The broken hand: The Way Home

October 26, 2013

The Way Home

R caught up with me. She was a bit behind the bend when I fell, so she didn’t see it. At first glance, the best she could tell is that I fell, and my face was funny when I got up.

The stress hormones do things to you. I thought everything was fine. I said there was a kid. The kid’s family was maybe a hundred feet away. They caught up with us, and they saw I was distressed. They said to R, “I’m sorry your friend fell down.” They looked at us for advice. Should they stick around? Should they call an ambulance?

I was the man. The brave, the few, and the stress hormones were still in effect, so I didn’t yet feel much. I waved them away with my unharmed left hand, signaling that I was alive and fine. I can imagine being in their position, seeing someone falling down. You are not the cause but you feel you are responsible. Getting out of the situation seems to be a pretty comfortable exit. That’s what happened. The kid and the family disappeared, and it was just me and R left on the scene.

I removed my outer jacket. I could sense my right arm was not right, as it hurt like crazy when I tried to move it, so I kept it motionless. I still hoped it was just a bruise. There was no external damage, and it was chilly outside, so I put the jacket back on. We limped home.

Building on our folk medicine knowledge, I lied down in bed and put a freezing agent on my arm. It hurt like a motherfucker, but it was a bit better when I held it in a steady position. I was still confident it was just a bruise, but I didn’t know what to do. I lied there with my arm in a fixed position.

We called a friend who knows about sports injuries. He came around, looked at my arm, and asked me to move it. I couldn’t. “You should go to the Emergency Room. Let me get my car,” he said.

We went to the ER.