How a trampoline started it all
We met at a hunting lodge a few hours north of Louis Trichardt, deep in the bush of Limpopo. New Year's, end of 2021. We'd known each other through friends for years, but only by name. Never spent any time together.
It probably would've stayed that way if it wasn't for the trampoline.
Sometime around midnight on 1 January we were jumping. She fell. I fell on top of her and came down on her ankle. She said, "It's broken." I figured she was joking. She wasn't. Broken clean off. Hi, I'm Chris.
By twelve thirty I'm driving her to the nearest hospital, two hours away, in the dark, on what had just turned into my birthday. We get there, the doctor takes one look at her ankle and says she needs surgery. Another hour further. I'd already done the damage so I figured I might as well drive her there too.
That's how I spent my birthday: in a waiting room with her ouma, while a surgeon put Joharita's ankle back together with screws. Not the way I'd planned to meet the family. She came out on crutches with a foot full of metal and a lot of painkillers, and somewhere in that night I already knew.
In my defence. It was an accident.The ankle still tells the weather.