Beauvais Skate Doom
I went on a couple of French exchanges to Beauvais, in France. I guess this time I would have been around 14.

There was a girl I fancied at the time going, and her French exchange partner fancied me, so we hung around together a bit. One day we went ice skating. The 2 girls both knew how to skate, but I had never been before.

After a while of floundering around at the side of the rink, they both came over, and grabbed a hand each. Then they proceeded to pull me around the rink at high speed, which they both thought was hilarious. However, one of them let go, causing me to spin and immediately lose my balance.

As I fell, I reflexively flailed my arms and grabbed out, taking Charlotte (the English one) down with me.

She banged the back of her head hard against the ice. I laughed and tried to pull her up, but she seemed dazed and disoriented, so we went back to the benches at the side to wait for her to recover properly.

After a while it became obvious that rather than getting better, she was getting vaguer and vaguer. We started to worry, and the French girl called her mother, who was a doctor. After a while she arrived, and took one quick look at Charlotte, and then immediately erupted into a whirlwind of activity.

She had to be rushed to hospital immediately, she said. As the only person who could speak both French and English, I went along as translator. The front seat of the car was flattened back as flat as it would go, and I sat in the back while the doctor screeched through Beauvais at rally-driver pace.

She kept shouting to me (in French obviously) "Keep her talking! Don't let her go to sleep!" and so, with increasing anxiety, I tried to keep her talking "what's your name, where are you" sort of stuff. She got quieter and quieter, muttering "it's because of the weather, it's because of the weather" over and over again.

After a while, she went quiet for a bit, then opened her eyes and took off her ring, which had a flower on it, and gave it to me, saying "look after the flower" - then her eyes closed and she went limp.

No matter how frantically I babbled at her, I could not get her to regain consciousness. She was well and truly out. I was beginning to realise that I had killed her at this point.

We got to the hospital, and a stretcher was rushed out, and we wheeled her in. We had to spend a few minutes waiting for the X-Ray room before anything could be done.

There was incidental muzak piped through a tannoy. Suddenly Charlotte's eyes flicked open. She stared straight into my eyes and asked

"Is that the angels singing?"

then she slumped back again. "Oh holy fucking shit" I thought- "even she thinks she's dead."

Then they wheeled her into the X-ray room, and I spent the next 15 minutes pacing arouind the waiting room, trying to process the fact that I had just accidentally killed my friend.

Eventually the doctor came back in. She looked very concerned, but still a bit relieved. I asked her whether Charlotte was alive. "Yes, she'll live" she told me. "But she has broken her neck."

I went to see her after a day or 2. She had a cast from her chin to her waist. She didn't look well or happy, but I was just incredibly relieved she was alive. Eventually they sent her back to England, and then she was out of the cast and into a brace, and then eventually she was perfectly OK, but of course I could never really have a proper conversation with her again. She didn't blame me - to be honest I think I was the only one who really blamed myself, but still, blame myself I did.

Anyway, at least she survived.

When I got back to England my mum had been ice skating, and had torn ligaments in her leg, crippling her for ages.

So there you go - the moral of the story is never go ice-skating, for it is satan's passtime.
( crab_bloke), Thu 14 Dec 2006, 12:21, Reply)