It began with something so small it barely seemed worth remembering — a phone slipping from tired fingers on a quiet winter night. Yet within seconds, that ordinary moment would send 21-year-old Tominey Reid plunging seven storeys from her Melbourne apartment balcony, leaving doctors to deliver a chilling verdict: she had only a ten percent chance of survival.
One year later, she is walking again.
Her steps are slow. She wears a brace. She limps. But she is here — alive — and that alone feels like a miracle.
A Simple Night, A Sudden Drop
It was just after 1:30 a.m. in July 2023. Tominey had spent the day babysitting before finishing a shift at the hair salon where she worked. Exhausted but missing her boyfriend Kyle — who was overseas in Greece — she answered his late-night call. As they talked, she stepped onto her seventh-floor balcony for some fresh air, leaning casually against the waist-high railing while listening to stories of sun-drenched beaches and distant adventures.
Then her phone slipped.
It bounced once and disappeared onto the balcony below, three metres down.
Annoyed but calm, she took the lift to the sixth floor and knocked on the neighbour’s door. No answer. She returned upstairs, thinking only of how worried Kyle must be after the sudden disconnection. The building was silent. She just needed to see where the phone had landed.
Holding the railing with one hand, she leaned forward.
Her foot slipped.
Hanging Between Life and Gravity
In an instant, her body tipped forward. Reflex took over. She grabbed the railing with both hands and found herself dangling from the seventh floor, pressed against the cold concrete wall.
Below her stretched 21 metres of empty air.
Her arms trembled violently. Her palms burned. Sweat made her grip uncertain. Shock trapped her voice; she didn’t scream. She tried to pull herself up, but exhaustion from the long day had already drained her strength.
Seconds passed like hours.
She understood, with terrifying clarity, that she could not hold on.
There was no foothold. No angle to swing herself back. No way to drop safely to the balcony below.
She thought of Kyle. She thought of her mother.
And then, through tears, she counted to three.
She let go.
The Impact
Witnesses later described hearing a sound that did not belong to the night — the violent crash of glass and bone. As she fell, Tominey flipped through the darkness before smashing through a glass fence at ground level and landing face-first on a bed of rocks.
The injuries were catastrophic.
Her right femur snapped so forcefully that the bone pierced 11 centimetres through the back of her thigh. The femoral artery and sciatic nerve were severed. Her heart suffered internal trauma. Her tibia and fibula shattered. Five vertebrae fractured. She sustained three brain bleeds. Her knee was destroyed.
Her heart stopped.
She lay unconscious, bleeding heavily beneath her apartment building.
The Man Who Heard the Fall
A retired police officer living next door heard the impact. Acting on instinct, he ran outside and found her broken body among shattered glass and stones. Without hesitation, he pressed his hands against the open wound in her leg, applying pressure to slow the bleeding.
Those minutes mattered.
Paramedics arrived and shocked her heart back into rhythm before rushing her to The Alfred Hospital, one of Melbourne’s leading trauma centres.
Doctors quickly contacted her mother, Sarah, delivering words no parent should ever hear: there was only a ten percent chance her daughter would survive the night.
Sarah drove from Phillip Island expecting the worst.
Waking Up Against the Odds
Five days later, in the ICU, surrounded by machines and tubes, Tominey opened her eyes.
Her mother was there — crying, overwhelmed, relieved beyond words.
The list of injuries read like something few bodies could endure: torn heart artery, shattered lower leg bones, fractured spine, severe nerve damage, and significant blood loss that required eleven transfusions. Surgeons had reconstructed her knee, placed a filter near her heart to prevent clots, and transplanted a nerve from her left thigh in an attempt to restore function to her right leg.
Doctors were cautious. They warned that she might never walk again.
But survival had already defied logic.
Learning to Move Again
After five weeks in hospital, Tominey left in a wheelchair — just days before her 21st birthday. The celebration that followed was not about presents or parties. It was about breath. About presence. About the quiet miracle of simply being alive.
Three weeks later, something extraordinary happened.
With a brace strapped tightly around her leg and hospital staff watching carefully, she stood.
Her first steps were unsteady, awkward, and painful. But they were steps.
Nerve regeneration is slow — sometimes painfully slow — and sensation in her right leg remains faint and unpredictable. She still wears the brace daily. She still falls sometimes. Rehabilitation continues to test her physically and mentally.
Yet each step carries a defiance that statistics cannot measure.
A Life Changed — Not Ended
The accident reshaped everything. Her relationship with Kyle eventually shifted; though they parted ways romantically, they remain close. Her career plans, once straightforward, now feel uncertain. Some days are harder than others — days when frustration outweighs gratitude.
But something inside her has transformed.
When you have dangled above 21 metres of empty air, when you have counted to three believing it might be your last conscious act, ordinary problems shrink. Fear changes shape. Gratitude deepens.
Tominey says she thinks often about that suspended moment — her arms shaking, her chest against cold concrete, the awareness that she was about to fall. She remembers the stillness. The silence. The clarity.
She remembers letting go.
The Fragility of Ordinary Moments
What makes her story so haunting is not only the severity of the fall, but its origin. There was no extreme sport. No reckless stunt. No dramatic storm. Just fatigue. A phone. A balcony railing.
Life rarely announces when it is about to change forever.
Medical professionals have described her survival as extraordinary. Trauma specialists note that falls from seven storeys typically result in fatal injuries due to massive internal bleeding and organ damage. In her case, the rapid response of a neighbour, immediate compression of the femoral artery, and swift emergency care created a chain of survival measured in seconds.
Seconds that made the difference between life and death.
Standing as an Act of Courage
Today, one year on, Tominey walks with a visible limp. She cannot feel parts of her leg fully. Recovery remains ongoing, and there are no guarantees about how much function will ultimately return.
But she stands.
And sometimes, that is enough.
When she falls now — because recovery is rarely graceful — she laughs shakily, pushes herself up, and tries again. Each rise from the ground feels symbolic. A quiet echo of the greatest fall of her life.
Her story is not just about survival. It is about resilience in its rawest form. It is about the human body’s astonishing capacity to endure. It is about strangers who act without hesitation. It is about mothers who drive through the night and daughters who wake against the odds.
Most of all, it is about the fragile, unpredictable beauty of being alive.
A phone slipped.
A life nearly ended.
And somehow, against a ten percent chance, a young woman learned not only to survive the fall — but to stand again.