Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [55]
At the desk, I was given a work sheet featuring the drawing of a unisex figure on which I was to circle the places that were giving me pain. On the right margin was a chart numbering the severity of pain, 1 being mild, 10 being the worst pain I had ever felt in my life. Each number came with a corresponding smiley or frowny face.
“Why would I have a whole body to choose from?” I asked. “It’s my foot.”
“Circle the head and see if they ask you about depression,” Zoë said.
We were moved to a private room immediately, but it was an hour and a half before I saw the doctor. He walked through the door reading my chart, glancing up long enough to offer a hearty handshake. His name was Dr. Santini. He looked nineteen.
“Swelling and sharp pain?” he asked.
My pant leg was already rolled up. I had taken pains to shave that morning, though vanity seemed beside the point considering my ankle had swollen to the size of a cantaloupe. Dr. Santini’s examination was far more brutal than Michael’s had been.
“Probably a sprain,” he murmured. “But I’d like to get this X-rayed. Better safe than sorry.”
I wondered how often he practiced his tone and delivery. It was hard to talk with young physicians without seeing my brother.
While we waited for the X-ray results, Zoë pulled a chair up to my bed and belabored the inefficiencies of the hospital. She dismantled everything from the outdated chart system (“they’re all online now”) to the outdated yellow curtains (“an offense to the patient’s sensibilities”).
“It’s not a resort,” I reminded her.
“It’s not the UC medical center, either.”
Zoë was a very devoted fan of the oncology centers that had administered her mother’s treatments. She stood beside these hospitals, like an alumna eternally defending her alma mater.
Dr. Santini’s verdict was that I had very badly sprained my ankle. His recommendation was that I stick to a careful regimen of RICE.
“Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation,” he explained.
“But I work on campus,” I said. “I walk everywhere.”
He shook his head. “Best way to let it heal is to stay off it as best you can. Crutches the first five days, some exercises as followup. You’ll be in an air cast for at least four weeks—maybe as many as six.”
“Don’t worry, dearest.” Zoë laid her head against my shoulder. “I’ll drive you.”
“That doesn’t worry me at all.”
Dr. Santini wrote me a prescription medication for the pain, along with specific instructions on what exactly I was and was not to do. Zoë, who loves being needed, wrote everything down in her Hello Kitty notepad.
10
News of my malady spread through the ranks. Mom called to inform me that the First Fundamentalist Church of God prayer chain had been alerted to my condition; Grandma FedExed a Ziploc bag of crumbs that had once been homemade oatmeal cookies; and Brian called to ask if the painkillers had had any adverse effects. I was touched, though I suspected he only wanted to test his memory of pharmaceuticals.
My brace was plastic instead of plaster, but Eli drew on it anyway. A cartoon old man holding a bundle of balloons rode a bicycle on the left side of my ankle; a field of overly large flowers sprouted on my right. Over the Velcro straps he wrote Feelings Happen in fat bubble lettering.
“I broke my leg when I was twenty-one,” he said. He was coloring the daisies in with a hot pink marker he’d bought just for the occasion.
“What were you doing?”
“Being an idiot.” He set his foot on the couch and rolled up his pant leg. He had thin legs covered in wiry black hair. A scar ran up his ankle, lines of tender pink skin in a row neat and orderly as the dotted punches of perforated paper. “I was trying to jump off the roof of a shed onto a trampoline. My leg broke my fall and the fall broke my fibula. Worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life.”
He rolled his pant leg back down. The silver charm of his hemp bracelet caught the light and winked.
“I suppose it would be predictable on my part to ask why you would be trying