2 THE ACCIDENT

2 THE ACCIDENT

It was a silly accident, really.

For an athlete like Nita to bump her way down the entire staircase on her rear end was - well, embarrassing. And yet everyone else in St. Bede's Hall, the entire dorm, heard the thump-thump-thump and the inevitable final crash, and of course they all came running out of their rooms at the head of the stairs to see what the commotion was about.

Nita had returned the day before from an interuniversity athletic meet in India's Mandi Valley, high in the Himalayas, where she had led her team to every women's trophy but one. So it was ridiculous to fall in the first place, let alone to sit there at the foot of the stairs, and not be able to get up.

Her legs just wouldn't work and pain stabbed her spine until perspiration beaded her forehead.

In a few moments several housemates had scrambled to her aid and dragged her up to a standing position - she could tell she had hurt her leg or foot somehow, and badly - but with their help she began pulling, dragging herself back up the brass-plated stairway toward her room. She forced herself to laugh and chatter with her girlfriends, saying with a grimace that it had finally happened! (They say you can't live in St. Bede's Hall without taking a tumble down the grand staircase at least once.) Before she got to her room at least three or four of them had congratulated her again on the fabulous triumph at the meet the day before.

Behind the closed door of her room, still humiliated by the fall, Nita dumped herself in her desk chair and picked up a textbook. Final exams were only two weeks away, and she had to do well. She could just hear her mother telling her she had neglected her education in favour of the sports activities she loved, and Nita was determined to prove otherwise. After all, no one had forced her to come up to northern India from Sri Lanka for her schooling. She had wanted to travel, she still wanted to see the world, and she still wanted eventually to study psychology in a foreign land.

The pain pumped up from her big toe, through her leg and into her hip as she sat and studied, but the star athlete had been bruised dozens of times before in the combat of competitive sport, and had no time for fooling around with whatever this was. It didn't feel like torn ligaments or pulled muscles, so she didn't even peel off her white socks to take a look. This was really nothing compared to, say, how she felt after some of the hockey games her girls' team had played as practice skirmishes against men's teams. Men, the girls always said, will cheat when they fall behind, and Nita had taken her share of blows by the hockey stick. She was certainly used to a bruise now and then. It was all part of the thrill of competition, a thrill that she craved going into every game, and then savoured coming out.

The entire school, beautiful and serene as it was, generated a certain electricity in Nita. The venerable old University of H.P. (Himachal Pradesh) was situated in a cluster of lush firs and cedars in the foothills of the Himalayas in temperate northern India - far from the staggering suffering of Asia. Nita, an Anglican by birth, was one of only three Protestants on campus - and the only Spirit-filled Christian at that - among eighteen Roman Catholics, twenty or so Tibetan Buddhists, and a mixture of Hindus, agnostics, and atheists from all over the world.

In what could have been an intimidating setting, Nita decided to live her faith with excitement and drink in every moment. She was known for her zany sense of fun and her inclination for good times. She was always included when big groups of students took off to go out for dinner. She had studied speech and drama, as well as foreign languages, at Trinity College in London before coming to India, and her outgoing nature, knowledge and agility made her one of the university's most popular young people.

Among Nita's favourites were the nuns and priests who conducted the campus chapel. She attended 6:15 mass every morning and sang proudly in the Catholic church choir from the stately choir loft - to the delight of the nuns. She learned the various prayers and rituals and sincerely made each service a time of true worship with Catholic friends.

She was fond of hiking up to Eagle Mount where the head priest lived, to spar with the little old man over theology, world affairs, and politics. He took to teasing her by calling her his "faithful Catholic", a preposterous nametag for a Spirit-filled Episcopalian from the Church of England. But he could sense her deep commitment to God, and he eventually served her holy communion in the Catholic chapel - a strict taboo in Indian Catholicism.

Nita remained true to her Anglican heritage as well. Each Sunday morning she and her two Protestant friends made sandwiches and set out on foot to attend the nearest Episcopalian church some seven miles away. It was a huge old cathedral - empty and cold. The bishop's prepared sermons and somewhat pompous prayers echoed forlornly through the museum-like sanctuary each week. But even this weekly ritual somehow invigorated Nita. It was again part of the total experience, part of the adventure of life that she was inhaling so fully and deeply every day.

Still, from her first day on the campus, Nita's personal testimony as a Christian was her foremost priority. She excused herself wherever tobacco or drugs or alcohol appeared on campus, avoiding the seamy parties that are part of every secular university in the world. She was known as a Christian with practical convictions; no one challenged that, because she would never compromise her faith.

Deep within her being, Nita also resolved to live an active positive Christianity, to spend herself in the service of the Lord, by giving help to the helpless wherever and whenever she could.

An entire mission field lay just beyond the campus, where Tibetan refugees were encamped in a government settlement. Having fled their own bloodthirsty government, when the Communists crushed their gentle land, these people now suffered the menaces of refugee life - disease, hunger, and depression. It was Nita's first encounter with true starvation. She often walked with friends to the hospital near the camp and ministered there, feeding the hungry bodies, and speaking words of hope, encouragement, and love in Jesus Christ to hungry hearts. She became, true to form, a popular face in the refugee hospital. Eyes lit up in every ward she entered. She might stop to lift a lonely child to her bosom, or hold the hands of a tired old Tibetan man.

For Nita, these were the best of times.

Each day, her love affair with the entire university scene grew more impassioned - with every new tennis or cross-country victory, every hilarious storytelling session in the dorm, every exhilarating glide down the ski slopes. She was making life a blast at this formidable and fashionable old school - and both she and the school seemed to love it.

When Nita's giddy, victorious team returned to school the night before the accident, singing and shouting in the back of their huge open truck, staggering under the weight of their many trophies, and waking the entire campus, the jolly Irish principal had declared the next day a school holiday. Nita was vibrant as the heady celebration carried on, deep into a beautiful, fragrant moonlit night.

The team had slept late that morning then regrouped for a trip downtown, grateful for the unexpected holiday. They feasted on tandoori chicken and traditional Indian nan bread, and continued the exulting celebration of their victories. When finally the group decided to go to a movie, Nita headed back to campus, still brimming with delight. It was late afternoon.

As she bounded into the foyer at St. Bede's, she saw Bambi, a beautiful little two-year old girl who was staying with the nuns for a while. Bambi's mother was going through a difficult time in her life so the child spent most of her time as an unofficial ward of the dormitory.

Bambi had become the baby of St. Bede's, a precious little visitor who was welcome at every bedroom door. She would stand at the bottom of the long, wide staircase and call toward the bedrooms on the upper level: "May I come up and play?" And someone invariably responded, "Yes, Bambi, come up and play in my room."

But this day there were no takers. Everyone was busy taking advantage of the holiday with studies or more pressing diversions. As Nita crossed the foyer toward the staircase, she saw Bambi's big brown eyes blink back the tears of disappointment and rejection, her lip pouting out just a little.

Nita's heart twitched. From the moment the child appeared at St. Bede's, Bambi had touched Nita in a special way. Every time she saw the child she thought of the little girl's father, gone now, unavailable to give his little Bambi the love she would need so desperately in the coming years. Nita knew the emptiness that could mean. She had lost her own father as well ... and she could never quite get over the ache and the bitterness when she thought of how he died.

"Come on, let's go," Nita said to Bambi playfully as she got to the steps. "We'll go to my room."

Bambi smiled her fabulous tiny smile and grasped her friend's little finger. She knew that Nita kept toys and sweets for her in the room, even if she did have to get down to study.

Slowly they made their way up the stairs together, with Bambi's tiny fat legs stretching their best to make each new step. The two girls chatted excitedly all the way up, with Nita's eyes fastened on Bambi's plodding progress.

The top step somehow disappeared. Nita's legs slipped out from under her and tossed her face-down onto the upper few steps. In a split second she realized she had lost hold of the baby, and she rolled over on her back to reach for her. Bambi had fallen, and stayed put on a single step, her eyes wide open with surprise - but she was intact. Nita pushed herself with her elbows to stand up, but she never regained her footing. It all happened so suddenly, and she wound up on the floor, looking up at the beautiful architecture of the immense high ceiling in the foyer. Bambi was screaming, and the entire place was in an uproar.

Nita's vanity took the real blows. Here she was, the ranking female athlete, a model of coordination, who had just thudded down St. Bede's staircase on her behind!

Peeved and in pain she studied intently for the rest of the day in the seclusion of her room, ignoring the hurt in her legs and lower back. On a trip to the bathroom, just down the hall, she found she lost her equilibrium and fell down after every three or four steps - but her mind was fixed on her exams, and she returned to her books. Who had time for a checkup anyway?

But the creeping anguish had begun. By nightfall Nita was falling down with every step she took.

The next day she found a walking stick, and it was funny at first, how she manoeuvered herself around.

"Nita! What's this now?"

"Oh, haven't you heard? I've joined the stockbrokers in London!"

There was a bit of prestige, after all, in relying on a cane for a few days. But in her room, as she kept up her studies for final exams, the pain pounded with increasing intensity. Then a deadly numbness began to creep up her legs.

For the gruelling schedule of exams, the walking stick was worthless. Nita arranged for friends to be on hand for each excursion. They helped her out of St. Bede's and into each classroom, then back again after the exam. Each moment was more excruciating than the last. Desperately Nita clung to her mental faculties, gripping her pencil and pressing out each paragraph. She was not about to let a stupid fall down St. Bede's stairs destroy a semester of work - and open the door for Mother to make more comments.

The pain and the numbness, however, were both advancing ominously like twin terrors. Before the finals ended, Nita could no longer sit upright to take her tests. The pain stabbed her so viciously that she had to lean over on one side, stretching herself sideways in her chair, to write the tests. After three hours in that position she could not pull herself up. She looked down at her legs. She could see them, but she could neither feel them nor make them move. Two friends dragged her out of the chair and carried her back to St. Bede's, up the stairs, and into her room.

One of Nita's friends, Sister Andrew, dropped by. She was grim.

"Nonsense, Andy," Nita chided her. "It's a sprain or something. I just need to stay off my feet for a while - after finals."

"This won't do," the young nun said tersely, as if she hadn't heard a word, "You're going to see a doctor."

A car came in minutes, and Sister Andrew assembled a group of girls to carry the beautiful, awkward cargo back down the hated stairs. With some trouble they eventually stuffed her in the car, and they headed for the best orthopaedic specialist in northern India, a Jewish doctor who worked at a big Seventh Day Adventist hospital. Nita sat awkwardly as the doctor examined her legs, squeezing and kneading each joint in careful succession - toe, ankle, knee, hip. There was no response.

"But doctor, I have pain," Nita insisted. "It's drawing up my leg from my big toe."

The doctor fell silent and looked evenly at Sister Andrew for a moment. Then he gently turned the patient over, laying her flat on her stomach. Beginning at the neck, he ran his finger lightly along the length of her spine. Before he could pull away, Nita had let out a horrible scream.

"I want X-rays!" the doctor barked shortly, pointing his nervous nurse out the door. "I want the proofs immediately. Don't wait for them to dry."

The X-ray machine had turned out four pictures, and the doctor held them dripping up to the light. There was no intricate study to be done. The pictures were quite clear. Two discs in the lower lumbar region of Nita's back had been completely crushed, and broken bits of bone were floating aimlessly in her spinal fluid.

"Get her into the hospital immediately," he snapped as he bolted out of the room.

Sister Andrew raised her eyebrows. "Well, let's get to it.”

"Andy! Are you crazy?" Nita responded, incredulous. "This place is fourteen hundred rupees a day! I can't afford that! Forget it!"

They argued all the way back to campus. It's true that Nita's family, back in Sri Lanka, were wealthy, but the Sri Lanka government prohibited the export of money, and Nita's financial support had always been just adequate. A hospital stay could destroy her.

"You have no option," Sister Andrew insisted. "You heard the doctor. You have to get into a hospital. If you can't pay for medical attention here, then I'll put you on a plane back to Sri Lanka."

Within a week Nita could only move by dragging her legs behind her. Under constant pressure from her friend Andy, Nita finally acquiesced. She wearily dictated a cable for the nun to dispatch to the Edwards' residence on Alexandra Street in Colombo. It was strangely understated: "Arriving Indian Airlines March 27. Indisposed."