"Goddamit, my hand's slipping…"

Noah grinned as a blush rose in Allie's cheeks. She seemed undecided at first, but quickly relented, apparently believing a date with Noah would be preferable to having his blood on her hands.

"OK, OK, fine, I'll go out with you," she said.

Noah smiled. He was loving this. It was a cheap shot, maybe, but he just had to have the girl. She was beautiful. He decided to draw it out a little more, just to see if she was serious.

"Don't do me any favors," he said.

"No, no, I want to," she said fiercely. Clearly she was worried. No need to be; Noah had frequently climbed all over the ferris wheel after hours at the carnival, and was quite confident of his ability to maintain his grip. Allie didn't know that, however.

"You do?"

"Yes."

"Say it."

"I wanna go out with you."

"Say it again."

"I WANNA GO OUT WITH YOU!" He could feel her breath from eight feet away. She was really scared. It was time to give up the act. He had secured a date with her.

He reached up to grab the bar with his left hand. "Alright, fine, we'll…"

That was when he slipped. Days, months, and years later he would remember the terrible feeling of his right hand loosing its grip, coated in sweat against the greasy support bar. He would reply the moment over and over again in his head when he realized he was falling. He would wonder if there was any other way it could have gone, or if it had been his destiny to fall as he did. He would wonder, but there was no way to know. It was too late.

He slipped, and was dimly aware of Allie's scream and her seatmate's confused yell. He briefly saw the both of them looking down at him in wide-eyed surprise, but he remembered nothing after that.

He hit the support bar below on the middle of his back. There was a sickening crack as his spinal column shattered. He flailed forward, his arms spinning of their own accord, and bashed his head against the base of the seat in front of him. He fell backwards, headfirst, and slammed into another support bar, shattering the bones in his upper arm and breaking six of his ribs. Mercifully (if anything about this could be merciful at this point) he ricocheted off the support bar and into the seat in front of him. He was spared any further agony, but the unfortunate girl on whom he landed was not; her head was crushed against the iron frame of the seat by Noah's deadweight body.

Then it was over. Allie was looking down at Noah's broken body, screaming in unrestrained horror; her date was vomiting over the side of the box; and virtually every person at the carnival had stopped in their tracks, looking toward the ferris wheel, staring in stunned silence.

***

"He's lucky to be alive," the doctor said.

Mr. Calhoun sat in the waiting room at Seabrook General, his eyes red-rimmed from hours of crying. A magazine, unread, lay open on his lap. He hadn't noticed the doctor come in, but he jumped up at the sound of his voice.

"How is he, Doctor?" Mr. Calhoun said in a whisper.

"He'll be paralyzed for the rest of his life," Dr. Gibbons said bluntly. Gibbons was not famed around Seabrook for his bedside manner. "His spine was what we call ­–crystallized—even if the technology existed to repair a broken spine, Noah's would be beyond repair. He received a concussion that damaged about sixty percent of his thalamus. He's lucky to remain even cognizant, which he will be, but his sensory perception and reaction will be severely hindered for the rest of his life. One of his broken ribs shredded his right lung, and while we were able to repair most of the damage, he'll be required to wear a Biphasic Cuirass Ventilator suit forever. As I said," Dr. Gibbons concluded, removing his glasses and wiping them on the lapel of his spotless doctor's jacket, "he's lucky to be alive."

Mr. Calhoun collapsed in his chair, his shaking hands going to his face that was wet from a fresh wave of tears. As Dr. Gibbons walked dispassionately from the room, Mr. Calhoun questioned whether or not Noah was lucky at all.

"Doctor," he called after Gibbons, who was almost out of the room, "what about the other girl?"

Gibbons looked back briefly. "The one he landed on?" he said. "She died instantly." And then he was gone, leaving Mr. Calhoun in the empty waiting room.

***

"It wasn't your fault," Anne Hamilton said to her sobbing daughter.

Allie was spread across her bed, her face pressed into a luxurious down pillow, crying uncontrollably. As Mr. Calhoun was receiving the devastating news of his son's condition, Allie was wracked with guilt, having known all along what the doctors had to figure out for themselves: Noah would never walk, never smile, never dance again. It had been clear to her at the carnival.

"It was," she screamed. "It was, it was, if I had just agreed to go out with him before the ferris wheel he would have never followed me up there!"

"He was irrational," Anne said. "It was silly of him to go up there. You're a wonderful girl, Allison, but any sensible man would have waited until you got off to talk to you. It was not any of your doing." She stroked Allie's back.

"I did this to him!" Allie screamed again, as if her mother hadn't spoken at all. "I caused him to chase after me. I've always been coy with men, and this time it cost poor Noah his life! He loved me!"

"Loved?" This time it was her father, who had come to the door of her room smoking one of his interminable cigars. "Now, Allie, the boy had just met you. It was a very foolish thing to do, but there's no way he could have loved you. He hadn't know you all of fifteen minutes!"

Allie sobbed. "Yes, but I just feel it. I truly believe he loved me. It was my fault for not seeing that, for not realizing that he would have done a-a-anything to g-g-get to m-m-m…" She broke down again, wracked with sobs, unable to finish. Her mother stroked her back and looked at John, who merely rolled his eyes. Women, the eye-roll said.

***

"How…do I look?" Noah asked.

Fin and Frank Calhoun stood by Noah's bedside, unsure of how to respond. In short, Noah looked awful. He looked, Fin had said before he could catch himself, like a side of beef that had just been tenderized. His entire upper body was encased in a nightmarish technological cocoon that emitted terrible clanks and gasps. His legs were useless slivers of meat that would never walk again. A long, Franksteininian gash ran from his forehead to his right earlobe. His right eye was puffed shut.

"Pretty bad," Fin said just as Mr. Calhoun burst into harsh, raging sobs.

"I landed…on a…girl?" Noah asked in between labored gasps. Fin nodded silently, holding back his own tears.

"She…ok?"

Fin only shook his head.

Noah began to cry, then, too, his good eye sprouting tears while his bad eye merely leaked a nebulous fluid.