Page 159 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
Fuuuuck.
He didn’t appear to be hurt. But he lay there on the floor with a three-legged dog gleefully leaning on his chest, looking at him like he hung the moon.
My stomach didn’t just drop, it slammed into the floor below me.
The grant. The entire point of this visit.
And we had one animal use a committee member as his personal perch, and the other was knocked to the ground.
The room went silent.
Every variable I’d been tracking all week collapsed into one: Mr. Geraldi.
I jumped to my feet and ran to his side. Each second it took to get there registered as an hour in my brain instead of seconds. I kneeled, both hands on Noble’s collar, hauling him back while running a rapid visual assessment—head, neck, shoulders, breathing, responsiveness—no obvious injury. No disorientation beyond the fall.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
Mr. Geraldi stood. “It’s fine.” He looked down at Noble, who looked back with complete adoration. Then he reached down and scratched Noble behind his ears. Brief. Meaningful. Apparently, that was enough for Noble to sit still. “He may stay, Dr. Kingsley,” he said before taking the clipboard and pen from the volunteer who had retrieved them.
I nodded, took a step back, and returned to my station.
Rutherford wound his way around participants, making them laugh when he licked their feet or knees. Three small chihuahuas, Butch, Hulk, and Tank were making the rounds to the delight of everyone, and Noble was now resting by Martha’s mat while still keeping his eye on Mr. Geraldi.
It was … going well.
Our new participant, Kevin, was having a blast. He’d arrived with no yoga experience, just optimistic energy looking for an adventure. He attempted every pose with full physical commitment but no center of gravity.
He was trying his best. Unfortunately, his best included making executive decisions mid-pose. I watched him shift from stable enough to ambitious in the span of a second.
Delaney had just corrected his tree pose and reminded him that he could modify any position. That he didn’t have to do the advanced pose until he was comfortable. Kevin disagreedand thought that he should work above his ability to challenge himself.
That had worked fine so far ...
He lifted his foot from his ankle, traveling upward with a confidence that was not supported by the rest of his body. His arms came out to compensate, which in theory should have worked. Instead, the movement overcorrected, then corrected, each adjustment making it worse.
I shifted my weight, already calculating the distance and timing, trying to determine if I could intercept him before this became exponentially worse.
The answer to that was no. I could not.
His foot came down hard. Not where he’d intended.
One of the cats, Lady, who’d been basking on his mat, found herself included in Kevin’s learning process. There was a split second where nothing happened—just enough time for me to internally plead that nothing did—before she reacted.
Her shriek cut through the room: sharp, offended, andloud.
Every dog in the room howled back as if it was a call to action.
Tank, Hulk, and Butch, the three chihuahuas who had been examining various participants, scattered in three different directions simultaneously, which in a room with seventeen people on mats was an event with significant consequences.
Tank went left, directly under Josh’s feet.
Josh, who reacted with impressive natural athleticism, threw himself sideways. He cleared the chihuahua by a slight margin and landed on the floor with a sound that reverberated in the space.
Tank, unharmed and apparently unbothered, continued his circuit around the room.
Kevin, destabilized by the Lady incident, had not recovered. The initial instability, compounded with the secondary distraction, and his attempts to regain control thoroughly failed.I tracked the fall as it happened, fully aware of the outcome and equally aware I was too far to prevent it.
He went down in an almost graceful collapse. Directly onto Gladys. She grabbed on to Kevin. Kevin grabbed on to her and somehow they held each other upright until I got there.
