As Close as It Gets

How does someone make new friends? Get involved, I thought. Somehow. Play sports. Join a team, take music lessons and participate in what group functions that affords you. Take art classes. Volunteer. Do what you can to get out there. That’s where the people are. Not online. Not on TV. If people are to become friends, they must be present, in the flesh. You just have to get out there and meet them, I thought. Maybe those activities will lead you to the type of people you like. There: a plan. Now to implement it.

I’d always thought I might like curling. I have no idea why. I’d never curled. That’s not entirely true; if you recall, I did curl once in an HSM curling bonspiel. But that was all. I heard it was a social sport, and I remembered that past bonspiel to be very sociable, so I thought I’d give it a try. The Mine hosted an annual curling bonspiel, a funspiel, they called it, so I asked Bev if she wanted to sign up for it. She’d curled before, so she was up for it. We got a team together, paid our admission fee, and had a good time. We liked it so much I thought we might join the club and take instruction.

But it never led to anything. We never looked into joining the curling club, but we did sign up for the Kidd Recreational Bonspiel every year. When the CIM chapter began hosting one, we signed up for that too. They were fun. We began to look forward to them.

I can’t say we were any good. Sliding out of the hack was problematic. I’d wobble and fall down. And even when I did keep upright, I could never hope to place the rock in the house if I did slide. So, I didn’t. I kept my foot on the rubber grip and thrust the rock down the ice. I didn’t use a slider when sweeping, either. “I’d likely crack my head open,” was all I’d say if asked why I didn’t. I probably looked foolish. But what the hell, I only curled a couple times a year. So long as I kept on my feet, I was happy. I fell once or twice, but I never hurt myself. The potential was there, though. But I always had fun. That’s the main thing, I suppose.

Our last funspiel was not that fun.

We set up to play our first game. We gathered, introduced ourselves to the opposing team, shook hands and I set about throwing the first rock of the game. I threw it right through the house. I turned my back to the rink and crouched to gather my second rock. When I stood again, I saw a group of people gathered mid-rink.

“Did someone fall?” I asked the other person at our end.

“Yeah,” he said. He looked concerned.

I looked to see who it might be. I saw a white sweater through the grove of legs. Bev’s got a white sweater just like that, I thought. Then I realized that it was Bev. Holy Crap! She was flat on her back. She didn’t appear to be moving.

I rushed to where they were, taking care to not fall, myself. I thread my way through them, coming upon our friend, a nurse, on her knees beside Bev, with another guy with his hand under her neck, already manipulating her neck. If she’d had a neck injury, it would have been too late to prevent injury, she’d have been paralysed. I decided it was pointless to point out that he ought to know better than to wiggle a person’s head about after an injury, thinking afterwards, but not then, that he must have asked her if she could wiggle her toes before he began messing about with her neck. He was a mine rescue man, after all. Bev says he did not.

There was no visible blood. But she was dazed.

I took over. The Mine Rescue man backed off. Maybe it was something in my eyes that told him to.
I asked her how she felt. Dizzy. She couldn’t see well, she said. Her head hurt. Her back hurt.
I asked her to move her arms and legs for me. Wiggle your fingers. They wiggled. Can you wiggle your toes? She could. Everything worked fine, so the Mine rescue man was forgiven.

Someone asked me if I thought that we should call an ambulance. I was surprised that no one had already, so I told him that I’d like him to do just that. My voice was deathly calm. I was not.

Bev was cold, so I asked her if she thought she was okay to move. She thought she could, so we sat her up slowly and once she gained her feet, we helped her off the ice and into a chair in the glassed observation area, away from the chilled rink. She was not steady. She was far from steady.
I began to worry.

She grew too dizzy to sit, so I tore a few parkas off their hangers so she wouldn’t have to lay on the hard floor, then another as a pillow. When we laid her down, she couldn’t lay on her back, she thought she might throw up. I didn’t really care if she puked all over everyone’s coat.

The ambulance arrived. They did a thorough inspection, and finally put her neck in a brace and strapped her to the spinal board.

She wanted me to get a few things from home, in case her stay at the hospital was longer than expected. Oddly enough, we both still thought they’d give her a quick once over and we’d be on our way. I even said as much, fully expecting that we’d be back for the gala Chinese buffet at evening’s end, at latest. Our friend, the nurse, took me by the arms and said, “Dave, you are not coming back today. They’re going to want to keep her for observation.” She didn’t want to worry me, so she didn’t tell me how serious Bev’s injury might be.

Even so, the severity of her injury began to sink in.

When I got to the hospital, I was ushered into her triage room. She was to have an MRI. The neurosurgeon in Sudbury was waiting to watch, in real time, to assess. But first, they wanted her to sit up. They gave her the largest bowl I’d ever seen for her to clutch while she did. She needed it too. She sat up, the world whirled, and her breakfast was in the bowl. The headache that rushed up and took hold of her paled the pain she’d been afflicted with until then. She almost passed out. The ER got very busy with her just then. She was rushed to the MRI, after which I was told they’d found a couple intracranial hemorrhages. But they were slow. She wouldn’t be rushed for emergency surgery in Sudbury. Not yet, anyways. They’d reassess in the morning.

Surgery? In Sudbury?
She was being transferred to ICU for the interim.
The ICU?
That’s when it struck me.
Bev had almost died. Right then. Right there.