“Kaff-kaff! Last night. Very bad cold. Sore throat, too! Sorry, gotta go take some cough medicine! Good luck!” He hung up.

I gnashed my teeth all the way to the drop zone.

The No-Frills Jump School was located on a weedy lot 53 miles west of Farmville. It consisted of a tiny prefab trailer and one flyblown porta-potty. I counted 18 people – 16 students plus a pair of instructors named Daniel and Lucy.

“Where’s Raoul?” a colleague from the hospital inquired when I joined the group.

“Bad cold. Kaff-kaff!” I replied.

Daniel overheard our exchange and smiled knowingly.

“You’d be surprised how often that happens,” he said. He then turned to Lucy and asked, “Where’s Fudge?”

“I think he’s sleeping in the back of the trailer again.”

“We should probably start. Would you mind waking him up?” Daniel blew a whistle to get our attention. “Okay troops, gather round! Fudge is going to be your primary instructor today. He’ll be starting shortly. He’s a Class One Skydiver with more than 2,000 jumps under his belt. Pay close attention to what he says – your lives may depend on it!”

Just then the trailer’s side door creaked open. We all turned to get our first glimpse of the man upon whom our lives would depend.

Fudge was a squat, 30-something fellow with a thatch of matted brown hair and a seedy-looking five o’clock shadow. He was wearing wraparound mirror shades, a tie-dyed T-shirt, fraying shorts and flip-flops. He looked vaguely disoriented. Several seconds elapsed, during which he gazed up at the sky while absentmindedly scratching an armpit. Finally he opened his mouth to speak.

“What day is it?”

Despite our initial misgivings, Fudge turned out to be an excellent instructor. He spent the first couple of hours teaching us the basic rules of skydiving. Among other things, we learned that since we were beginners our canopies would be rigged to automatically deploy a few seconds after we exited the plane. All we had to do was relax and enjoy the ride. Once we got closer to the ground one of the instructors would communicate with us via walkie-talkie to help us steer the parachute safely into the landing area. The whole thing sounded preposterously easy. I began to wonder why I had allowed myself to get so worked up about it. I should have done this a long time ago! Maybe I should look into bungee jumping, too… . Fudge interrupted my ambitious daydream.

“Hey, Gray, wake up. Now for the fun part, everyone! I’m going to tell you about everything that can go wrong while you’re in the air.” Uh-oh. “Here’s an example,” he continued. “Every now and then some poor fool gets tangled in the lines of his chute. When that happens, you fall faster than a cannonball. Any of you happen to remember what terminal velocity is?” My stomach lurched. I scanned my fellow jumpers. They all looked like they were about to spew. “120 miles an hour,” he said. “Pretty fast, eh? That doesn’t leave you with much time to react, so listen up!”

We listened.

An hour later the plane went up with Daniel and three very nervous-looking jumpers. The rest of us watched as the single-engine Cessna climbed to the proper altitude and levelled out over the jump zone. A tiny speck appeared in the plane’s doorway. Moments later the speck dislodged and a white parachute blossomed above it. We all cheered like hillbillies at a graduation. A few minutes later the plane circled back and the process was repeated. The third time around, however, the speck at the threshold didn’t move. We turned to Fudge.

“Choked,” was his simple explanation.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“Daniel will probably give the jumper one more chance,” he replied.

Sure enough, the plane turned around and passed over the drop zone again. Despite our shouted encouragement, the jumper remained frozen in the doorway. Fudge shook his head sadly. “There’s one or two in every class.” As the plane began its descent, Fudge handed me a parachute. “Put this on,” he said. “You’re in my group, and we’re going up next.”

It was cold and noisy in the airplane. There were no seats behind the cockpit, so the other two jumpers and I sat with our backs pressed against the hull. Fudge lay on his side reading a dog-eared science fiction paperback novel. As the plane ascended, I tried to remember everything he had taught us. I couldn’t seem to recall much more than the bit about getting tangled in the suspension lines of the chute, though. Come to think of it, what were we supposed to do if that happened? Oh yeah, “cut away” the main parachute, free fall until we were no longer entangled and then activate the reserve chute. Did screaming like a schoolgirl come before, during or after those manoeuvres? Just then, one of the other jumpers nudged me with her knee. I looked up to see Fudge standing by the door.

“Door!” he yelled over the racket of the engine.

“What?” we yelled back in unison.

He threw the door open.

A tremendous roar filled the plane. I could barely hear myself think. Fudge motioned for me to approach. Although every cell in my body begged me to ignore him, I got up and walked stiffly to the doorway. He surveyed my parachute one last time and then pointed at the footpegs welded to the frame just outside the door. We had practiced standing on them earlier in the day, but that had been on terra firma. Circumstances had changed considerably since then. When I leaned out of the plane to step onto the first peg, the wind buffeted me with incredible force. Struggling for balance, I put my left foot on the peg and looked back at Fudge. He smiled broadly. Encouraged, I planted my right foot on the second peg and glanced back again. This time he gave me the A-OK sign and shouted, “Jump!”

Who, me? You have got to be kidding. I stared down at the ground. It was a billion light-years away. The farmer’s fields below were the size of postage stamps, and the roads were thinner than strands of spaghetti. Meanwhile, the howling wind continued to tear at me and screech in my ears. I looked longingly at the interior of the plane. Sanctuary. Fudge gave me the thumbs up sign and hollered again for me to jump. I didn’t budge. We stared at each other for what seemed like eons. At last he motioned for me to climb back inside. The look of disappointment on his face was unmistakable. Somehow it served to galvanize me. I sucked in a huge breath and vaulted into thin air.

If my life were a cartoon, the thought bubble above my head as I plummeted earthward would have contained nothing more than a giant exclamation mark. My first coherent memory after my frantic leap was the loud snap of the chute opening. After that, the only sounds were the muted drone of the Cessna in the distance and the occasional rustle of the canopy above me. It was strangely peaceful, drifting lazily a quarter of a mile above the prairie. It was also electrifying. I had my next jump date planned long before my feet touched the ground.

Elementary Questions

The summer I completed my medical training I landed a job as an emergency room physician at the Misericordia General Hospital in Winnipeg. One day my mother asked if I’d be willing to come to her elementary school during Career Week to speak about health care. I told her I’d be delighted.

I assumed I’d only be talking to one or two classes, but when I got there the principal apprised me I’d be addressing the entire school and escorted me to the gymnasium. It was packed with kids, all of whom were sitting on blue gym mats and chatting noisily. The principal stepped up to the podium, motioned for the students to be quiet and introduced me. I then launched into a kid-friendly description of my life as an ER doc. When I was finished, I asked if there were any questions. Two dozen hands shot up. I pointed to a boy in the centre of the crowd. He leaped to his feet.