Interlude 1
The Fall
They say accidents happen in seconds, but I don’t think that’s true.
I think they start in silence. In something too small to notice: one wrong tilt of the wing, one thermal current shifting too suddenly, a feeling you dismiss because you’re too experienced to be wrong. And then, when it begins, it’s already too late to fix.
A gust, sharp, unexpected, grabbed the glider’s wing.
My right wing dipped, sending the aircraft into a shallow spiral.
My instincts kicked in. Adjust the rudder, stabilize.
But something was wrong. The air, my partner only seconds ago, had turned.
No lift. No time. The glider dropped in altitude faster than I could manage.
I didn’t scream. Not at first. Not when I lost control. Not even when I knew I wouldn’t recover in time. The fear also came in silence, like a cold hand tightening around my chest.
And then, the sudden impact.
A dull, crushing weight against my body. The canopy cracked. The world folded in on itself. Darkness. Then voices. Distant and muffled, as if I were underwater.
My brain, the perfect organ that it is, shut off almost all my senses. One by one. I didn’t hear the sound of metal splitting or a wing hitting the grass. I didn’t hear the screams, or the sirens, or my own voice, though I think I tried to call out for my dad. “Dad!”
Maybe I screamed it. Maybe I only thought it.
I’ll never know. The last thing I smelled was smoke.
Something chemical. Something burning. It crawled down my throat and clung to my skin.
Then came the darkness: soft at first, almost gentle.
Like falling into velvet. And then, deeper.
A drag. A silence so total it nearly felt like sleep.
I never remembered the next part. The hospital. The surgeries. The months of healing. Only the aftermath. The mirror reflecting the angry red scars lacing my skin.
A slight numbness in my left hand. The persistent ringing in my ear that never fully faded.
The silence in one ear. They told me later that I was lucky to survive, in relatively good shape.
They said it like a compliment, like I should wear it with pride.
But no one tells you what to do when survival becomes something you didn’t ask for.
When waking up is harder than passing out.
That much love almost killed me, and that was only the first time that year.