The moment solid ground literally falls away beneath your feet

This story was originally written to a prompt in the #SeptemberStoryStreak challenge on Story Republic, Keep reading after for more details of our forthcoming book What Is Love? a global collection of real life stories, including my story, ‘Ants’.

Its like vertigo, but this time the usually solid ground has literally fallen away.

I’m walking from the pool (too cold) back to the spa. I’m anticipating the pleasure of sinking into its warmth. The ground holds just long enough my body has committed to the shift of my centre of gravity. There is not even time for ‘uh-oh’, as a cascade of sensations engulf me, so fast my frontal lobe can’t make sense of any of it.

My left leg is plunging down, until gripped in a vice-like grip half way up my thigh. The tender flesh squeezed up until the skin feels like a balloon being pulled. Below, my lower leg dangles in empty air. The boards of the deck rush upward, the palm trees and hotel walls tilt askew. My face is only spared by my forearms, which slam flat against the wood, pressed beneath my chest, though my forehead grazes just hard enough to hurt. My right leg and foot are squashed under my sprawled body, knee bent up and toe still tucked like a sprinter about to start a race. All the air is knocked out of my lungs. Pain jangles along most of my nerve pathways.

I turn my head, rest my cheek against the sun warm wood, and try to breathe.

Above the rim of the spa, two small faces stare at me, mouths and blue eyes stretched wide beneath gold curls.

From around my body, klaxons alert: Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! I am about to scream curses, to vent my outraged shock, but years of preschool music teaching kick in: I can’t swear in front of little children. Instead I give a wordless moan. It sounds, even to me, like a cow in distress. The youngest child is inhaling to scream in panic.

“I’m alright, darlings!” I gasp, “I just have an ouchie.” The gaping mouth closes, I am grateful to be spared the hysterics. Hope I can contain my own. It dawns on me that I need to pull my leg out of the hole before the tissues swell and trap it. I hope its not already too late. I wonder if my body will even obey me. Everything feels rubbery and uncertain. I don’t think any bones are broken, but either way, the leg needs to come up. I sense I only have one shot. I inhale slowly. Hold for a count of three, then on the exhale I push up and away to the right with everything I’ve got. A long moment of resistance, a sensation of scraping and pulling but no worse, and I am free.

I flop onto my right side, and clutch my agonised thigh with both hands, hissing like a steam engine. Even through the rush of returning circulation, I can feel the skin is mostly intact. I dare to open my eyes, blinking at the azure sky remote above me. I glance across at the small dark hole in the deck. Its only as long as my foot and a board wide, with a frill of damp splinters where it broke. My leg is, usually, a lot wider. No wonder it hurts. I close my eyes again, trying to maintain a decent fortitude and work out what to do next.

There is sloshing from the spa, as water is displaced.

“I’ll get help,” a man’s voice, the children’s father. His feet ring on the deck as he runs, and the childproof lock on the gate clatters. Help would be good. The pain is… quite bad. As a migraine sufferer I am a connoisseur of pain. Not as bad as broken bones, but not good. The internal klaxon continues on a rising tide of nausea. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

“I have a boo-boo too,” says a voice near my ear. I open my eyes. The smaller toddler has plumped herself down beside me and proffers her small round knee. I blink and focus. The merest vestige of a healed graze shows on the soft skin. Her imperative hand points to her knee and she gazes, thoughtful, at my hands clamped around my thigh.

“They hurt, don’t they?” I gasp. She nods, emphatic. “But then they get better,” I manage.

She nods again, and shuffles a little closer. I am touched by her empathy, and warmed by her small bright presence, as we wait for help to come.

Thank you for reading, your time and attention are a gift.

• Has the ground ever literally fallen away under your feet? Perhaps you missed your footing and fell down a curb or into a pothole? Perhaps something worse? Spend a moment or two connecting to your memory of that sense of vertigo (or whatever you felt).

• Any kind of sudden loss or illness gives us a similar sense of solid ground suddenly not there. It might be metaphorical, but its real inside us. What has made you feel like that?

• How long did it take you to recover from the times you’ve lost contact with solid ground? Are you recovered now? What if, like many of us with chronic illness or injury, it feels like we don’t ever recover that assumption of certainty that the ground will be solid. For example, its hard for me to predict how much energy I will have, day to day and even hour to hour. Like a glitchy battery in your smart phone, one minute I have 70% charge, the next it might be flashing red on 5%

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I’m excited to announce our story collection. What Is Love? official publication date was 7 October, which means it will be available to buy very soon. Click on the photo below to learn more, get sneak peeks and we’ll notify you when its available in your country! I can’t wait to share this joyful book with you and with the people you love.