127 Hours Page #20

He pushes and pushes with his left hand under the boulder to

create maximum downward force on his right arm. Hard, harder,

HARDER. It looks insane, unnatural and painful, but he says

nothing.

POW:

Like a gunshot in the canyon, the bone breaks. The sound

ricochets. He rises and sees the bone pushing up violently

against the skin. He feels it. It's a serrated, but clean,

successful break.

Still he says nothing.

Now he humps his body up and over the chockstone, smearing

his feet, one with a shoe, one without, against the wall, he

pushes grabbing further and further round the dark side of

the chockstone, pulling with a silent, furious intensity.

Hard, then harder, and HARDER.

BANG:

A second gun shot smashes around the canyon. He's sweating

heavily and yet euphoric, possessed. He checks the underneath

of the arm. It's broken too. Around the same place.

He can rotate his forearm like a shaft inside a housing.

Giving himself no time to wake up he grabs the knife, looks

at the watch-

CUT TO:

C/U:
DIGITAL NUMERALS.

10:
32

CUT TO:

66.

INT. CANYON. DAY.

He mutters...

ARON:

Ok Aron, here we go. You're in it

now.

He pushes the knife hard, to the hilt, in between 2 veins on

his wrist.

F*** knows where the sweat is coming from but it's pouring

out of him.

Sawing downwards he makes as large a hole as he can without

tearing any of the noodle like veins. He puts the knife in

his teeth and pokes his left forefinger and thumb inside his

right arm.

Like a mechanic he looks to analyse and then he works by feel

only.

His sweat falls on his knife mixing with the blood.

He pulls muscle nearer the surface allowing his knife to

slice and pare away at a pinky 'finger-sized' fragment bit by

bit. It takes a dozen actions, each time the knife goes back

to his teeth.

Sort. Pinch. Rotate. Slice.

There's not a lot of blood. But he keeps working and working.

Once the blood increases he puts the knife down on top of the

rock and swiftly ties his tourniquet.

He's silent, refusing to verbalize the pain.

CUT TO:

C/U:
DIGITAL NUMERALS.

10.53

CUT TO:

INT. CANYON. DAY.

He can't cut the tendon, no matter how hard he slices. But

nothing will stop his addiction to surgery now. He folds in

and swaps the blade for the pliers. He uses them to bite into

an edge of the yellowy tendon. Then squeezing and twisting he

tears away a fragment.

Grip. Squeeze. Twist. Tear.

67.

Finally he finishes the tendon.

CUT TO:

C/U:
DIGITAL NUMERALS.

11:
16

CUT TO:

INT. CANYON. DAY.

He returns to the knife. Finally all that remains inside is a

pale white strand. Like swollen angel hair pasta. The nerve.

He touches it with the knife edge.

ARON:

AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!

He explodes internally with vocal pain, through gritted

teeth. The first time he has made any sound during the

surgery. But it's like he's been taser-ed, he's stunned still

for a minute

CUT TO:

C/U:
DIGITAL NUMERALS.

11:
17

CUT TO:

INT. CANYON. DAY.

He looks at it... the nerve.

CUT TO:

INT. CANYON. DAY.

...and the thin, swollen wire of his own nerve looks back at

him. For the final time, he asks himself, `Can you do this?'

CUT TO:

INT. CANYON. DAY.

He puts the knife in and pulls it toward him, an inch, two

inches, it lengthens like pulling a guitar string.

Unimaginable pain builds in his whole body, like he's pushing

his arm into a cauldron of magma...

68.

(It's difficult to tell because everything is so tight and

claustrophobic but maybe the boy is there intermittently

riding his shoulders slipping across and around him, or

obstructed by the boulder and stopped from getting to Aron)

...until it breaks. He shudders in shock and drops everything

for minutes. His head lolls forward dripping. His mind

swarming with trauma.

And then he's back on the last action stretching the skin of

his outer wrist tight and sawing the blade into the wall.

It's a piece of gristle on a cutting board.

Everything now is forcing us towards the boulder, cramping us

in with him impossibly close, he's sweating and heaving, his

vision blurring with tears, his contacts failing, his breath

impossibly dry and rasping and then, as simply as this all

began, his shoulders open and he's free......

He staggers back, one, two, three steps away from his arm...

His head swarming with colours, swooning, overpowering. He

stares at his obituary as he's born again. His feet stagger

under him like a new foal, an involuntary dance, we see

colours bleeding and blending in his P.O.V.s and the colours

invade our shots of him.

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