³Pull back hard on the reigns, Drew!² Debbie shouted.

Time distorted, a jumble of slow motion, stopped action, and fast forward. I panicked and lost control of the reigns. Water and rocks streamed and bounced past, flickers of blue, green, white, brown quilt squares. I screamed and hung on to the saddle horn until my sweating palms slipped off. Hurtling toward the white, dairy barn and the tall white fence, I had to do something. Knowing full well that I was going to die, I jumped. Everything stopped as if time had wound down for just a moment. Then I landed face first into a slab of limestone jutting from the grass and topsoil. Pain blossomed. Time restarted. I bled. I cried. I didn¹t remember the trip to the hospital in Hannibal, but my right, permanent incisor had been broken off and lower lip torn in half. A doctor rolled a stool up, produced a syringe, inserted it into both sides of my lip. My head was placed and held down on a cushion, and I watched a curved needle trailing black thread as it slid into my lip. All I felt was pressure and a pulling together.

³Mr. Foster, Mr. Drew Foster,² a nurse called. I blinked and looked up.

³Yes,² I said and stepped to the nurse¹s counter at the Christian Northeast Hospital¹s emergency room. I have struggled to keep in control since then. That had been the last injury that caused me to cry. I shook my head and thought how strange and fragile memories could be, how easily we lose them. Material and flesh have always been much easier to stitch together.