Almost as if some fates had read my previous post about Pluribus, I was a few short days later confronted with the real life dilemma of who an individual is, as opposed to the body they walk around in.
My husband is not really an adrenaline junkie, in the way most people understand that. He doesn’t take mad risks just for the thrill of the risk and the dopamine hit of it working out. He just enjoys the endorphins of exercise, along with the problem solving aspects of route finding, puzzle mapping, physical flexibility and a certain element of jeopardy involved in both climbing and mountain biking.
Some time in early January, we were lying in bed and he told me how excited he was about Rjukan. It’s an ice climbing mecca in central Norway, where the daytime winter temperature averages about -7C. We went there last year, and I loved it, so I booked again for February. I remember thinking “I hope it all works out. Given the awesome ice formation, the only thing that can get in the way is an accident”. I didn’t say that though, for some reason.
Anyway, the accident materialised, like these things always do, in a very pedestrian way. Richard went to Woburn, which is where he goes every other day to do a mountain bike trail through the forest. Personally, I find the way he does this quite terrifying, because it’s at such speed, but then I’m not a highly skilful biker. We’ve both been keen to build as much fitness as possible before the trip, and he decided to take my sister along so that she can practice her driving. She passed her test on Friday, and it was Sunday. I was very nervous about her driving there, and texted Richard to check they had arrived. He made some joke about how it was a miracle.
I decided to take two of the kids to the shopping centre to look for some new work clothes, and take my mind off the anxiety of a new driver. It was a bit of a boring trip. I went to Starbucks, after buying a black top and black trousers, to give the complaining children something a bit more interesting to do. They decided to have a cinnamon bun and a hot chocolate, and shared them quite nicely. I looked at my watch. It was 3.15 pm on the 11th January.
I chivvied the children into drinking up, because we needed to get home. I wanted to be back at home before my sister started the return journey, which she should have started already. I was vaguely surprised she hadn’t set off when I looked on the map, but it was only approximate, and she might have gone for a longer run than it takes Richard to complete the hour’s bike circuit.
I was walking along in the shopping centre, chatting with the kids, and then Ingrid said, “Mummy, your phone is ringing”. It was Richard, and I scrabbled to pick it up (whatsapp does weird stuff sometimes).
I cwash. You come pick me up. I not where know I am.
It was very confusing; Richard sounded as if he was speaking through a straw, with a sort of garbled yoda aspect to the word order. It must be the reception. I was trying to remain calm about what “I cwash” meant, because my first thought was that they were in the car and my sister had crashed it on the A5.
Sorry darling, I think my reception must be poor, I can’t quite hear you.
I crashed on my bike. I don’t know where I am. wsksh akakf akskfj thththth. I pass you to man here.
So to cut a long story short, he had apparently stacked a jump, been found unconscious by another biker, and although he thought he made sense, he made no sense at all, and was making noises that did not turn into words. It’s hard to describe how much cold fear that strikes into one’s heart.
I got all the details of where to find him from the good Samaritan who was helping him. He was obviously unsure whether to call an ambulance. He probably had the same hestiation I did, which is ending up waiting hours for an ambulance when I could drive him to A&E myself. So I drove there as fast as possible, with the kids, who were completely silent. I told them everything would be ok. I got there. His face looked like the Batman baddie, TwoFace. Totally scraped up one side, but otherwise uninjured.
The helmet was intact, but unfortunately his head was not. He was asking me the same questions every 30 seconds, saying he didn’t know where he was, what he was doing there, why were we in the car, why were we in the hospital. And then it’d come back to him, and he’d be vaguely himself. Then he’d say oh, I’m all better now, what happened – which would be followed by at least half an hour of very intense discussion on whether maybe he lost consciousness before he fell off his bike, just randomly. Right, yes, there are skid marks by a tree stump, your face is mashed up, but you just fell off. It’s quite amusing that his similarly fearless friends were echoed this idea that he couldn’t have fucked it up; apparently the very scary implications of randomly passing out while doing intense exercise are somehow preferable to the ego dent of having made a technical error. I have lost count of the number of times I had to show him his Garmin live track as if it was the first time. I did not cover myself in glory and will probably be criticised for the eye roll for many years to come.
The medical opinion involved a lot of scans, followed by “nothing to see here”, and a contradictory “it’ll take a while to get better”. No timeline was given, and no real information other than “if he has fluid leaking out of his ear, bring him back”.
There have been gradual improvements each day, and lots more rationality and insight, but he’s still not quite “himself”. He knows this too, but he can’t quite describe in what way – and neither can I.
I never really think about who he is, because I’ve known him for so long and don’t even notice all his little habits, likes and dislikes. It’s strange when he can’t organise things around the house, because one of his defining features has become all the tidying things up and doing all the washing and folding. A lot of the time, I can’t stand it because I hate the pressure it creates. But the absence of his routine tasks is involuntary, and I think it makes him feel a bit unanchored.
We met in 2004, and I still have those little snapshots in my head. I first set eyes on him in a meeting, and a certain frisson of mutual attraction seemed obvious. We went for drinks after work with the team, to the Slug and Lettuce in Covent Garden. He was a very confident man, full of energy, easy to talk to, friendly but no danger of friend-zone. He was an alpha male who carefully window-dressed as a beta male. He was solicitous, considerate and avoided any sleazy behaviour. That is who he still is, with some oddities with planning, and an open emotionality I’ve not seen in nearly 20 years.
We went to my work drinks last night, which was the first time he had been to my office or met my colleagues. I looked at him looking handsome, and to everyone else he would have seemed completely normal. To me he seemed a bit withdrawn, unsure of himself. He has spent his life putting many parcels of difficult feelings into the controlled fear experiment of trad and ice climbing, I think it is quite hard when the walls break down.
Maybe it intrigues me so much because it’s a reversal of sorts. Someone who looks like the same person, but whose soul is slightly frozen in time. It’s like the chaperone character Zosia, who still knows who she was, and still is. But in the hive mind, it is all merging together, the past and the present, the hopes and fears of all the years. All of us have those little ways of slightly discounting the past in our minds, in order to be fully present and progress; it seems as if brain injuries leak all the compartments, all the voices and scenes and choices clamouring for attention.
We are still going on holiday in Rjukan, but I think it might be hard to watch the beautiful ice from the sauna.
Also, since gear reviews seems to be the only thing anyone clicks around here for, his bike was a Sonder Titanium frame which he bought and had customised from the now defunct Alpkit. It is completely pristine, which of course is the main question most bike nuts ask when they hear there’s been an accident – “how’s the bike”.
We binned the old Giro helmet, which was also fine and doesn’t appear to have taken any impact. I made him replace it with a very robust MTB helmet from Fox. I think it’s the Speed frame and it looks great. https://foxracing.co.uk/product/speedframe-camo-helmet/33503.html
The resting writer 
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