a bottle of juice for my little sister, I was struck by how nicely
my life had been turning out of late.
I was getting along with my mother for the first time in years,
I had made a dinner for her and her guests, was thanked, I was
getting out of doing dishes that evening, which was something I was
eternally thankful for.
I had a boyfriend, for the first time ever, and that was quite the
coup for me.
I was coming to terms with the fact that I was not a slender woman,
and that mayhaps, just maybe, not everyone saw me the way that the
children who taunt young women such as myself do.
I was being productive, I was being helpful, kind and thoughtful.
The evening was much like any other that spring, calm and cool in the
mist rising off of the pavement with the rain that fell lightly on my
face and hands, ticking off my leather jacket and releasing that warm,
horselike scent that comes from leather during a rainfall.
I walked across the street and bookmarked in my mind the way that
the world smells during a rain, even in the depths of a major city
like this one.
Clean and new, almost fresh, hopeful and almost electric with promise.
The people at the store knew me, for I'd lived in this neighborhood
for long enough for us to exchange niceties. Smiling, something that I
was not horribly prone to doing on a regular basis at that point, as
I paid for the juice and walked out of the store.
I took a deep breath of the moist air and exhaled, enjoying the way
that it clouded around my face warmly.
It wasn't even dark yet, it was barely that most special and magical
time of evening when the skies are grey and light, each droplet of rain
had it's own distinct place as it fell to the ground, soundless.
Stepping to the corner, I pushed the button for the flashing lights
that would herald my crossing to the cars that passed me every
once in awhile.
One stopped in the far lane on the other side of the road, and as I
put out my hand, as all children in school are taught to do when
they cross a pedestrian intersection, I saluted him.
He smiled at me, I remember that quite clearly and half saluted back.
It was a nice moment.
I looked both ways, began to cross, and blinked.
When I opened my eyes, I noticed that the road was at a different angle then it had been a moment ago. It took me a moment or two to realize that I was now lying on the cold,
wet pavement.My mood dissolved from the warm happiness it had been,
thinking I had fallen and hurt my knee yet again.
I was no stranger to knee injury, having spent more then a few months
in a leg brace for a knee that never seemed to want to co-operate with
me, I tried to get up.
Quite promptly I was surprised by how much it hurt.
It almost took my breath away, and I tried to move again.
Worse pain this time, and this time, it did steal the breath from my lungs.
Gutwrenching, insurmountable pain, the type that you can not just ignore.
So I lay back in the street and cried for help.
It seemed like hours since I had made this startling discovery about
myself, but I know in truth that only a few moments must have passed.
I heard footsteps from behind me, running footsteps, and with that
break in the silence that had surrounded me, I became aware of other
happenings, I heard the rain again, I heard someone crying.
It was me.
Someone's feet stopped in front of my line of sight, they asked if
there was anyone that they could call, it was the woman from the
store, I'd chatted with her about inconsequential things before, and
we had been pleasant.
My mouth opened and I tried to say the words "Please, call my mother,
her number is..".
I choked on my words a few times, pressing them past the pain I was
now feeling everywhere and spat out, "Call my mother.."
No please.
No thank you.
It had been my intent to be courteous, but I just could not bear to
pass one more word through the agony.
While the ambulence was taking it's sweet time to arrive and the
dirt and oils from the road embedded themselves even deeper into my hair,
another voice was crying, but it wasn't mine.
I remember thinking about how very odd that was.
And then "she" was kneeling beside me.
She was very well dressed, although I do not remember now what it
was she wore, the smell of her expensive perfume lingers in my mind,
probably because it cut the smell of the rain and road which were now
oppressive and gagging.
She kept saying "I'm so sorry, we didn't see you".
More pieces of the puzzle.
A car!
I'd been hit by a car!
No wonder I was so far away from the crosswalk I barely remembered
walking through. My mother arrived just before the ambulence, and
all I could think about was, "Don't let her touch you, don't let her
move you, you may have spinal damage".
She was crying too.
Our mutual tears mingled with the drizzle that was chilling me through
and through, my mother's, mine, and the woman who had been in the car.
The ambulence arrived after several thousand years, bringing with it
more of a surreal texture to the evening, more of a sense of unreality to
it then anything had before now.
I was placed on a wooden backboard that felt as if it had been made from
stone, a neck brace around my neck, choking my breathing more then the
pain already had.
Lifted in the air, juggled in two pairs of hands until the balance
was just right, hoised higher as their grips slipped a little bit.
With a dull cracking sound, I was hauled into the ambulence as fast
as was possible, the backboard had begun to break.
My mother climbed into the front of the ambulence, and I was glad,
glad that she wasn't in the back with me, fretting over me and
antagonizing the nice men who were trying to make certain that I was
not going to die in the next 30 seconds.
Questions were asked, over and over, "What's your full name?
Where do you live? What's your name?"
I cried back the answers as best as I could, under the circumstances,
I'm surprised that I hadn't been more verbally abusive to anyone, but
I vowed to myself to apologize if I ever got the oppertunity.
For you see, I thought I was going to die, on route to the hospital,
the way that they were carrying on with me, not to mention that all that
attention focused on me made me extremely uncomfortable at the best of
times. This was certainly not in the "best of times" catagory for me.
While still in the back of the ambulence, I asked what hospital I was
being taken to and was told S-------.
I must digress for just a moment to say that S-------- is the most
horrific of hospitals here, having been there before with friends,
and having seen what the emergency department was composed of did not
exactly endear me to the idea of being taken there for any kind of
treatment. But more about this later.
Having been told that I was going to S------, I did the most rational
thing I could think of at the time.
I asked them to take me to another hospital, I begged them to take me
to any other hospital then the one I was going to end up in.
I was ignored.
My mother, hearing the commotion from the back of the ambulence,
began advocating on my behalf, with harsh words.
They just ignored her as well.
So I took the next logical step in my pain fevered mind, I begged them
to take me back to the scene of the accident and lay me back on the
road where they'd found me.
This time, they laughed.
I should mention that I'm not very keen on being laughed at, probably
due to a childhood of teasing by other children, but as by that point,
we'd reached the hospital, it was a moot point anyway, I did my level
best to ignore it.
Rushed into the waiting room of the Emergency admitting part of the
hospital was almost as dramatic as anything you've seen on bad
melodramas on televison, with one actor doctor yelling "Stat!" and
another yelling "Clear!" as they zap the paitient back to life.
Once in the waiting room for the hospital however, I lay there on my
stretcher, getting more and more chilled by the rain dripping from my
legs and arms onto their not too clean floor.
More questions were asked, seemingly pointless ones as I stared down
at my leg in a kind of fascinated horror, it was swollen horribly and
was bulging disturbingly in several places, my other leg was all torn
up and skinned in several places, and my head began to hurt the way I
always know means a migrane is going to be my companion for the next
little while.
I decided to stop looking at my leg as if it belonged to someone
else and fixed my gaze on a splash of blood that was quite obviously
not mine, seeing as it was across the room, and I'd not been over there
as of yet.
When the endless questions finally seemed to be over, and I was wheeled
off to another section of the Emergenccy department, still on that
backboard, and still with that neckbrace on, mind you, I was relieved to
be getting a change of scenery, even if it was more of that grey/green
hospital colour.
My mother went off to call my father and my boyfriend and the dinner
guests that I had totally forgotten about until just then, and a police
officer came in to talk to me.
She was fairly nice, not too officious, but not exactly the type you'd
picture dressed in a pink dress with an armful of kittens either, and
she asked more questions, "Were you in the crosswalk when you got hit by
the car? Did you push the button before you crossed? (this seemed of
utmost importance to her, judging from the number of times she asked me)
Do you remember what lane you were in when the impact happened?
More and more questions from her, seemingly pointless at the time, as
all I could focus on was the pain, until she snapped her black book shut
and walked out without so much as a "goodbye" or a "thank you".
My mother returned and sat by the side of the stretcher and cried at me,
not for me, not with me, but at me, angry tears, bitter woman that she was.
A doctor, an intern arrived at that point to assess the damage to my
person, and I was thankful to see him.
I was getting thirsty, my head hurt, my leg hurt, let's face it, everything
about me hurt, and I just wanted it all to go away.
He touched my leg and lava began to flow up and down the ruin that had
previously been a part of me.
I screamed and cried, but he seemed not impressed by my verbal display
of pain and suffering at all, told my mother that I could not have any
water, nor anything to eat, as my leg was surely broken, and I'd need
surgury for it and who knew what else.
Surgury?
New concept for me.
I'd had friends that had various surguries, one that had MS and had his
legs broken and rebroken in surguries in an attempt to straighten them,
but I'd never applied that particular word to myself at least, not while
I was old enough to remember it.
My clothes were cut away from the lower half of my body with scissors
that looked as if they could amputate a finger, and I decided that I would
not even attempt to look at the broken parts of myself, seeing as the sight
of them had reduced my mother to choked tears, they covered me with a
sheet and called for someone to take me for x-rays.
It was at this point that my boyfriend, Sean arrived on the scene, and
he took charge of the situation.
He talked calmly to me when they took me down for x-rays an hour later,
reclaimed my attentions when I rejoined him outside the room where they'd
made me contort myself in hundreds of awkward and pain inspiring ways,
kept me calm by just talking to me about nothing whatsoever.
After the x-rays had confirmed that I had a broken leg, and not much more
in the way of orthorpedic injuries, the blasted backboard and neck brace
were removed, much to my relief, and a pillow was provided for my aching
head.
Of course, relitive comfort was not to be mine for long, seeing as they'd
assessed the damage to my leg, and decided that it required surgury to
repair. In order to stablize what was left of the intact bone of my leg,
they'd have to put a half cast, or a "slab" on my leg, so off I got
wheeled away again, this time, to the casting room.
Sean accompanied me there as well, talking to me the whole time and
saying nonsensical things like "it'll all be alright" but, I was
comforted by this, regardless of the reality.
I looked around the casting room and reaquainted myself with the tools
of this particular trade, over there was the "cast saw" and there was the
bowl of water, ready to have plaster strips dipped into it for casting,
and to my left was a small table with other small tools on it, like
scissors and tape, gauze and these strange looking wooden triangular
block things.
I was left in there with Sean for a little while while they paged the
resident on staff, and Sean talked to me the entire time, again, things
of little relevance to what was going on around me to keep my mind off
of the situation at hand.
The Resident arrived not too long after, and with a grin he asked Sean if
he could "Help him" with the casting procedure, seeing as he'd never
actually "done" a cast before.
Sean agreed and my leg was placed, none too delicately on those triangular
block things, "For balance" the intern assured me, or tried to anyway.
The casting process is not a neat and tidy one, by any means, it's a mess
of plaster of paris, gauze, water, and screamed curses by yours truly, at
least in my expirience, with Sean holding my leg out in midair a great deal
of the time while the Resident wrapped plaster under and around it before
Sean set it back on the triangular blocks to set and "cure".
If you've never had a cast before, you're probably unaware of the chemical
phenomena that happens when plaster begins to set, first it begins to warm
p, and then actually become an uncomfortable heat before it actually sets
into a solid mass, suitable for keeping a leg, or arm, or whatever you
wish to be cast, immobile.
Previous to this incident, I had a cast on an arm I'd broken at a summer
camp one year, so I was not unaware of the changes that happen to plaster
in the midst of setting into a cast.
This time was a little different, at least to me, it seemed.
The heat became a sting in my ankle, which previously to this had not
really hurt, then a burn, a low stingling burn, and after that, a solid
note of pain that was sustained like a temple bell being repeatedly
struck by someone who'd never get tired.
Over the course of 2 hours I lay there, in more pain then I'd been in
before that point.
I cried, I pleaded, I groveled to anyone who would listen for someone to
take the cast off of my leg, and again I was ignored.
My father entered the room at that point and was brought up to speed by
Sean while my mother wiped a tepid washcloth across my forehead, (wet
washcloths being well known to cure any ill) she did back off long enough
for my father to hug me and make certain that I was coherant enough
to understand what was going on around me.
I managed to convey, somehow, that there was something seriously wrong
with my ankle to him, and he bent down close to the bed to get a good view
of the problem area.
He straightened and looked at it again, kind of sideways as if trying to
get a good perspective of it, and I knew that something was just not right
about the cast.
The doctor returned at some point during this circus of people through
the room and said, quite testily I might add, "There's nothing wrong with
the cast whatsoever" and tried to leave again.
He made it to just outside of the door when my mother followed him out,
I could hear her yelling as the door swung shut behind her, and I knew that
he'd not be daring to simply walk away from her.
My father pulled a knife out of his pocket and handed it to Sean, and told
him where to cut to release the part of the cast that was hurting my ankle.
I believe it shocked Sean, but he did it, under my father's direction, and
didn't even nick the skin.
The doctor and my mother stalked back in, this time, his expression was
one even less friendly, hers slightly happier, seeing as she'd just won her
little battle in the hallway.
By this point, Sean had finished with the knife and was working on the
cast with a pair of scissors that had been lying on the table beside the
stretcher I was still lying on, tearing away at the back of the ankle part
of the cast while my father supported my leg carefully.
The Resident was not too impressed by this, not by any stretch of
imagination, and was about to embark on a blistering sermon about
hospital care being left to the doctors at said hospital, or some such
thing, when suddenly the pain in my ankle lessened to the point of
nonexistance and the throbbing in the middle part of my leg became more
apparant again.
I looked down at the wedge of plaster that was running with blood that
had been digging into my Achillies tendon for the past 2 hours, and the
blood dripping to create a small pool under where my ankle had been lying,
and the speech that the Resident had been about to deliver, simply never
happened.
He examined the ankle, smiled self conciously and mumbled something to the
effect of "it still wasn't too bad for the first cast I've ever done, and at
4 am too".
4 am?
I had gone to the store at about 8:30 pm and it still seemed like several
eternities had passed.
