Three Seconds to Live

I’ve said it many times before: True’s stories and taglines are not always meant to be funny. This one is a great example, because there’s something to learn, and I have an EMS story that informs my commentary on this.

First the story, which leads this week’s issue:

This page does not include the video (though it does include two screencaps from her launch), nor does it include the photos that purport to show her body.

Starting with Clarity

I wrote “it wasn’t a bungee jump” into the story because that’s not what it is, despite most of the news reports using that word. The point is not to go “boing” like with bungee, but to swing. It’s a totally different experience. It uses a rope, not an elastic cord, and there’s a clue to that in the name of the sport: “rope-jumping”.

But look at the rope in the first photo: even if this was attached to a harness, there’s no way that I’d rely on it: it appears too thin to hold up to stopping the fall of a heavy weight, such as a human body. Though if it did work (and apparently, it did on previous jumps), then you can expect it to be damaged with every jump, and at some point it will snap.

One last bit of clarity: “Who was the crazy person who let me jump off a bridge?” was the last thing de Freitas posted, shortly before her “jump” …which I put in quotes as it’s clear that’s certainly not what she did. She was thrown, even if willingly. She clearly did not know they failed to attach the rope; she trusted them with her life, and that trust was misplaced.

Still, I couldn’t get a handle on this story — what I wanted readers to get from it. I  had written the first draft and was not satisfied: it didn’t have a hook, which is why I couldn’t come up with a tagline. Since I started writing Saturday evening (aka “early”), I put it aside and thought about it in the dark after I went to bed. It reminded me of a story from early on in my EMS career….

EMS Story

I’ve written a number of stories to illustrate my years as a medic. This one goes back quite a way.

In about 1979 while working for a 911 response BLS ambulance service in Marin County, Calif., we got a call to an apartment complex that backed up to the woods in San Rafael an hour or so after sunset.

The caller said someone was hurt and banging on their door, but she was afraid to open the door. We got there pretty quickly — well before anyone else, such as the fire department (always sent to emergent ambulance calls) or police.

What I found was a bloodied teen girl lying in the outside hallway with a view toward those woods. She was heavily cut up, and I could see why: there were pieces of shattered safety glass everywhere. The short version of her story: her “boyfriend” had taken her to the top of an overlook to see the sunset. He had been drinking, and on the way down went off the winding road and crashed. She “ran for help,” saw the lights of the apartment building, and started banging on doors calling for help.

First things first: this was way before cell phones, and we were not supplied with portable two-way radios. That said, I had a side business before this in reselling gently used radio equipment, so I had bought such a radio for myself. I radioed Dispatch to send police and our second ambulance to the Lovers Lane to find the wreckage and rescue that driver, who the girl had said was 21 years old …older than I was.

Then Back to the Patient

“Bastard!” I thought to myself, considering this 16ish-year-old girl and the 21-year-old guy, who got drunk and hurt her so much.

Apparently the windshield was shattered in the crash, and a good amount of it ended up not just on her, but also inside her shirt — and her bra. As she ran for help, her body bounced a bit with each step. And each step she was cut a little more by all that glass in her clothing. I pulled her shirt’s neckline open and peeked in: the cuts inside were even worse, and yes, there were pieces of glass everywhere.

The conundrum? If I packed her up and moved her to the hospital, she’d be cut more with every motion. If I took the time to pick out every little piece of glass, we’d be there for 30-45 minutes, and with the sun down it was getting cool. There’s no protocol for “girl with a ton of glass shards in her shirt and bra.” The best I could do is think up a way to fix this in a big hurry so I could get her off to the hospital.

Despite the commotion, no one came out of their apartment. There was no crowd gathered. Good! I just pulled my bandage shears out of my holster and cut open her shirt from her navel to her neck, also cutting right between the cups of her bra. Then down her arms to get her fully free from her glass-filled clothes. Her pant waist was pretty tight, so I knew she had little or no glass there, but once I got her top exposed I could go to work: I pulled a liter of sterile saline out of my bag and washed the glass away.

Then back to my bag for several large “Surgipad” dressings: I covered her entire chest with several pads, which soaked up the saline, which also helped to hold the dressings in place: I didn’t have to take the time to tape them down.

By then my partner was back with the gurney so we could load her up and transport.

Along the way I was monitoring the radio traffic and could hear our other crew had found the wreck. The “boyfriend” was in critical condition and they’d be transporting lights and siren to the same hospital.

Knowing they were moving quickly on the same path and would pass us, I got on the radio and asked the other unit to go by us silently in order to keep my patient calm. I told her they had found him and were taking him to the hospital, but said I didn’t know the extent of his injuries, which in a sense was true.

It turned out that his mother was a nurse at that hospital and was on duty, and I remember her coming down to the E.R. to see him shortly after I arrived. He would need a fair amount of surgery, though would surely survive. Hopefully he learned something; I sure did, and presumably my patient did too.

The doctor came in right away to get my report. I said her main problem was multiple lacerations around her torso. He lifted one of the surgical pads to take a peek. He gasped: “There must be hundreds!” I nodded.

He turned to the nurse to tell her to get the on-call plastic surgeon to come in for the suturing: it was too busy that night for him to take several hours to stitch her up. Plus, I surmised, a specialist could probably leave her with less-noticeable scars.

The Point

I had a couple of years of experience by then, not a lot. Looking back at it now with around 25 years of field experience, I don’t think I “should have” done anything different. I remember she picked up on my calm vibes and calmed down well in response. She could tell I was there to help her, and I told her what I was doing every step of the way.

Still, I was 20 with a very pretty half-naked teen in front of me. Like the self-described “instructors” who were “teaching” people about a fairly extreme sport: in a real way we both had someone else’s life in our hands — them literally. Both of our clients were “distractingly beautiful.” I helped my patient get through what was probably the worst day in her life so far. And they casually threw their client’s life away — literally.

My actions didn’t “save a life” in any way: she would have lived without any treatment at all, though with worse scars, both physical and emotional.

Professionals need to act like professionals: we are there to get a job done and, in my case, while I had to expose her, I did it quickly, with purpose, and got her covered up again, and took her to the hospital without inflicting further injury. In medic training they warn us about “distracting injuries”: don’t let “icky” injuries keep you from doing your job completely and efficiently, and don’t let stuff that simply looks bad distract you from more hidden things that could kill your patient. My patient’s injuries weren’t distracting, but where they were could have been. I simply got the job done and moved to the next step: transport.

That’s what professionals do. They don’t forget basic safety and end up being forced to say “Oops, I killed her.” Make no mistake: homicide is the correct charge here due to their extreme negligence. They screwed up because they didn’t think. They actually told police they “didn’t remember” which of them was responsible for assuring the client’s safety gear was properly secured. What that really means: no one was specifically assigned to that job.

Remembering that 1979 case is what gave me the handle on the story. Once I thought back to one of my own “distractingly beautiful” patients, I knew what I wanted to say. Once I added one phrase — “distractingly beautiful gym rat” — to the story, giving the clue that Maria’s good looks perhaps distracted the crew, the potential causal factor was established and the tagline followed easily.

A.I. Response

I ran the completed story through Chat-GPT to get its “observations” — my usual prompt to make it clear I don’t want help with writing. I pointed out that the “mention of her beauty” made the story writing fall into place, leading to my tagline. Here’s its response.

I think I see what clicked for you.

Without the beauty reference, the story is simply “three incompetent operators forgot to attach the customer.” The tagline then has to carry all the weight.

With the beauty reference, the story becomes about why the mistake happened. You’re not excusing them; you’re proposing a plausible human failure mode: they got distracted by the customer instead of focusing on a life-critical checklist.

That gives the tagline something to answer.

A few observations:

• “Distractingly beautiful gym rat” is doing a lot of work. “Gym rat” establishes that she’s athletic and physically attractive without dwelling on it. “Distractingly beautiful” makes the causal link explicit.
• The phrase may draw some complaints because it is an inference rather than a documented fact. That’s not necessarily a problem in a This is True story; you often use loaded descriptions to frame the irony. But that’s where pushback would come from.
• The tagline works because it doesn’t actually mention beauty. It generalizes the lesson: professionals don’t allow distractions, whatever they are.

In EMS, medicine, aviation, and technical rescue, “protocols” exist because people get tired, rushed, distracted, overconfident, attracted, frightened, interrupted, or complacent. The protocol is what prevents a momentary lapse from becoming a death.

“I do have a photo” I responded, attaching it to answer the second bullet point’s “objection”. “The point of ‘gym rat’ is that she *worked at* being fit, which adds to attractiveness,” I said. “Plus, my photo is her is a ‘dressed for the gym’ type, wearing a flattering sports bra.”

It responded:

If readers accept your premise that the crew was distracted by an attractive young woman, then the tagline isn’t really about attractiveness at all. It says that professionals assume distractions will occur and build safeguards accordingly. The tagline is concise, applicable far beyond rope-jumping, and consistent with the lesson the story actually teaches.

“Gym rat” isn’t just describing a hobby; it’s helping explain why she was visually striking. You’re not saying, “beautiful woman, by random chance.” You’re saying she invested significant effort in creating that appearance. In that context, your opening phrase does two things:

1. 1. It quickly sketches her as young, fit, and athletic, which is relevant to someone participating in rope-jumping.
   2. It subtly supports the implied explanation for the instructors’ lapse without having to belabor her appearance.

The bigger editorial question isn’t whether the phrase works — it does. The question is whether readers will accept the causal implication you’re making. Your story is effectively saying: “Here’s a very attractive young woman. Three men whose job required absolute attention failed to perform a basic safety step. Draw your own conclusions.”

That’s a reasonable bit of commentary, especially given the photo. You’re not claiming investigators determined that was the cause; you’re presenting an interpretation of the circumstances. That’s classic This is True territory.

That’s a stronger lesson than merely laughing at the instructors. It points out that competent professionals don’t rely on their ability to remain perfectly focused — they rely on procedures that catch mistakes before someone dies.

And the Slug?

I noticed through all of this, Chatty-G never mentioned the slug (“At the End of Her Rope”). “The only bit of ‘humor’ is the slug at the start,” I prompted. “With the turn in the story, though, it becomes more commentary: she was literally ‘at’ the end of the rope, it just wasn’t attached. Coming back to it, it has turned from wry to a dig.”

I agree. Once the story takes that turn, the slug stops being merely a clever idiom and acquires a second edge. At first read, ‘At the End of Her Rope’ looks like the standard expression meaning frustrated, desperate, or exasperated. Then the reader learns it’s a rope-jumping story, so it seems like a literalized play on words.

Then comes the reveal: there was a rope, and she should have been at the end of it, but wasn’t attached. It’s hard to treat it as a pure farce once someone is dead. The result is a story with an unusual tonal structure:

Slug: dark wordplay.
Body: increasingly grim factual narrative.
Tagline: professional-responsibility commentary.

That’s not uncommon in your work when the underlying event is fatal. The ending points at the real lesson.

One thing I particularly like is that ‘At the End of Her Rope’ doesn’t announce its cleverness. Many pun slugs give themselves away immediately. This one keeps acquiring meaning as the story unfolds. By the end, the reader has mentally reinterpreted it two or three times. Those are often the strongest slugs because the payoff comes from the story, not from the wording alone.

Be Wary of Photos

During my research I found all sorts of photos that were clearly doctored in bizarre ways, such as the selfie I include above, except that it is altered by A.I. to make her look like she’s crying. Huh?! Not just a lie, but attempted manipulation of our emotions. The bare facts are emotionally wrenching enough, thank you.

While I refuse to include photos of her body in any case, I’m not even sure if the ones I saw were real: there was very little trauma considering a 13-storey fall onto solid ground. I showed one to Kit (context: a now-retired Deputy Coroner), and she scoffed: there should be more trauma if she fell 30 feet, let alone 130.

But I’m including one example of a very-obviously-faked photo just to show the depths that some sites and “influencers” will stoop to for clicks. Seriously, the video I grabbed to get the screenshots from clearly show there was no crane holding her up at multiple points, and why would there be?! If she was being held up by a crane, why would the guys need to be holding her too?

Some other photos I saw show her with short sleeves during the jump; in the video, she is clearly wearing long sleeves.

Crap like this just doesn’t make sense, and it comes right back to thinking — my favorite thing! Don’t take photos at face value. Not in the Photoshop era, and not today in the A.I. era. If it looks unlikely or bizarre, it’s probably fake. If someone is trying to score points in an argument, it’s probably fake. At least consider whether you trust the source. It doesn’t pay to think too hard about why someone would fake something like this, just know that they do fake stuff like this. Recognize that it’s bizarre obliviocy, and move on.

Oh, and check the safety gear yourself before you do anything dangerous, OK?

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