Chapter 4: The Cruel Month of June

Friday, June 8, 1984 9:18 PM

The emergency room was a madhouse. A three-car accident on the turnpike had brought six other patients to the trauma center, all with injuries worse than mine. I sat in the waiting room for nearly four hours before seeing a doctor. The weary ER doctor simply sent me to radiology, where I sat for another hour waiting to be X-rayed.

I had broken my right tibia, the larger of the two bones in my lower leg, a few inches above the ankle. It was a simple fracture, meaning the ends of the bone didn’t tear through the muscles and skin. However, the doctor was still concerned.

“This kind of break can be tricky,” he told my mother, gesturing to the X-ray with his pen. “The fibula is normally held in a bowed shape by the tibia. What often happens when the tibia breaks is that the fibula straightens out a bit. This separates the ends of the break and inhibits the healing process.” He went on to explain that in such cases, surgery would be necessary to screw plates onto the tibia to hold the ends together.

“However,” he continued, “We try to avoid that kind of surgery these days, unless it is absolutely necessary. Open surgery brings a risk of infection, and health insurance companies frown on that. I’ll put a full leg cast on, and with luck it will be fully healed in eight to ten weeks.”

“Excuse me, doctor?” I asked. “How long would it take to heal with the surgery?”

“The installation of plates keeps the broken ends together and speeds up the knitting process significantly,” he said. “Healing usually completes enough for removal of the cast in four to five weeks. We’ll explore that route only if the cast doesn’t do the job first.”

I could see my plans for the summer falling by the wayside. Whether the cast worked or not, I would still be out of commission until the middle of August. No biking, no fishing, no swimming. I desperately tried to lobby to have the surgery right away, but my pleas fell on deaf ears.

Eight hours, four X-rays, and one full-leg plaster cast after leaving the top of Fast Lane, I was sprawled across the back seat of Mom’s station wagon on the way home from Memorial Hospital.

The painkillers administered in the Emergency Room helped, but they didn’t keep the pain in my leg away completely. Remorse, and anger, frustration ... and oh, yes, that pain ... all seemed to swirl together in my head.

Now, I thought, my summer was COMPLETELY ruined.

It was well past midnight by the time we got home, but I got very little sleep that night. The painkillers only dulled the pain and the cast on my leg was heavy and unfamiliar. Between all that and Mom coming in to check on me every couple of hours, the best I could do was doze off for a few minutes at a time. What little sleep I did get was filled with dreams of flying bicycles and blue-spotted clouds.

In the morning, Mom brought breakfast and my meds to my room. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she ruffled my hair. “How are you doing?”

“How am I doing?” I grumbled. “It’s the third day of summer vacation and I have a broken leg. I can’t sleep, I can’t ride my bike, I can’t go swimming and I have to use crutches just to get around. The doctor said I could be wearing this stupid cast for TEN WEEKS! How do you THINK I’m doing?” By the end of my tirade I was on the verge of tears.

“Look at the bright side, sweetie,” she started. “You--”

“There is no bright side!” I interrupted. “My whole summer is ruined!” I didn’t say it, but there actually was a bright side: Charlotte wouldn’t be around to see me gimped up like this. “Just leave me alone.” Through my tears I could see the worried look that crossed her face. I knew none of this was her fault, but at that moment I didn’t care about her feelings.

Mom pursed her lips. “I’ll be downstairs. If you want to come down and watch TV, just yell and I’ll help you get down the steps.”

She left the room and I began picking at my breakfast. I should have been ravenous-- I hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before-- but I was too upset to have an appetite. After a few minutes I gave up on eating and picked up my crutches. I clump-clumped my way down the hall to the bathroom and clumsily cleaned myself up with a wet washcloth.

Returning back to my room, I noticed the ant farm. I had forgotten all about it in all the excitement. I looked at the progress the ants had made overnight and was amazed at what I saw.

I had been expecting a few inches of tunnels and a food chamber or two. What the ants had done overnight blew my expectations away! There were a half dozen chambers, all connected by a series of nearly symmetrical branched tunnels, all of which led to the three access holes at the surface. One of the chambers held the sprinkle of food I had dropped in. The loose sand that had been dug out to make the tunnels was all piled in the right corner rather than above each access hole.

A few of of the ants scurried around the tunnels or above ground, but most were concentrated in the center-most chamber, and the blue-spotted pebble was in there with them! The ants had tunneled over to the connection port and brought the pebble back to the chamber. Why would they all want to hang out in there with a pebble, I wondered. Didn’t they have other work to do?

They are attending me.

“They are attending her,” I whispered. Where the hell did THAT come from?

Attending. Like maidens-in-waiting attending a princess. Only while my mouth whispered “her,” the word in my head had been... me.

I shivered and hiccupped out a nervous laugh. I’m hearing things. I guess the meds are kicking in, I thought to myself. I added a few drops of water to the hill with the eyedropper, replaced the top and bid my diminutive friends good morning. The few moments I had spent with them had lightened my mood considerably. I hobbled out to the hall and called Mom for help navigating the stairs.

On the way down I apologized for yelling at her.

Over the next few days, the pain in my leg settled down to a dull discomfort-- along with the dozen or so other bumps and bruises I had received at the end of my short flight. I learned to walk on the crutches without tearing the skin off my armpits. I learned to sleep with twelve pounds of plaster on my leg.

And I learned that, indeed, my summer was completely ruined.

Sunday’s call from Dad was filled with more bad news. Well, it was good news for him and Mom, I suppose. Dad’s supervisor had a death in the family and had to come home early, and Dad had been promoted to take his place. That was the good news. In fact, it was very good news, as the promotion came with a significant increase in his already generous salary. The bad news was that it meant staying until the entire project was completed. Instead of being home by the end of June, he would be staying in the UAE until early August. I tried to be happy for him (he sounded thrilled about the promotion, and called it ‘a great opportunity’); but he had already been gone four months at that point and I really missed him.

At lunch time Tuesday the gang stopped by to sign my cast and present me with a get-well gift: the rock I had hit that caused my wreck. It was granite, about the size of a lemon, but wedge shaped. At the speed I was going when I hit it, the shape had been just right for sending me and my bike ass-over-teakettle. After a closer look, I decided that it would make a nice doorstop for my room. We all had a nice chuckle over it, and I apologized to them for being arrogant.