I was in and out of the hospital almost daily from then on.
They X-rayed, poked, and prodded me, and then they did it again for good measure.
T8, T10, and T12 vertebrae were fractured. It was as clear as day to see.
You can’t hide from an X-ray.
Those are the main vertebrae in the middle of my back. And they are the ones that are hardest to break.
“Will I walk again properly?” was all I kept asking the doctors.
Yet no one would give me an answer. And that not knowing was the worst.
The doctors decided it would actually be best not to operate immediately. They deduced (and they were right), that as I was young and fit, my best chance of any sort of recovery was to wait and see how the injury responded naturally.
The one thing they did all keep saying was that I was “above-average lucky.”
I knew that I had come within a whisker of severing my spinal cord and never moving again.
I became affectionately known as the “miracle kid.”
Miracle or not, what I did know was that whenever I tried to move just a few inches to the left or right, I felt sick with the agony. I could hardly shift at all without excruciating pain.
Whenever I got out of bed I had to wear a big metal brace that was strapped around me.
I felt like an invalid. I was an invalid. This was crazy.
I’m screwed.
You stupid, stupid idiot, Bear. You could have landed that canopy if you hadn’t panicked, or you should have cut it away and pulled that reserve early.
As it was, I had done the worst of both worlds: I had neither gone for the reserve straight away nor had I managed to land the canopy with any degree of skill.
I felt I could have avoided this accident if I had been smarter, faster, clearer-headed. I had messed up, and I knew it.
I vowed that I would never fall short in those areas again.
I would learn from this, and go on to become the fastest, clearest-thinking dude on the planet.
But for now, the tears kept coming.
I woke in bed, sweating and breathing heavily. It was the third time I’d had this nightmare: reliving that horrible feeling of falling, out of control, toward the ground.
I was now on month two of just lying there prone, supposedly recovering. But I wasn’t getting any better.
In fact, if anything, my back felt worse.
I couldn’t move and was getting angrier and angrier inside. Angry at myself; angry at everything.
I was angry because I was shit-scared.
My plans, my dreams for the future hung in shreds. Nothing was certain any more. I didn’t know if I’d be able to stay with the SAS. I didn’t even know if I’d recover at all.
Lying unable to move, sweating with frustration, my way of escaping was in my mind.
I still had so much that I dreamt of doing.
I looked around my bedroom, and the old picture I had of Mount Everest seemed to peer down.
Dad’s and my crazy dream.
It had become what so many dreams become—just that—nothing more, nothing less.
Covered in dust. Never a reality.
And Everest felt further beyond the realms of possibility than ever.
Weeks later, and still in my brace, I struggled over to the picture and took it down.
People often say to me that I must have been so positive to recover from a broken back, but that would be a lie. It was the darkest, most horrible time I can remember.
I had lost my sparkle and spirit, and that is so much of who I am.
And once you lose that spirit, it is hard to recover.
I didn’t even know whether I would be strong enough to walk again—let alone climb or soldier again.
And as to the big question of the rest of my life? That was looking messy from where I was.
Instead, all my bottomless, young confidence was gone.
I had no idea how much I was going to be able to do physically—and that was so hard.
So much of my identity was in the physical.
Now I just felt exposed and vulnerable.
Not being able to bend down to tie your shoelaces or twist to clean your backside without acute and severe pain leaves you feeling hopeless.
In the SAS I had both purpose and comrades. Alone in my room at home, I felt like I had neither. That can be the hardest battle we ever fight. It is more commonly called despair.
That recovery was going to be just as big a mountain to climb as the physical one.
What I didn’t realize was that it would be a mountain, the mountain, that would be at the heart of my recovery.
Everest: the biggest, baddest mountain in the world.