July 18, 2017

I had not planned to step backwards into a void when I boarded the ferry from the mainland island of Orkney on the north coast of Scotland to the island of Hoy, but that is what I did.

I had climbed the stairs to the open deck when we boarded the ferry and sat on benches with the other seven from my small tour group until the cold wind and the ocean spray made me think better of the decision and decide to find a drier place to sit for the thirty minute trip. 

Coming down from the sunlight to the dark and into a crowd of passengers trying to go up the stairs to the open deck, I stepped backwards to give them room, into a void.

As I fell, head first, backwards, down the flight of stairs that led to the passenger lounge below decks, my brain registered what was happening, and I screamed for help.

We take our lives and these soft bodies for granted, most of the time. It is not only the young teens who think they are impervious to death, it is all of us. We know in one part of our brains what a slim line separates us from death, but most of the time we are able to shrug it off. There might be a moment in a plane, our seat belts fastened, our bodies pressed back as the plane begins to climb, that we silently acknowledge to ourselves that we live on the brink between life and death, but most of the time we delude ourselves that we are immortal, or close to it.

In that moment of falling, I knew that death was possible, that we are always on the brink.

And then I felt a hand grab my hand, and a voice say, “I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” and I looked up to see a small brown haired woman with glasses staring down at me, gripping my right hand, keeping me from sliding any further down the stairs. And then other hands were there, below me and above me, helping me down the stairs where I could get to my feet, and then helping me to climb the stairs to a quiet spot where I could sit down, offering me tea, asking me who they should find. All of them were strangers.

The metal edges of the stairs had branded me from the top of my shoulders to my thighs, but I had not broken my neck or cracked my spine. I was very lucky.

As I sat there, breathless and shaken to the core, I remembered the words of the brown-haired stranger: “I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”  

And I was back from the brink.