My stethoscope was at the very bottom of the bag.
Fear and Loathing at 3,000 Feet
In May of 1990 I was in the final stages of my medical training. One evening a fellow resident named Raoul and I were hanging around the cafeteria at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg.
“Hey, Donovan, take a look at this,” he said, pointing to a new notice on the bulletin board. It was a sign-up sheet for a one-day skydiving course. Raoul was excited. He figured it would be the ultimate adventure. As for me, I wasn’t so sure. I’m deathly afraid of heights, so naturally I had some problems with the concept of leaping out of an airplane at an altitude of 3,000 feet. For the next two weeks, Raoul badgered me incessantly: “Come on, don’t be such a wuss! Sign up with me! It’ll be the experience of a lifetime!” Eventually I caved in and added my name to the list of thrill-seekers.
As the jump date drew nearer I began to have second thoughts. What the devil had I gotten myself into? The sign-up sheet seemed to leer at me every time I walked by it. “Pssst! Schmendrick!” it would whisper sibilantly. “Is your life insurance policy up to date? Heh-heh-heh . . .” I was sorely tempted to scratch my name off, but pride prevented me. Would John Wayne have chickened out before The Alamo? Hell, no!
On the morning of our jump class I awoke with a colossal knot in my stomach. “Maybe we’ll get rained out,” I told myself hopefully. When I opened my curtains, brilliant sunlight streamed in. So much for divine intervention. I got dressed and phoned Raoul to see if he needed a ride to the drop zone.
“Hurro?” he mumbled. What was he doing sleeping in on the morning of our big adventure?
“Rise and shine, buddyl! Need a ride?”
“Ride?”
“To the drop zone. You know, for today’s skydiving lesson.”
“Kaff-kaff! I won’t be able to make it today, Donovan – bad cold. Kaff-kaff!”
Those were without a doubt the lamest coughs I had ever heard.
“Gee, you looked fine yesterday. When did you get this cold?” I asked suspiciously.
“Kaff-kaff! Last night. Very bad cold. Sore throat, too! Sorry, gotta go take some cough medicine! Good luck!” He hung up.
I gnashed my teeth all the way to the drop zone.
The No-Frills Jump School was located on a weedy lot 53 miles west of Farmville. It consisted of a tiny prefab trailer and one flyblown porta-potty. I counted 18 people – 16 students plus a pair of instructors named Daniel and Lucy.
“Where’s Raoul?” a colleague from the hospital inquired when I joined the group.
“Bad cold. Kaff-kaff!” I replied.
Daniel overheard our exchange and smiled knowingly.
“You’d be surprised how often that happens,” he said. He then turned to Lucy and asked, “Where’s Fudge?”
“I think he’s sleeping in the back of the trailer again.”
“We should probably start. Would you mind waking him up?” Daniel blew a whistle to get our attention. “Okay troops, gather round! Fudge is going to be your primary instructor today. He’ll be starting shortly. He’s a Class One Skydiver with more than 2,000 jumps under his belt. Pay close attention to what he says – your lives may depend on it!”
Just then the trailer’s side door creaked open. We all turned to get our first glimpse of the man upon whom our lives would depend.
Fudge was a squat, 30-something fellow with a thatch of matted brown hair and a seedy-looking five o’clock shadow. He was wearing wraparound mirror shades, a tie-dyed T-shirt, fraying shorts and flip-flops. He looked vaguely disoriented. Several seconds elapsed, during which he gazed up at the sky while absentmindedly scratching an armpit. Finally he opened his mouth to speak.
“What day is it?”
Despite our initial misgivings, Fudge turned out to be an excellent instructor. He spent the first couple of hours teaching us the basic rules of skydiving. Among other things, we learned that since we were beginners our canopies would be rigged to automatically deploy a few seconds after we exited the plane. All we had to do was relax and enjoy the ride. Once we got closer to the ground one of the instructors would communicate with us via walkie-talkie to help us steer the parachute safely into the landing area. The whole thing sounded preposterously easy. I began to wonder why I had allowed myself to get so worked up about it. I should have done this a long time ago! Maybe I should look into bungee jumping, too… . Fudge interrupted my ambitious daydream.
“Hey, Gray, wake up. Now for the fun part, everyone! I’m going to tell you about everything that can go wrong while you’re in the air.” Uh-oh. “Here’s an example,” he continued. “Every now and then some poor fool gets tangled in the lines of his chute. When that happens, you fall faster than a cannonball. Any of you happen to remember what terminal velocity is?” My stomach lurched. I scanned my fellow jumpers. They all looked like they were about to spew. “120 miles an hour,” he said. “Pretty fast, eh? That doesn’t leave you with much time to react, so listen up!”
We listened.
An hour later the plane went up with Daniel and three very nervous-looking jumpers. The rest of us watched as the single-engine Cessna climbed to the proper altitude and levelled out over the jump zone. A tiny speck appeared in the plane’s doorway. Moments later the speck dislodged and a white parachute blossomed above it. We all cheered like hillbillies at a graduation. A few minutes later the plane circled back and the process was repeated. The third time around, however, the speck at the threshold didn’t move. We turned to Fudge.
“Choked,” was his simple explanation.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“Daniel will probably give the jumper one more chance,” he replied.
Sure enough, the plane turned around and passed over the drop zone again. Despite our shouted encouragement, the jumper remained frozen in the doorway. Fudge shook his head sadly. “There’s one or two in every class.” As the plane began its descent, Fudge handed me a parachute. “Put this on,” he said. “You’re in my group, and we’re going up next.”
It was cold and noisy in the airplane. There were no seats behind the cockpit, so the other two jumpers and I sat with our backs pressed against the hull. Fudge lay on his side reading a dog-eared science fiction paperback novel. As the plane ascended, I tried to remember everything he had taught us. I couldn’t seem to recall much more than the bit about getting tangled in the suspension lines of the chute, though. Come to think of it, what were we supposed to do if that happened? Oh yeah, “cut away” the main parachute, free fall until we were no longer entangled and then activate the reserve chute. Did screaming like a schoolgirl come before, during or after those manoeuvres? Just then, one of the other jumpers nudged me with her knee. I looked up to see Fudge standing by the door.
“Door!” he yelled over the racket of the engine.
“What?” we yelled back in unison.
He threw the door open.
A tremendous roar filled the plane. I could barely hear myself think. Fudge motioned for me to approach. Although every cell in my body begged me to ignore him, I got up and walked stiffly to the doorway. He surveyed my parachute one last time and then pointed at the footpegs welded to the frame just outside the door. We had practiced standing on them earlier in the day, but that had been on terra firma. Circumstances had changed considerably since then. When I leaned out of the plane to step onto the first peg, the wind buffeted me with incredible force. Struggling for balance, I put my left foot on the peg and looked back at Fudge. He smiled broadly. Encouraged, I planted my right foot on the second peg and glanced back again. This time he gave me the A-OK sign and shouted, “Jump!”
Who, me? You have got to be kidding. I stared down at the ground. It was a billion light-years away. The farmer’s fields below were the size of postage stamps, and the roads were thinner than strands of spaghetti. Meanwhile, the howling wind continued to tear at me and screech in my ears. I looked longingly at the interior of the plane. Sanctuary. Fudge gave me the thumbs up sign and hollered again for me to jump. I didn’t budge. We stared at each other for what seemed like eons. At last he motioned for me to climb back inside. The look of disappointment on his face was unmistakable. Somehow it served to galvanize me. I sucked in a huge breath and vaulted into thin air.