Chapter 24
The Velocity Skydiving instructor was not thrilled to see Arthur walking through the front door of his office.
It was Arthur’s last gambit, one last thing to try after the man had told him over the phone that all his slots were booked up and there was no way he’d be able to accommodate him for a jump.
At first, Arthur was relieved, but no. He had to find a way to do this.
Right now. It was the only way to end this day, this particular day, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“She’s not here. It’s just me,” Arthur said.
The guy looked skeptical, stood on his tiptoes and peered over Arthur and out the front door to make sure the bad lady wasn’t lurking somewhere.
“Well, anyway, I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” he said as he began sorting through a pile of release forms. Standoffish words aside, Arthur could tell the man was instantly more at ease.
“It’s been my girlfriend’s lifelong dream to, in her words, ‘fly like a bird.’ ”
The Aussie laughed. “Bit corny.”
“I agree. But I thought maybe if I went in her place, she could…not live vicariously, but…maybe she’d get that feeling again, that anything is possible. Because I would never, ever, ever do this in a million zillion years. But for her, I would. I would do anything.”
“Well, now you’re making me feel bad.”
The instructor rapped his fingers on the countertop, thinking it over. Good Lord, he really was handsome, Arthur thought.
“All right. Fine. I’ve got a group coming through soon, and I guess we could jam you in. It’ll probably be fine as long as we distribute the weight evenly on the plane.”
“I understand,” Arthur said with a sigh. “I appreciate you hearing me out.”
“Mate, I said yes.”
“Wait, really?” He’d been expecting a no, definitely hoping for a no. His brain couldn’t even compute what was about to happen. And had the man said it would probably be OK to fit one more person on the plane?
“Really. Now, sign this waiver before I change my mind.”
The instructor slid a piece of paper across the counter for Arthur to review.
There was no time to be an Arthur about this.
No time to overthink. Arthur scanned the legalese—release the company of all liability, understand the risks, bodily harm and even death, yadda yadda—and, regretfully, signed at the bottom.
“Say, just curious,” he said as he scribbled his name. “Do people ever die doing this?”
“Sometimes. About one in half a million.”
The logical part of Arthur’s brain was reassured by the “half a million.” He knew intellectually that he was more likely to die driving home, or during the next lightning storm. The rest of him was focused in on the “one.”
“Hardly ever happens here, though,” the instructor added kindly.
“I’m sorry, hardly ever?”
Arthur could hear very little over the roar of the plane as it readied for takeoff.
But he could still feel his cell phone buzzing up against his body, buried deep in several layers of clothing. He managed to finagle it out and answer with his nose, since his fingers were gloved.
It was Wren calling. He wasn’t supposed to answer his phone on the plane, but he had to know if everything was OK.
“Hello?”
“Arthur!”
“Hello?” He could barely make out her words.
“Where the hell are you? Why is it so loud there?”
“Uh—it was going to be a surprise! Are you OK?”
He couldn’t hear her response. The plane’s engine was too loud, and it sounded like the call was breaking up. A hand signal from one of the other instructors on board advised him to hang it up. Wren said something else that he couldn’t make out.
“Wren, I can’t really hear you!” he shouted.
“So I’m just going to talk! Um, I think there’s a non-zero chance that I’m about to die.
I probably won’t, don’t worry! But it’s kind of clarifying.
I had an epiphany just now. I had it all wrong, Wren.
I thought you always wanted me to be someone else.
In reality, you just refused to let me settle for anything but the best that I was capable of.
And I love you for that. It’s not always comfortable with you, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
We do want the same things, Wren. We want each other.
We want a life together. That’s all that matters.
The details come later. Figuring it all out, that is the adventure.
I’m sorry for lying to you, for ruining so many things.
But I’m jumping out of a plane any second now, to show you that I am capable of surprising you, to show you that—”
“ARTHUR!” her voice finally broke through the noise in a scream. “GET YOUR ASS TO THE HOSPITAL!”
“I— Wait, it’s happening? It’s time?”
“THE BABY IS COMING. NOW. LIKE, NOW NOW.”
“Mate,” the Australian instructor said to Arthur. “Put it away.”
“Just hold on,” Arthur told him. “Wren, I’m coming. I promise, I’m coming!”
Arthur hung up, tucked his phone away, and grabbed his instructor by the jumpsuit.
“I’m sorry, I gotta get off,” he said. “You gotta turn it around, land it somehow!”
“Sorry,” the guy said. “Only one way off now!”
Minutes later, Arthur’s instructor was painstakingly securing their harnesses. They were strapped together, and he was checking each and every buckle, every clip.
“I don’t want to sound like a dick,” Arthur said, “but is there any way we can hurry this along?”
The guy just looked at him, like, You’re kidding me, right?
“Got somewhere to be, do you?”
“Sort of, yeah!” Arthur yelled over the noise, which was deafening now, the jump door open and wind whipping inside the cabin. “My girlfriend is having our baby!”
“Now?”
“Yeah, now!”
The instructor took this in, looked around, and passed a hand signal back to another instructor, who was waiting with her own passenger.
“Best I can do is cut you in line and have you go first! You ready, mate?”
“Thank you— Wait, what?”
Did he just say first?
The pair waddled over to the open door and Arthur stared out.
There was nothing. Just open blue sky and a haze of clouds all around.
He couldn’t see the ground. Shouldn’t there be a cornfield down there somewhere?
A Little League baseball diamond? Something, anything to remind him that he was still on earth?
Vertigo kicked in; his head began spinning.
His stomach lurched and he thought he might throw up.
All the bravery and urgency he’d been feeling moments ago had apparently been sucked right out the open door.
“Hold on, wait.”
“We’ve got the green light, we gotta go!”
“One sec, one sec!! I don’t think I can. I don’t think I can do this.”
“You have to!”
“But what if we die?! I can’t die the same day my child is born. Wren will be traumatized forever. And I don’t even have a will yet! I can’t. I can’t.”
“Take it from me, as a dad and a skydiver with over a thousand jumps under my belt,” the instructor said, leaning in even further, “you’re never gonna feel fully ready! But you are!”
“You think?”
“Hey. It’s gonna be a helluva story to tell your kid one day, yeah?”
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”
“On the count of ten.”
“OK.”
They counted together.
“One. Two—”
“TEN!” the instructor yelled, and with one final push, Arthur was airborne.
Arthur burst into the hospital room, hair still matted from his helmet, fresh rings around his eyes from the goggles. All of it made even more ridiculous by the surgical mask the nurses made him throw on, which only accentuated his dishevelment.
He was expecting chaos, a war zone. Screaming and blood and a dozen medical professionals tripping over one another as they hurried to deliver the baby.
Instead, the room was dark. Quiet. His own panting aside, the room was completely peaceful.
Wren was lying in the bed, torso propped up slightly, a woozy, relaxed look in her eyes. Arthur ran to her, grabbed her hand.
“Did I miss it? Oh God, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Shh,” she said. “You’re harshing the vibe.”
Arthur didn’t understand.
“Where’s the baby?”
“Still here.” She pointed to her belly. “It doesn’t happen that fast, dummy. Charlie got me here in plenty of time.”
“She couldn’t stay?”
“I’d already kept her long enough. She had a honeymoon to get to, and I knew you’d make it.”
A sigh of relief that he had, in fact, made it. More than relief. Arthur felt as if someone had just suddenly decided that the apocalypse was called off. If he’d missed the birth of his first child, he’d have never forgiven himself. That was the kind of moment you could never get back.
“I know that,” he said. Some semblance of logic and reason began returning to his brain as the adrenaline wore off.
Flashes of passages from books and blogs appeared to him.
Things like length of contractions and average duration of labor and how dilated Wren would need to be before she could start pushing.
“I was just so desperate to get here, I had no sense of time. It felt like it took forever.”
The jump had been exhilarating, but after the initial rush had subsided—and after allowing just a moment to imagine himself as Superman, flying through the air to save Metropolis—all Arthur had wanted to do was land.
Eventually, they did. In a big empty field, where they had to wait an eternity for the shuttle to come pick them up and take them back to the start.
It all took way too long.
“You seem surprisingly calm,” he said, as if just noticing.
“It’s the drugs,” she said with a big lazy grin. “I want them all the time.”
“I should never have left you alone. I’m an idiot.”
“I told you to.”
“I shouldn’t have listened.” Then: “I take it you couldn’t hear me, when we were on the phone.”
“I heard enough.” She squeezed his hand, glad he was here, but somehow still distant. “But words can’t change everything. They don’t erase you lying to me. They don’t prove that you’re actually capable of change.”
“I jumped out of a plane.”
“Admittedly, a pretty good start,” Wren said. “But just a start.”