No control

First, a note to my fellow students, I know this is old news, but it applies to the question - my apologies

The question posed is, "Describe a time in which you have been in a frightening situation that required immediate attention (such as a fight or a bad injury requiring emergency room attention). How did you respond and feel?"

Well, this is not a situation that happened to me, however I was involved, therefore I feel it is relevant.


When I was nine years old, my father was in a diving accident. My family owned a cottage at a lake. It wasn't much - pretty typical: the cottage was green with the paint chipping, exterior and interior; the furniture was all floral, the beds were hard mattresses on rod iron bases, the fridge was stocked with sodas and beer with general food necessities like eggs and bread. There was a nice side yard, a huge backyard, and a decent sized front yard. The front sloped down into this steep hill that had a metal staircase leading to the dock and the lake. We had rebuilt the dock's foundation, putting new boards along the sides to make it sturdier and putting cinder-blocks against some of the boards to ensure that they'd stay straight.

My father and I were on the dock, while other family members lounged and some played in the water. Two were in inflatable rowboats, planning to have a race. My father was going to jump in and tip one of them over. He was that fun type of person, a beer in one hand and the other ready to do whatever was needed: flip a burger, turn a wrench, tip a boat. He was a good guy, you know?

He dove into the water. It was shallow, maybe up to my waist at the time - probably two, three feet deep. I was standing on the dock next to him - the boards buckled slightly when he bent his knees before propelling himself toward the water. His head and shoulders were covered, but from halfway down his abdomen and down he was above the water. For a moment it seemed like he just froze, his legs straight up. And there was a big splash when the rest of his body collided with the water, spraying everyone in the water and on the dock.

I think it was about a twenty seconds before any of us noticed the blood. We saw it right before his body floated to the surface. His head was just visible, an inch of water covering it to the top of his spine. The curve of his spine was above the water, and then the top of his swim trunks and the rest of his legs disappearing beneath the surface.

People began screaming. It was that noiseless scream that TV shows try to replicate whenever there's a traumatic scene. Everyone's running and you can tell their screaming, but there's silence. Except in reality, you hear everything. It's like your senses are suddenly upped 100 times and you can hear everyone individually even though everyone is screaming at once. Someone in the water was yelling his name, someone shouted to call 911, someone called 911, someone called my name, someone was just crying.

And then I was pushed up the stairs to the cottage. It felt as if I was the one in the water, my legs seemed to move like jello. I was so calm as I walked to the phone, called my mother. I was alone in the house except for a few other kids who had been rushed back inside too. From inside, I couldn't hear the screaming and the static in the phone was too loud.

The next time I saw my father was when the ambulance arrived. He was probably in the water for a good five minutes with his head barely head up, so as not to damage it further. It took everyone to get him on the dock, where someone performed CPR until the ambulance pulled up in front of the cottage. And with everyone working together, he was carried up the stairs and across the yard. That's another thing that seems to be upped 100 times when a traumatic event occurs - strength.

He was put into the ambulance and people got in their cars to follow it to the hospital. He was unconscious and it wasn't thought that he'd live the ride. The blood had been from a cut on his head that started at the top of his skull and went all the way to the base. He had a cut in his spinal cord, causing paralysis from the neck down. He couldn't breathe on his own.

The ambulance met a helicopter which flew him the rest of the way to the hospital. I stayed the night at the cottage with the family who had stayed behind. We all slept in one room with the telephone. We didn't talk, we didn't watch TV, we didn't eat. I don't remember getting off the couch at all. The phone rang once, maybe twice during the night. It didn't matter what the person on the other line said, as long as he was alive.

I went to the hospital the next day. I remember standing at the emergency doors and meeting up with a friend of the family. I was going back to their house because she was the mother of my best friend. But I didn't have my Pooh Bear that my dad had given me when I was born. So my uncle had to drive back to the cottage and get it. I think that was the first time it really hit me. Spending the night without sleeping and not knowing what was going to happen was scary. But not having my Pooh Bear was terrifying.


I never went in to the hospital room where my dad stayed for twenty-two days. He celebrated his 39th birthday there. The nurses in the Intensive Care Unit were so nice to my family. They gave me a teddy bear and knew us all by name - I have a huge family, so this was an achievement.

I got as far as the doorway once. My brother, my mother and I went to my dad's room. I thought I was ready. But there were so many tubes and beeping machines. It's not like when someone has a baby or someone breaks a leg. The room itself seemed lifeless. I had made him a picture in school and it was hanging on his wall. The TV was on, but it was muted. My father had been in a medical coma, meaning he could come in and out of the coma, rather than not waking up. My mother had taken pictures a few days before to show me what he looked like so that I'd be prepared. I was fine all the way until the door. After that it was as if my shoes were cemented to the floor. And no one pressured me to go any farther. My brother held my hand and my mom told my dad I was there. I waved.

That was the last time I saw him.

He passed away while I was at a barbeque on July 4th. When I came home, I slept in my mom's bed because my grandparents were in town and were staying in my room. She told me that night before I went to sleep. I cried, of course, and she cried and it seemed for the next couple days, all we could do was cry.

But I think the most frightening part was the one time I tried to see my father in the hospital. Because when you see someone like that, you realize how powerless you are. In a way, death gives you closer because you can believe they're in a better place and they're no longer suffering. And when they're alive and healthy, you don't have to worry. But seeing my father like that, with the tubes and the machines - he couldn't even wave; he couldn't say hi because of the breathing tube down his throat. His way of communication was through blinking with his eyes, a code that we had made. When you see someone like that, you realize that you're a very small person with no control.