Burn In, Burn Out

The thing about military parachuting is that usually the jump from the door of the aircraft will not kill you, unless you don't jump far enough from the door and you thump down the length of the plane. Even if you do hit the side of the aircraft, it's usually more a source of amusement for the instructors who shake their heads than a flag handed to your mother. The big necessity when parachuting is obviously the landing. Feet and knees together, with knees slightly bent to absorb the impact. As soon as you think you're about 250 feet from the ground you must assume a good tight landing position. When your heels hit the ground you must turn your body and fall so that after your heels touch down your calf, thigh, buttocks and your back all hit in succession to cushion the impact of hitting the ground at fifteen miles per hour. With the momentum of this half roll you must kick your legs over and plant your feet solidly on the ground to anchor yourself and then disengage the risers from your harness to keep yourself on the ground. When executed properly the Parachute Landing Fall, or PLF, should look like one smooth movement, totally natural, when the reason for it is anything but.

There's no series of sensations quite like it, the almost unbearable adrenaline rush of waiting to jump, the rush of the wind and the initial tumble out the door for four seconds of terror, the jarring shock of your T-10C chute opening, the sudden stillness. Once the world righted itself and I'd recovered my breath from the shock of the chute opening, I fell to the earth with a sense of wonder, the joy of experiencing a brand new view of the same old world. The floating feeling was fantastic, like I was flying, alighting softly like a bird to land gracefully on the turf below. This wonderful reverie was interrupted when I realized suddenly that I was burning in to the drop zone, the ground approaching way too fast to be healthy. Our instructors had taught us to look at the horizon, because looking at the ground causes you to instinctually reach for the ground with your feet, pointing your toes like spears at the earth. I was maybe five, ten feet from the ground, still speeding like hell, when I looked at the ground. Feet apart and pointed at the ground, I hit like a ton of shit. I heard my ankle pop as my left foot landed flat on the uneven ground, while the rest of my body flopped to a rest. I was lying flat on my left side and my left foot was still flat on the ground. While the instructor was screaming at me that I was lucky my fucking retarded ass wasn't dead he noticed the odd angle of my foot. He asked me if I could move it, and when I lifted it off the ground I still had full, albeit painful, range of motion.

I did everything wrong and what I prayed was a severely twisted ankle turned out to be a nondisplaced fracture of my left tibia. After getting off the ground I hobbled back to the truck and waited with everyone else, and marched back to the barracks with them, trying to hide my totally obvious limp. Next morning I went to sick call, walking two miles to the nearest Aid Station. Being in a state of denial, I told the doc that he must not have read the x-rays correctly; my leg only hurt when I had to put my full weight on it, or attempted to bend my foot as it might normally bend. This being my first broken bone I imagined it hurting worse than this. The doc was a little perturbed at my lack of belief in his ability to read an x-ray. He put it up to the window, and there on my left tibia was a thick white crack across the bone, it being obvious enough the doc didn't need to point. My tongue was thick and heavy in my mouth but I denied him again, claiming only a twisted ankle and a bad x-ray, so then he pointed at the crack in the bone. Vanquished, I hopped into a different room to have a cast put on.

The cast turned out to be a light yellow plaster webbing that reached from just below my left knee to the bottom of my foot, completely encasing my nonfunctioning leg. I remember the plaster being warm as it was rolled around my leg. I rested all of my weight on my elbows, leaning back so as to keep my broken leg elevated for the nurse to unwind and unroll and totally seal my failure. The nurse was very kind, talking to me calmly even as he looked studiously at my leg and at the roll of gauze and then plaster in his hands. I wanted to tell him that I hadn't meant to suffer a nondisplaced fracture of my left tibia, but I knew that would only illicit some kind of reassurance that it hadn't been my fault, that it was the incredible speed of my fall that had done it, or maybe I had simply landed wrong and that it was all a terrible accident, even though he knew, as I do, that all of the blame was squarely on my shoulders.

The table next to mine held another broken boy. The doctor looked at him gravely as another nurse entered with the materials for a brace. The other boy's ankle had twisted, and though the doc had some issues with the extent of the twisting, it was enough for a profile that would keep the boy out of action for a week or so and he carried the smug look of the righteously wounded. My nurse dipped a new roll of the plaster webbing into a bowl of warm water and continued to wrap my leg. If he'd looked at me just then he might have been surprised to see my lips curled back in a snarl, gritting my teeth. I wanted to strangle the boy with his twisted ankle, with his radiant face. I wanted to smash him and cause him pain such as I felt inside, where the nondisplaced fracture of my left tibia had shattered any notion of the invulnerability I had harbored in my previous life, the twisting, bitter knot of failure in my guts forcing an acid portent of the future to the back of my throat. There was no hope now; my total failure was growing more complete with each revolution of the nurse's hands around my now monstrous leg. Not looking at it and trying to wish it away accomplished nothing. It was inexorable; the nurse wound and wrapped the plaster. The boy with the twisted ankle slipped off of his table with ankle brace in place and limped out of the room. I silently asked the Lord to trip him, but to no avail. He returned after a moment to grab the shoe he'd left on the floor and hobbled out again. I cursed his balance.

I could feel the sun on my back; I could see my silhouette inside the square cage of light on the floor, bent out of shape from my odd position on the examination table. The nurse finished rolling the plaster onto my leg and gave the whole unwieldy mess a slap. My prison fortified, he disappeared into another room and returned with a boot for my cast, open like a sandal with one strap high across my bloated ankle and another low across the top of my foot and after sizing and adjusting I was ready to go. It was time to find the elevator and reenter the world a cripple.