Aron Ralston - Between a Rock and a Hard Place

“Holy crap, Aron, what did you just do?”

My vision warps with astonishment. The light quality in the canyon bursts into beige contrast, highlights becoming bright pale tan and shadows changing to deep brown as if I’ve crossed over into a sepia-toned movie. I bend my head to my arm, and my surroundings leave hallucinogenic trails behind them, responding unhurriedly to my movements, as though this pseudo-film is being played at two-thirds normal speed. I was half expecting the knife to glance off my arm, but when I relax my grip, I can see the folded handle of the multi-tool thrust perpendicular into my arm. Yesterday it didn’t seem possible that my knife could ever get through my skin, but it did. When I grasp the tool more firmly and wiggle it slightly, the blade connects with something hard, my upper forearm bone. I tap the knife down and feel it knocking on my radius.

Whoa. That’s so bizarre.

All at once, I am curious. There is barely any discernible sensation of the blade below skin level. My nerves seem to be concentrated in the outer layers of my arm. I confirm this by drawing the knife out, slicing up at my skin from underneath. Oh yeah, there they are. The flesh stretches with the blade, broadcasting signals through my arm as I open an inch-wide hole at the site. Letting the pain dissipate, I note that there is remarkably little blood coming from the torn cells in my skin; the capillaries must have closed down for the time being. Fascinated, I poke at the gash with the tool. Ouch. Pushing the knife back into the gory hole, I probe at the inner constitution of my arm. The epidermis is twice as thick as I thought it would be, and leathery-tough. Yellow fatty tissue lies under my skin in a membrane layer around my muscle. When I root around, my view disappears as burgundy-colored blood seeps into the wound. I tap at the bone again, feeling the vibration of each strike through my left thumb and forefinger. Even damped by surrounding tissues, the hollow thumping of the blade tip against my upper forearm bone resonates up into my elbow. The soft thock-thock-thock tells me I have reached the end of this experiment. I cannot cut into or through my forearm bones.

Pushing aside that bleak conclusion for a moment, I find some levity in my situation-it’s the first time in thirteen years that I have carried out a dissection, and I’m handling it much better this time around, even though it’s my own arm. I recall the sheep’s eyeball that stared back at me from the stainless-steel pan in ninth-grade physical science class. Cutting into the squishy orb was enough to intimidate me right out of the biology program in high school; thereafter, I stuck with chemistry and physics-anything to avoid animal parts in a nonculinary setting. That eyeball was indirectly responsible for my chosen path in engineering. It’s odd that I’ve come back to face such an old and rooted fear in this canyon.

Sweating from the adrenaline, I set my multi-tool on top of the chockstone and pick up my water bottle. It’s not time for my next sip, but I’ve earned this. As the first drops splash against my lip, I open my eyes and stare into the opaque blue bottom with detachment. I continue to tilt the bottle up and up, feeling a mix of deserved reward and recalcitrant spite-like I’m doing something naughty but I don’t care; I’m going to do it, and the fact that I shouldn’t makes me enjoy it even more.

Just do it-get it over with. It doesn’t matter.

Each continued tablespoon of water satisfies me like a whole mouthful, and instantly, I’m gulping at the dribbling flow. I close my eyes…Oh, God. After an all too brief three seconds, I swallow the last drops of my clean water supply, and it’s gone. My body wails for the water to keep coming, but there is no more. I gaze into the container poised over the bridge of my nose and shake the Nalgene, tearing free those last drops from the walls of the bottle.

Well, that’s it, there’s not a single drop left. I don’t linger on it. Screwing the lid back on the threaded lip, I realize I’ve passed a moment I’ve been anticipating for three days. Now it’s over. There’s one less thing I have to worry about. I decide to disengage the tourniquet-it’s making my whole arm ache, and since I won’t be going any further with the amputation, there’s no need to cause any excess agony. I unclip the carabiner holding the neoprene tubing and slowly unwind it, allowing my arm to regain its regular shape. At a snail’s pace, my circulation returns to my arm, and I keep watch on the wound. There is no increase in the blood flow at the gash, and no pulsing at all, so I figure I have avoided any arteries. Still, the bleeding is less than I would have expected. It almost seems like the tourniquet wasn’t doing anything. I make the connection that since the chockstone has pinched off the arteries and veins in my hand, it has reduced the blood flow in my arm. That would explain why my forearm is stone cold.

Pulling out the video camera, I hold it in my hand this time and begin taping the results of my surgery. My hat, webbing, and tourniquet supplies appear in the screen, on top of the chockstone.

“This next part may not be for all viewers at home. It’s a little after eight. At precisely eight o’clock I took my last sip of clean water…and…hide your eyes, Mom…”

Panning across the boulder, the camera comes to my arm and the gaping wound, smattered with bright red blood. My breathing becomes labored as I look at the puncture in my arm.

“I made an attempt-a short career in surgery, as it turned out-those knives are just not anywhere close to the task. I’ve got about an inch-wide gash in my arm that goes about a half inch deep. I cut down through the skin and the fatty tissue, and through some of the muscle. I think I cut a tendon, but I’m not sure. I tried, anyways. It really just didn’t go well. The tourniquet is relaxed at this point. Which actually is a little bothersome, considering I’m not bleeding that bad, barely at all. It’s so weird. You’d expect to definitely see more pulsing and bleeding, but oh well.

“I’m really fucked now. I’m out of water.”

I stop the tape, more depressed than ever. With an open wound, I’ve introduced a new contestant in the competition to see what will kill me first-dehydration, hypothermia, a flash flood, toxins from my crushed hand, or the infection that is likely breeding in my arm at this very moment.

Stabbing yourself with a contaminated knife-that was true genius, Aron.

Surmising that the bleeding at the gash site isn’t going to get any worse, I decide to cover the wound to keep the dirt, grit, and insects off it. Delicately pinching the bottom of my salmon-colored Phish tour T-shirt between my ring and pinky fingers and the palm of my left hand, I pierce the fabric with my knife, held between my thumb and forefinger. From the hole, I rip a strip of the cotton shirt from in front of my waist and wrap it three times around my forearm. There now. I have a bandage on the puncture site.

In a rush of noise, the raven’s wings swat at the air seventy feet over my head-once, and twice, as it attains cruising altitude, flying its morning search route. I glance at my watch. 8:31 A.M. The bird is fifteen minutes late this morning.

The canyon behind me begins to glow in a spectrum of pastel reds as the sun breaches the depths of the upper walls. Knowing that the sun will be more punctual than the raven, I get my video camera out of my rucksack for the third time this morning, anticipating my matinal sun salute. I videotape myself stretching my leg into the dagger of sunlight as it creeps closer to me. Before the sunshine veers up the north wall, I pan the camera from the view of the bright pink and carroty-orange undulations twenty yards downcanyon, to my calf absorbing the precious warmth of my only direct sunlight.