Rooms - James L. Rubart [86]
He went to bed early that night. The ankle would be fine by morning. It was. The problem came when he tried running Friday afternoon, and the ankle flared up again, much worse than before.
This time it wasn’t better the next morning. Or the next. Sunday night Sarah and he were heading back to his car after dinner and a movie when she said, “Want to tell me about it?”
“What?”
“The limp you’ve been trying to hide all night.”
“I took a run on the beach the other day, and wham, it just hit me.”
“You twisted it?”
“No, it came out of nowhere.”
“Well, I know this will fly in the face of macho-acting males everywhere, but why don’t you see my doctor about it? I promise he’ll only poke and prod a little.”
“Thanks for looking out for me, Sarah.”
“Always.”
He pulled her close for a long soft kiss. As she lingered in his arms, he frowned and tried to ignore the feeling his visit to the doctor wouldn’t be as comforting.
CHAPTER 32
Monday morning at just past eleven, a doctor walked into the waiting room of Cannon Beach Medical Clinic that looked like Foghorn Leghorn in human form. He smacked his clipboard against his hand with a sharp pop as he grinned at Micah.
“Howdy! Chart here tells me you’re Micah Taylor, friend of Sarah’s. Nice to meet you and all that stuff.”
Micah smiled. Sarah hadn’t mentioned her doctor’s robust personality. “Hi, Dr. McConnell.”
“Why don’t you ease on back to my office, Micah, and we’ll do the ol’ look-see.”
When they were both seated, the doctor asked for “the lowdown.”
“I started a run a few days ago when this dull ache in my left ankle came out of nowhere. No big deal; I gave it a few days, figured it’d get back to normal.”
“And it didn’t.” Doctor Foghorn nodded and looked at his clipboard. “When were ya born?”
“1980.”
“Almost thirty and old age is already kicking in.” The doctor laughed. “Ever felt anything like this before?”
“Never.”
“You didn’t smack your foot into anything lately, fall down, twist it, something like that?”
“No.”
“All right, partner. We’ll fire some X-rays through those bones of yours and see what turns up.” The doctor walked to the door, then spun on his heel toward Micah. “Give us about an hour, and we’ll have some fine shots of that ol’ right wheel of yours.”
“You mean my left whe—ankle.”
“You’re sharp, partner.” The doctor pointed at Micah and laughed again. “I see why she likes you.”
As he waited for the X-rays to develop, Micah walked gingerly up and down Main Street twice, stopping in two art studios, Geppetto’s Toy Shoppe, and the Cannon Beach Bakery without seeing anything inside them. He returned to the doctor’s office, and ten minutes later the doc stepped into the waiting room.
“Well, no great mystery here. But let me ask a quick question first to make sure I’ve hopscotched to the right conclusion about that ankle.”
Micah nodded.
“You been working the wheels pretty consistently, haven’t you?”
“Four or five times a week down on the beach.”
“There you go. Mystery solved, case closed. Elvis, you can now leave the building.” The doctor smiled, as if he’d been bestowed a fellowship at Scotland Yard.
“So are you going to let me in on the details of the case?”
“Good one!” The doctor slapped Micah on the back too hard and laughed. “The X-rays say you tore up your ankle pretty good a while back, broke it in two places, might’ve torn a ligament down there, too, from the looks of those two little metal screws there. See ’em right there?” The doctor tapped the X-ray with a mechanical pencil. “Can’t really tell for sure with only an X-ray. You’d need an MRI to be 100 percent sure, but if I were a betting man, I’d lean that direction.”
As the doctor pointed out where the screws were on the X-ray, heat filled Micah’s body, and he felt ready to faint.
“Whoever worked on ya did a good job, FYI. So anyway, you’re just getting a little aching from working the ol’ ankle more often than normal down here where the moist air works its way in there and stiffins