Two nurses came into my hospital room and one began to examine me. I could tell something was amiss when they started whispering to each other in hospital code – clearly they intended to cut off my leg and didn’t want to alarm me or cause undue distress. While one of them traced her finger along what now revealed itself to be the jagged edge of my Patella I started to understand that just maybe we weren’t dealing with an errant but adorable little Patella here. Maybe, I thought … and then I saw the other nurse move her hand much too quickly toward my knee and I grabbed her wrist in a death grip before she could touch me. My eyes locked on to hers and sent a very clear message that I could snap her forearm at will. She calmly asked me to let go so that she could help examine the line of fracture. So that was it: I had a fractured Patella – it wasn't dislocated after all.
As I sat with my family waiting to be discharged from the hospital, I used the time to prepare my son for the possibility that I could lose my job, rack up debts, go bankrupt, and end up homeless and living on the good graces of all those friends and relatives I had been ignoring for so many years. Things looked pretty bleak but I have never tried to shelter my family from the cold hard truth or at least my unbiased interpretation of that truth.
When I got home, I started to cancel some travel appointments. My son heard me cancel my trip to Washington DC before Christmas and my trip to Connecticut immediately after Christmas and he looked like he was going to cry. My heart really went out to him but I seized the moment - this was my chance to show some generosity and love without having to spend a single hard-earned dollar, “You know Corin, I really wanted to surprise you but this January, Mommy and I were going to take you to Disney World right after Christmas.” He couldn’t hold back any longer and tears burst out all over but I couldn’t help myself. “Yeah and then we were going to take a hot air balloon ride down to Cuba for a day. Now we’ll have to cancel all of those plans. I’m so sorry.” I torqued my knee a little to help muster up some tears of conviction.
Nice work! I could chalk Disney World off the list.
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