I Am The One - 1. Story

I Am the One

By Wildone

Lightning causes more deaths than most other natural hazards. Men are four times more likely to be struck by lightning than women, and if you are struck, there is a one in ten chance that you will die. The odds of getting hit by lightning in a single year are 1 in 700,000. Twenty three years ago, I became that one, and this is my story...

Gasping, I pedaled my new Norco eighteen-speed touring bike up the last hill before home. Hearing the familiar clang of the chains changing meant gearing up had made the climb a bit easier, but I was beginning to get that burning feeling in my quads that made the effort worthwhile. Ignoring the ‘good’ burn in the legs, I pushed on.

Sweat was tricking down both sides of my face from my forehead as they converged their paths towards the corners of my mouth. Anytime I opened my mouth for a gasp of air, I could taste the salt in the sweat. Ninety-degree heat was unexpected for this early in July and my shirt was clinging to my back and shoulders like I had entered a wet t-shirt contest, and since it was white, you could imagine any casual glances in my direction would reveal pretty clearly my upper body underneath it.

Passing over the bus trap which connected one community to mine shaved off about fifteen minutes of my commute to the university which I was currently doing twice a day. Gearing down, now that all the hills were past me, found me slowing my peddling pace and gave me the opportunity to enjoy the cool breeze blowing against my overheated body. This allowed the sweat to evaporate into the arid atmosphere.

A casual glance at the horizon to the west, I noticed the big white clouds forming over the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. I wondered if they would continue to build over their 70-mile journey to the city and turn into one of the brief, but dangerous, thunder storms that were inherent to my area of the country.

Rounding the last corner, cutting it short by riding into the oncoming lane, I began to think how life had been so good of late.

Last week had been a blast. Four days of partying with others from my graduating class after we had all finished our departmental exams had put me on a euphoric high that I didn’t seem to recall any time before in my seventeen years of life. Today was the second week at my new summer job at the university, the same one I would be attending in the fall. After receiving acceptance, everything was falling into place. For lack of a better expression, I had life by the balls and I was enjoying every minute of it.

Finally reaching home, my bike was ditched on the front lawn just outside the doorway as my thoughts were turned towards lunch. Working a split shift from seven in the morning till eleven, and then back at four till eight, meant that there was plenty of time to come home, eat, and participate in one of my most favourite activities, the midday nap.

Knowing that both the parents were at work and the older sis and younger one were both gone for the day, I unlocked the front door and went inside. I decided to partake in some down to earth student dining, and pulled a package of Sapporo Ichiban from the pantry when I entered the kitchen. Next, grabbing the four-cup Pyrex measuring cup from a cupboard, I filled it half way with water and put in the microwave to nuke for six minutes to get the water to a boil.

Realizing that there was six minutes to wait, and feeling the dampness of my shorts and shirt clinging to my body, an instant decision was made to take a quick shower before lunch. Discarding my clothes quickly as I walked down the hall, and knowing no one would walk in on me, I began to wonder if I had time for another favourite pastime which every teenage boy with normal hormones thinks about four or five times a day. Realizing that even in my horny state from seeing hot university guys walking around shirtless, time was going to be an enemy between the conflict of sexual relief and my growling stomach. It wasn’t like the relief couldn’t happen after lunch, before dozing off for my afternoon nap where time and reflection on the sights from earlier might be more enjoyable.

Leaning into the tub, adjusting the water temperature for the shower that would get rid of the sweat and dirt that I had accumulated from the morning and the commute home, I pulled on the plunger to activate the shower head. The house suddenly shook. Glasses on the counter rattled as they too felt the vibrations as thunder clapped right above the house. I felt the pipes on the shower and the whole house shake with the earth shattering crack.

Crap.

My new bike was lying out on the front lawn and all of a sudden my Dad’s lecture on taking care of it came to mind.

Shutting off the water and leaving the bathroom, I picked up my discarded shorts from the floor and not bothering with the underwear, slid them back on. Rounding the corner and taking the steps two at a time, I slammed into the storm door and stopped suddenly. Huge raindrops had started falling. It seemed like one drop would hit the dry concrete of the porch and dampen an inch immediately. Due to the exceptional heat, it appeared that seconds after hitting the ground, all traces of the moisture evaporated until the next drop slammed into it.

For some reason, seeing the rain caused me to do a one-eighty and put some shoes on. Since I didn’t want to take the time to untie the sneakers that I had toed off coming in, I reached into the closet and found a pair of cheap $5.99 boat shoes that were picked out of a distress bin at Sears.

Clad in just shorts and the boat shoes, I bent over to pick up my bike and start to head between our house and the neighbour’s to get to the back yard. In the back yard of the house we had a shed where I could store the bike without fear of it getting wet. Suddenly I noticed a charge in the air, the kind that makes your hair stand up on your arms and head, followed by another crack of thunder that had my ears slightly ringing.

Damn, this storm is close.

Rain started really pouring down when I rounded the front of the house to the narrow strip of grass between the two houses. In a way, it was refreshing to feel the cool large drops make contact with my naked skin. Deciding to walk with the bike on the grass instead of the concrete blocks so I’d have some room, I felt another charge in the atmosphere. This time, in addition to the hair tingling on my arms, a warm feeling enveloped my body like I was sliding into a warm bath. With my hand on the T section of the handlebars, I began to reach up for the latch in anticipation of reaching the gate to get into the back yard.

I remember two things, a bright flash of lightning between the two houses, and then total darkness.

Being alone, and unsure how long I was lying on the grass, I woke up with a sharp pain in my forehead and a deep, dull ache, the kind of pain that bothered you for days after straining a muscle, throughout my right arm. It was strange to feel the pain there since I had actually landed on my left side. I went to reach for the side of my head with my right hand when I noticed I couldn’t move it.

Still being a bit foggy in the head, along with the sharp pain on the left side of my skull, found me rolling onto my back and then attempting to sit up. Still unable to move my right arm and not knowing what was going on, I began to feel a tightening of my chest as I realized something was wrong, even if I wasn’t sure what. I struggled with the pain as I pushed myself up into a sitting position with my left arm. I managed to clear the haze from my eyesight by trying to focus my eyes on my right arm. Slowly, the haze and fog from a horror movie swamp scene began to dissipate. It was definitely weird to look at and to feel. The upper part of the arm was in spasm, twitching and numb, and locked against the side of my body. The forearm stuck out at a peculiar angle ending with the wrist bent backwards and each of the fingers and thumb bent in a different direction at each joint. The throbbing dull pain was nearly unbearable. The pain was as if a person had been sitting on it for a long time and had cut off the blood flow to the entire arm.

‘Holy shit! I think I’ve been hit by lightning’ was the only thought in my mind. I felt my heartbeat racing a mile a minute and noticed that my breathing was short and I was gasping. I was beginning to panic. Looking over at the bike where my hand had been sitting on the handle bar joint, you could see the aluminium paint had discoloured.

Still in somewhat of a daze, my attempt to stand had me feeling like the previous couple of weeks when I had consumed way too much booze in one day. I fell over, luckily onto my left side, as I didn’t have the strength to use my legs.

Feeling my heart beating even faster, it seemed like a new pain was developing in my chest from the over activity. I called out for help and waited.

Realization finally set in that most of the neighbours would be at work or inside, staying warm and dry during the thunderstorm. It wasn’t long after that when I figured out my cries would probably go unheard. The storm had turned into a torrential downpour which you could hear bouncing off the roofs and siding of the houses. Seeing a river pour out a drain spout, like a storm drain into a river, made the storm even more terrifying and my fear of not getting help increase. Even though it was pouring rain all over me, I’m sure I added to the pooling water with my own tears as I didn’t know what to do.

Finally understanding that there was nobody to help made my decision to try and get up again more determined. Using my good left arm, I shuffled my butt up the side of the slight incline between the houses and pushed forward into a squatting position. After an immediate wave of dizziness, I slowly began to push myself upright into a standing position. At first I felt my legs begin to shake a little, then a little more, and then I felt my legs start to give out completely. I staggered two steps and tried to lean on the side of the neighbours’ house. Those two steps seemed a mile away with the current condition of my body. Unsure if my legs would give out again, all my focus was on getting my body to the wall of the house.

After leaning a few minutes while I continued to get drenched from the rain and the water gushing over the edge of the flooded eave trough, I wondered how I would make it any further. My whole body felt exhausted like I had just run a marathon from the effort of sitting up, getting into a standing position and taking two little steps.

Still unsteady, I was able to make that next step and using the support of the house, I attempted a second and third. The pain was now in my head and my right arm, and my legs that felt like they wanted to collapse under me like wet spaghetti noodles. Unlike the dull persistent pain in my right arm, the sharp, stabbing pain in my head was unbearable. It felt like someone had belted me over the head with a baseball bat.

Gaining a bit more strength the more I walked, something similar to shuffling, seemed to give me the determination to leave the side of the house and make it to my front door.

Reaching the storm door, much like a drunken fool, I managed to press the thumb latch and swing it open and will my leg to make the eight inch step into the front landing of the house.

Lifting my legs was too much as I crashed down into the stairs heading up to the living room and kitchen. Landing on my right side didn’t result in any additional pain in my still throbbing and disfigured right arm.

Slowly, crawling up the stairs with the help of my knees and left arm, I reached the top and crossed the carpeted hallway to the kitchen. Luckily, the portable phone was on the kitchen table just inside the entrance way.

Grabbing at the phone and rolling to rest my back against the wall, I punched 911. A sense of relief, even though temporary, seemed to have a calming effect over me.

Hearing the ringing on the phone, my panic had started to subside a bit.

“911. How may I direct your call? Police, Fire, Ambulance or Poison Control?” was the response of the operator in a monotone, unemotional voice.

“I’ve been hit by lightning,” I gasped in a panicky voice, not realizing how dry and constricted my throat had become.

“How old are you?” asked the operator.

“17. Can you please get me an ambulance here right away?” I managed to scramble out quickly because my throat hurt so much.

“Is there an adult there with you?” asked the monotone speaking operator.

“NO!” I screamed into the phone. “My parents are both at work, my sisters aren’t here either.” I’m sure I must have been on the verge of tears. How could this operator be asking me questions when I needed help?

Especially now.

“Is there a neighbour that you can contact?”

“NO!” even louder now, screaming into the phone. “I’ve just been hit by lightning and there is nobody around, I need an ambulance!!” Any feeling of relief I felt a minute ago from hearing the phone ring was gone as I began to verbalize the panic I was feeling.

“Okay, I have your address on the screen and will dispatch emergency medical services to your place immediately,” she replied. “Please call back if you have any changes in your condition.”

I heard the click and was relieved that help was on the way. I closed my eyes and tried to push away the frustration of the call along with the pain in my arm and head. Just knowing that help was on the way enabled me to take a long, much needed breath into my sore lungs, once again feeling the pounding in my chest from my heart subsiding.

After a few minutes, and feeling a bit more calm, I decided to make my way back down the stairs to the entrance way of the house and wait for the paramedics. Crawling down the stairs backwards while holding the phone was nearly too much, and I felt myself starting to fade out of consciousness once again. Luckily, determination had settled in with the knowledge that help was on the way and I wouldn’t be alone.

Reaching the landing and sitting with my back against the stairs, I shut my eyes again and was anxiously waiting to hear the sound of sirens come from the distance. Of all my senses, my hearing was most alert at that moment. Knowing I was less than two miles from the nearest fire hall, I figured they should be here by now, or really soon.

After another couple of minutes, the familiar racing heart and burning feeling throughout my body returned, indicating the panic in me rising up again. Deciding to call again, I got a male operator this time.

“911. How may I direct your call?”

Interrupting him, I screamed, “I’ve been hit by lightning and called five minutes ago and nobody is here!!”

“Sir, we have no record of any ambulances dispatched to your location,” replied the operator. “I am dispatching a unit right now. I want you to stay on the line with me until the paramedics get there. What is your name and age?”

After giving him my full name and age, plus some other information, I could hear the sirens approaching my house.

Telling him that the paramedics were at the house moments later, he asked me to stay on the line until he could talk to the paramedics. At this point, panic had actually turned to excitement now that I knew help had finally arrived.

Two male paramedics jumped out of the ambulance and grabbed a couple of cases each and approached the house. I was too weak to stand up and open the door, but realizing that I couldn’t, they opened it and entered right away.

“What happened?” asked the older of the two men. The younger guy took the phone from my hand and began to talk to the operator.

“I was walking between the two houses with my bike when I saw a flash of light and then blacked out.” I felt my panic beginning to return as I actually heard for the first time what I was saying. “I woke up with my arm like this and pain in my head.”

I began to pound on my right shoulder with my left fist, “I can’t feel anything!!” I sobbed.

“Whoa, easy there, let us check you out.” I felt the other younger medic take my left arm and straighten it out and wrap a blood pressure cuff around it. As he inflated it with one hand, the pressure of the cuff as it filled caused a pain in my left arm that made me temporarily forget about the other parts of my body that were hurting. He grabbed the stethoscope around his neck with his other hand and fumbled to put it in his ears.

“How old are you?” asked the older paramedic in an obvious attempt to take my attention away from his partner.

As I told him, the other paramedic got a surprised look on his face and said, “190 over 120!”

Both paramedics turned and started opening cases and I felt the younger one putting sticky pads on my already bare chest while the older one helped me lie down on my back on the landing while reassuring me that everything was okay.

After getting me prone, he opened another case which had paddles on the side of it and grabbed the wires that the young guy had hooked up to the sticky pads.

Seeing this, I really began to lose control and tried to push myself up in panic when the older guy, shielding the machine from me, reached up and keyed his shoulder mic for his walkie talkie.

“Foothills Emerg?” he said.

“Foothill Emerg, go ahead,” I heard crackle from the walkie talkies on both of the medics.

“We have a seventeen year old male who has been hit by lightning. BP of 190 over 120. We have him hooked up to the heart monitor and don’t recognize the pattern. Can we transmit to you?” asked the older medic.

Don’t recognize the pattern? What the hell is going on? I began to struggle again to sit up and see what this monitor was showing. Unfortunately, in my weakened condition, the younger medic was able to keep me down as he was trying to tell me to relax and calm down.

“Begin transmit when ready. One second, we have an attending coming to the unit for further instructions,” crackled over the radio.

“Beginning transmit,” replied the older medic.

“This is Doctor Smith,” I heard a male voice over the radio. “Bring him in Code One and start a saline drip. Have the paddles prepped and ready.”

Hearing this and knowing enough from watching TV shows, I looked at the older medic with panic in my eyes as the younger one bolted out the door to the back of the ambulance to grab the gurney.

“Relax now,” the older medic said in a softer voice. “Everything is under control. We have everything taken care of. I’m going to start an IV once we get you on the gurney and in the back of the ambulance and we’ll be at the hospital pretty quick. Just try to relax and let us do our jobs.” Just seeing his smile and hearing his smooth voice made me relax a bit and give up on trying sitting up.

By the time he finished talking me down, the other medic parked the gurney outside the front door and came back in. He got behind me and grabbed under my armpits to lift me up.

“Can you walk?” he asked from behind me.

“Barely,” I croaked out as a new wave of dizziness and nausea began to take hold of me.

“Okay, let me turn you around and pull you the couple of feet out the door. Jack will have to hold onto the monitor so we don’t disconnect you,” he explained.

Using his butt to press the storm door open, he pulled me by my armpits and placed me on the gurney while Jack began strapping me in after throwing a blanket over my lower half and putting the monitor on my legs. My arm was still in an awkward position, but luckily, due to the numbness of it when they cinched the restraining straps I didn’t feel it. The blanket felt warm on my body and it was the first time that I noticed how coldness had sunk deep into my body.

Once in the back of the ambulance, both medics began getting ready to insert an IV into the back of my left hand. Knowing from previous experience the sharp, excruciating pain of having a big needle shoved into a vein in the back of my hand, I asked if they could do it in my other hand since there was no feeling.

Both chuckled and Jack said, “A sense of humour, that’s a good sign. But no, I’ll let Ben do it in the other hand, and I know that he is one of the best for putting in an IV with minimal pain.”

Looking away as I felt Ben hold my left hand, I cringed in anticipation of the expected pain to come from the insertion of a large needle into a tiny little vein in my hand. Still cringing, I suddenly noticed they were taping the needle to my hand and hooking up the IV when I realized I didn’t even feel the pain.

“Okay, Ben is going to drive us to the hospital now,” Jack explained as Ben hopped into the front of the ambulance and started the engine. “How did you get that gash on the side of your head?”

“Gash on the side of my head?” I exclaimed. “I don’t know, but that is maybe why my head hurts. I think when I woke up my head was on the concrete, so maybe I hit it.”

“Well, we will get it looked at when we get to the hospital,” Jack smiled as he looked over at the monitor and the paper readout.

He keyed the shoulder mic and said, “Foothills Emerg.”

“Foothill Emerg, go ahead,” came from the walkie talkie.

“Looks like normal status rhythm now,” explained Jack to the hospital.

“That’s what we are reading here, too. Still, get him here Code One and have the paddles charged and ready just in case.”

As I looked down at the monitor between my legs I noticed a red light on the top with the word charged under it. Jack noticed me looking and assured me that everything was okay now and it was just a precaution.

With sirens blaring, and I imagine full lights, we began our trip to the hospital.

Jack engaged me in conversation for the short ten minute ride to the hospital. We pulled into the enclosed Ambulance Bay and when the back doors of the ambulance suddenly swung open a young doctor jumped up into the ambulance.

“How’s he doing, Jack?” asked the doctor.

“He’s stable now, with normal status rhythm. BP is now 120 over 80 and he seems to breathing okay without oxygen Doc,” replied Jack.

“Okay, well, we will take him in and check him over,” replied the doctor and then he looked at me. “It’s not everyday that we get a lightning victim in our ER. You’ll be a bit of a celebrity for the next while, but it seems like you’re going to be okay. I’m Doctor Smith and I’ll be taking care of you.”

Doctor Smith jumped back out of the ambulance as Ben appeared and unlocked the wheels of the gurney and started to slide it out.

“Heck that is the first time I’ve seen a doctor meet us in the ambulance bay. You should be getting great service today,” Jack explained with a wink of his eye.

Around a couple of corners and down a couple of halls, I was placed in a normal observation room where a couple of nurses took over for the paramedics. I wanted to thank them and say goodbye, but was being barraged with questions from the nurses as they disconnected the leads from the monitor and plugged them into a wall unit.

Doctor Smith came in and began to check me over by watching the monitor and checking my blood pressure, pulse and breathing. Once he took the stethoscope out of his ears he asked if I was in any pain.

Realizing for the first time that my arm had relaxed and was no longer contorted, made me realize that other than a dull ache in the arm, like I had over worked it, the only other thing I had was a slight headache.

After letting him know, he said they were going to run a couple of more tests and asked if I had noticed if I had any burns on my body that I was aware of.

When I told him no, he asked me to describe what happened. After recounting the events, he checked my hands again and decided to check my body over completely. As he was doing this, a nurse appeared with a big machine on a cart and wheeled into the curtained-off area. Doctor Smith explained they were going to do an EKG to check and see if my nerves were all okay after the jolt I got. He excused himself and said he’d be back in a few minutes.

The nurse pulled out a small razor and began shaving where needed, some small areas to rid any hair on my ankles, inner legs, stomach, shoulders, wrists and elbows. After she finished each area she affixed another sticky pad to those areas. Finally, she pulled multiple wires out and started connecting them to the machine and sticky pads.

Just as she finished, Doctor Smith came back into the room. He explained that what the machine did was send an electrical charge to one of the pads and then the monitor would detect if the other pads received an electrical current. He said I wouldn’t feel anything as the charges would be very minimal. He flipped a few switches and then he watched the monitor as it spit out a paper record much like the heart monitor earlier on.

After about what seemed to be ten minutes, but was more like a couple, he turned the machine off and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Everything looks perfect to me,” he explained.

He then went on to explain that I was very lucky. He figured that what happened was that I was caught in some sheet lightning that was immediately absorbed by the frame of my bike. Since I was holding onto the bike, I was a shorter conductor for the electricity than the tires below it. He said that my saving grace was most likely my shoes which grounded me out, thus avoiding the entry and exit wounds that most lightning strike victims had.

“You should realize that 90% of lightning strike victims, we never get to talk to,” he said in a solemn voice.

“You’re one of the lucky ones.” he explained. “You should live everyday to the fullest after this experience.”

As he was explaining this, my Mom burst into the room with a nurse. The doctor got up off the bed and explained what had happened and that I was 100% okay. I needed to get a few stitches to sew up the cut on my head and he was going to prescribe some Tylenol 3 for my headache and I should be ready to go home in a half hour or so. Since my arm was now relaxed and probably had taken the most of the initial shock, the test confirmed everything was fine now.

Mom was relieved that I was okay and told me that she sped all the way from work when she got the call from the hospital.

Probably a half hour later, after stitches, drugs and goodbyes from everyone in the ER who had treated me, Mom and I took off for home. Still having the headache, Mom more or less left me alone once the doctor had talked to her alone and assured her that I’d be okay. It wasn’t an awkward silence, but I’m sure if Mom wanted to discuss it she probably noticed me slouched in the passenger seat with my eyes closed.

When we arrived home, Mom nudged me and asked if I felt okay to walk in the house. Feeling more or less recovered and having my strength back found me assuring her I was okay to make it into the house. As we walked up the sidewalk to the house, my eyes were pulled over to the strip of grass between the two houses. Realizing that my bike never did make it to the shed, I told Mom that I wanted to grab it and put it away.

With typical ’mom’ worry, she looked at me and told me to let her do it after I lay down. Curiosity was too strong to not check out the bike. Telling her that I was fine, I detoured left to go between the houses. Rounding the corner found the bike lying where I had left it. Approaching it had me looking it over to see if there was any damage from the lightning strike. It appeared as good as new, but then I noticed the brownish burnt colour that was left where my hand had been resting on the handlebar junction.

Not too sure how long I stood there and looked at the discoloration, I finally broke out of my reflection and picked the bike up and started to push it through the gate and into the backyard. As I put it in the shed, I stopped and glanced one more time at the handlebars.

“You should live everyday to the fullest” was Dr. Smith’s comment to me. To this day, anytime I see a bike handlebar, or see an approaching thunder storm, his words resonate within me.

Author’s Note: Special thanks go out to both Myk and Vivian. Myk’s input to help with areas of the story were invaluable. Vivian, without her, this story would probably have never got submitted or look so good. Her comments, feedback, and patience, makes her the best. Thanks to you both.

© 2009 Wildone

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