Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron Ralston [165]
“Yes, you are alive. Your mom will be happy to know that when she comes back.”
“Mom?” I say, my voice rasping just above a whisper, delicate and weak. The word releases an internal torrent of love that courses through me, overwhelming my drugged brain and loosing a deluge of sobs.
Mom.
It hurts my body to cry, but I have no control. As the tears recede, I see a clock on the wall but I can’t read the time. Someone has taken out my contacts. I squint and make out both clock hands pointing somewhere to the left of down. It’s shortly after seven- or eight-thirty, only four hours since I was rescued. Moab is at least a seven-hour drive from Denver. Despite the sedation, my mind works well enough to know the math doesn’t add up.
“She’ll be back. She was here last night after your surgery. She’s probably having breakfast, and she’ll be in in a half hour or so.”
Last night? Breakfast? I ponder those concepts for a long moment, perplexed in my fatigue. It must be morning. “What day is it?”
“It’s Friday morning,” the nurse explains while finishing up her duties, moving precisely about my bed.
“Oh,” I say, but it comes out as a soft moan. I am stumped by my inability to link together any experience since I lost consciousness on the table in the ER. It seems like I just blinked, and now I’m in a different room. Moab is a long way from Denver. Did my mom fly here? “How did she get here so fast?” I manage to ask, my throat chafing with dryness.
“Where did she come from?”
“Denver.”
“It’s only about four and a half, five hours to drive here.”
Five hours? That can’t be. “Five hours to get to Moab?”
“Oh, you’re not in Moab, dear, you’re in Grand Junction. They flew you over last night.”
“Oh,” I mutter, trying to orient myself. I have no recollection of another flight after that amazing helicopter ride. But Grand Junction, I understand that. I’m in Colorado.
I am immobilized by exhaustion, which is a good thing, considering I have a full octopus’s compliment of tubes, insulated wires, and other unnatural tentacles running across the sheets into various parts of my arms and head. Before I can entertain any further explorations of my environment, I pass out again.
When I come around the next time, Sue Doss is at my bedside. I am pleased and comforted to see her. In her soft Texas twang, Sue says, “Your mom is right outside,” and she steps out the door to get her.
My mom walks into the ICU room. The harsh light of the fluorescent boxes embedded in the ceiling bathes her in a glorious glow. I can’t distinguish her features—but I can see her take two steps to stand beside me on my left side. I lift my left hand, and she takes it in both of hers. Her hands are cool, soft, and trembling ever so slightly. She bends down and kisses my forehead. At close range, I can see how much worry I’ve caused my mom, and though I can barely speak, I scrape out “Mom, I’m sorry I scared you. I love you.” She shakes her head, and before either of us knows it, we are crying together.
Regaining her ability to speak as the sniffles subside several minutes later, my mom tells me, “Sue and I were joking that if it wasn’t a broken leg that had kept you from coming home, you were going to have two broken ones by the time we got done with you.”
We both choke out a laugh and smile at each other. Love passes between us, reaching that spot that can be touched only by the reunion of a son with his mother, a mother with her son. I know we both want it to be a long time before we leave each other’s side again.
Epilogue:
A Farewell to Arm
You’ve got to love the life you live, and live the life you love.
—JERRY GARCIA BAND, “(I’m a) Roadrunner”
THE DAYS AND WEEKS following my rescue were nothing short of extraordinary. Even before my dad arrived in Grand Junction, my story was headline news across the globe. I had lost forty pounds and a liter and a half of blood in the canyon and had a long recovery ahead, the progress