How Zach Holden fell five storeys at Kirra and lived to tell the tale

Zach Holden plummeted five storeys from a highrise balcony and lived. Now it’s made him determined to ensure no other young person suffers the same fate. HOW HE REBUILT HIMSELF

***WARNING, THIS STORY DEALS WITH ISSUES OF ATTEMPTED SUICIDE***

IF YOU’RE EXPERIENCING ANY MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES, CONTACT LIFELINE IMMEDIATELY ON 13 11 14.

ZACH Holden appeared to have the world as his oyster.

He was 19. He had a job as a baggage handler at Gold Coast Airport.

He loved riding motorbikes.

He could fly planes. He’d learnt to do that before getting his driving licence.

On January 29 he walked on to a balcony in Kirra, five storeys up.

There was a girl there.
He looked at her and said: “I’m sorry.”

And walked off.

LSD AND ICU

Zach is not sorry that he took LSD that night. Life is not that simple. Neither is his story.

It’s true that without the incredible efforts of ambulance crews and Gold Coast University Hospital (GCUH) staff he would not be here to tell it.

True also that he spent 17 days in ICU, most of them in a coma.

That his face literally detached from his head. That for weeks he was fed through a tube, peed through a catheter.

That he’s had 11 surgeries, with more still to come.

All of this is true, but he says taking the drug was not his mistake.

“A lot of people ask me, do I regret my decisions? Do I regret doing drugs and stuff like that? And my answer is essentially ‘no’. And I know that a lot of (people) are not going to be happy with that answer.

“But I don’t regret what I did. The mistake I think that I made ... I essentially
became too complacent with psychedelic substances, I was too comfortable with them, and I used them in a bad environment, because environment is everything on a psychedelic substance.

“You know, the fifth floor of a building should have been an immediate red flag as to, hey, maybe not this time, not at a party. It’s a really bad environment.”

Zach Holden, who was seriously injured after falling from a Gold Coast high rise, at Gold Coast University Hospital. Picture: Glenn Hampson.

REMEMBERING

Only recently has Zach started to fully recall what happened that night. Why the fall. Why he walked off.

When he first came round in ICU, he asked if he’d been in a motorcycle accident.

But a lot of the details have come back to him.

The strange feelings, the conversations, before that fateful moment.

“One day my mum came in (to the hospital) and she said something like, ‘oh you probably thought you had wings or something like that’.

“And I remember just looking at her and just shaking my head really aggressively, because I knew so well that that’s not what happened. I couldn’t talk at the time because I had the tracheostomy in, like, in my throat.

“I couldn’t talk, but I knew that was not what had happened. What actually happened was that night at the party, we ended up discussing reality being a simulation like a matrix, and at one point in my head I became certain that is what it was, that we are stuck in a matrix, we can’t get out.

“On psychedelic substances like LSD you’re very sensitive to even basic words.

“So the word stuck. I just kept thinking, ‘we’re stuck, we’re stuck, we’re stuck’, and had to escape.

“And so all that was in my head was I was stuck and I had to escape.

“Then we discussed the only possible way to escape, if it actually was a simulation, would be to die.

“So I just decided that I had to die. And so, I stepped over the balcony.”

‘DYING’ THREE TIMES IN THE AMBULANCE

Zach should not have survived that night. He knows that.

Fate was on his side.

Someone heard the thud of his fall, and immediately phoned triple-0.

An ambulance crew was just a street away. They responded immediately.

They performed lifesaving work there and then. Miracle work. It was just enough.

“Apparently, I did die three times in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

“I don’t remember any of the incident. I don’t remember falling and I don’t remember anything beyond that.

“However, the first thing I do remember are the dreams I had while I was in the induced coma, very strange dreams, and the dreams actually happened to relate to my incident.

“One of the dreams being I was at a party and there was a girl and stuff happened, and she had two blue frogs. I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t know what it means. You know, red frogs the lollies. They weren’t, right, they were blue, she had two of them. Then she walked away and she came back with a knife, like a kitchen knife.

“She stabbed me, and then dragged it down my leg. She did it exactly where my scars are.

“And then the other dream was, I thought I was in India and my incident happened in India and it’s like they had given up on trying to save me, so they were just going to incinerate me. They were like, ‘oh we’ll just burn him alive’.

“And so my mum was there like, trying to fight, ‘like at least let him try and survive
on his own on a fan or something. Like all right, we’ll let him live this time’.”

LOVE AND SUFFERING

Zach is not the only one who suffered, the only one left with bad dreams.

He has a loving family.

A family who were also scarred by the experience.

“For a good while my dad was having nightmares about it. My dad was over in WA when it happened, but he came back the moment he heard.

“I have a stepdad that lives with my mum. He has PTSD, not from the incident itself, but from the way my mum reacted the night of. Apparently my mum went literally insane, she went almost psychotic in the car on the way to the hospital.

“And Scott, my stepdad, he was so scarred from seeing my mum like that, that he, that he has PTSD from it.”

Zach Holden head scan from January 2022.

Zach Holden pelvis scan with screws from February 2022.

It was also a night that won’t quickly be forgotten by the trauma team at GCUH.

Matt Scott is a trauma clinical nurse navigator at the hospital – someone who helps patients like Zach through their difficult journeys.

He says Zach’s injuries were among the worst the team has seen.

“They were faced with a young man, horrifically injured and disfigured, who was dying,” he says.

“Basically, he was bleeding to death with all of his injuries. He had 30-plus blood products over the first four days he was in.”

It was the start of a long journey, of two painful months in hospital.

“When Zach fell, he landed on his feet and then crumpled forward on to his face,” Matt says.

“So he had massive lower limb injuries. He smashed his pelvis into pieces. He’s got more metal work in his pelvis than I’ve ever seen in anybody’s and then, of course, smashed his face. So he had what we call a le fort fracture where his face is free floating, detached from his skull.”

THE HEROES

For a long time, the team feared Zach would never walk unaided again. He feared it too.

Just six months on from the fall, he’s not only standing again, on his own two feet, but standing proud.

It’s not just his body that has been remade. It’s his mind too.

When I meet Zach he is at another party, of sorts. It too is filled with young people, the world their oyster.

But this party is different. It’s at the hospital. Zach is speaking, not of matrixes or simulations, but of his own painfully lived reality.

The party, in this case, is the hospital’s “P.A. R. T. Y program” – a tongue-in-cheek acronym for “prevention of alcohol and drug-related trauma”.

Trauma clinical nurse navigator Matt Scott at Gold Coast University Hospital. Picture: Keith Woods.

Matt says, statistically, young people are “over-represented” in hospital emergency departments. The PARTY program, running since 2015, is designed to change those numbers.

Today, the room is filled with students from St Andrew’s Lutheran College in Tallebudgera.

Matt leads the session. It’s confronting. It’s meant to be. He’s sincere when he says he doesn’t want to see any of these students again.

Zach Holden leaving Gold Coast University Hospital.

Then it’s Zach’s turn to speak. Bravely, selflessly, he tells his story.

He shifts awkwardly in his seat, foot bobbing nervously, but never shies away from even the most devastating of details.

He knows not everything he says will be popular with everyone. He doesn’t care. That’s not the point. He’s not looking for your approval. He just wants to make a difference.

“A lot of people think I’m here to bring the message don’t do drugs. I’m not,” he says.

“I know that they may end up doing it at some point in their life. I know that kids end up trying things here and there.

“I’m just here to really help them make sure they’re safe.”

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