gallusrostromegalus:

katy-l-wood:

gallusrostromegalus:

So when I was in second grade I broke my leg.  Or more accurately, the girl I was head over heels in love with broke my leg.  We were in after school care, milling about the playground in the september heat, and Erica decided to liven things up by telling me to lie down on the ground while she jumped off the top of the playset because she saw it on TV and If I Really Loved Her I’d Do It.

In my defense, I was seven.  In hers, Erica had problems the way most people have family heirlooms.  

She was probably aming for my chest but thankfully missed and slammed her 65lb body feet-first onto my leg, then tumbled forward and got a piece of tambark in her eye.  Being concerned that she might have hurt herself jumping on me, I tried to get up and…

I don’t recall my leg hurting.  It was more an intense and sudden lunge of panic that something was WRONG but I was unable to identify what, beyond my foot not obeying my brain anymore and sticking out sideways at an angle I’d normally have to work for.  I called out to the two teenagers that were supposed to be watching us and eventually they disentangled long enough to come look at me, shaking and only holding myself up with the aid of the slide, and declared that if i wasn’t bleeding I should shut up and walk back to the outbuilding with the rest of the kids.

It is worth noting here that I was a supremely unattractive child, bones growing almost too fast for my skin to keep up with, with joints that bent too far and the physical coordination of a three-legged gazelle on an an acid-coated escalator, so I was also nearly constantly hurting myself doing one dumb thing or another.  Maybe Tiffany and Dylan had legitimately forgotten thier first-aid training.  Maybe they didn’t care or thought I was faking.  Regardless, I had to listen to them, so I stood up as best I could and tried to follow.

I lurched along after the group like a particularly pathetic zombie, growing increasingly distressed about not being able to perform normal motor functions, eventually managing to convince Tiffany that we should call my mom to tell her to pick me up early.  She couldn’t be bothered to look up my parent’s work number, so I ended up calling the home number and telling the answering machine that I hurt my leg and couldn’t walk.

Mom, being at work, wouldn’t hear the message until she got home three hours later.  In the meantime, I crawled onto the aged futon and lay there listlessly, watching the ceiling times twist and contort as I tried not to have a meltdown in public.  I distinctly recall wondering if I was going insane like in the movies, and if they made straight jackets in my size.

What had actually happened was that Erica had broken my Tibia (the big lower leg bone) in two which is a serious fucking emergency in anyone but particularly in a chronically underweight and anemic child.  So for three hours, I lay there, slowly bleeding out.

So Mom arrives at Five PM like normal with the kiddie wagon because she assumes I’ve twisted my ankle or some other kind of nonemergency and finds me “actually gray” on the futon, which you may recognize as a color healthy human children aren’t.  She hauls me home post-haste and immediately into the car to go to the closest Urgent Care, not wanting to wait for an ambulance to Stanford hospital in rush-hour Bay Area traffic.  

We arrive, and mom begins describing my symptoms to the admitting nurse, who interrupts her to demand paperwork information.

“What’s the Kid’s name?”

“[Gallus] [My Dad’s last name], I’ll write everything down for you just- I think she’s going into shock-”

“And your name?”

“Lucy [Mom’s last name]”

“…are you this child’s legal guardian?”

“Yes! Here, this is my ID and Insurance, just please get someone to see her I’ve never seen her like this-”  Mom offered her, getting frantic.

“Sweetie.” Nurse Horrible leaned over the counter to squint at me over hier horn-rimmed glasses.  “Is this your mother?”

“Yes?” I replied, watching her wobble and distort like an owl on acid, vision going black around the edges.

“What’s your parent’s anniversary?”  She demanded as I melted over the edge of the wagon like one of Salvador Dali’s watches.

In Nurse Horrible’s defense:

1. Mom was already professionally known by her maiden name when she married Dad, and since he’s not a stick in the mud and name-change paperwork was a fucking pain in the 90′s, she’d never changed it.

2. Mom is a round, soft-faced woman with pale eyes and rosy complexion and at the time I looked like Brown-eyed Gollum in a  He-Man wig.  I don’t look like her. I don’t look like my dad either.  I look like my Dad’s sisters. Kind of.

3. You are supposed to keep an eye out for kidnappings and abuse.

On the other hand:

1. I was able to recite my parent’s anniversary, my home address, knew both of Mom’s middle names and like five other things that a kidnapped kid probably wouldn’t know.

2. I was very obviously fucking dying.

Eventually Nurse Horrible sat back and told my mom to go wait with me and the doctor would be out soon.  Mom compiled, and sat with me, trying to keep a conversation going with me about how I’m being so brave and yes those plants are fake, you don’t have to go to school tomorrow, no they don’t have a fish tank here but that would be a good idea-  

Until I started blacking out.  

Mom’s admittedly very good “Don’t Panic In Front Of The Injured Child” snaps when she has to start shaking me awake, and starts screaming for help, anyone, anyone please my child is dying-  Which summons a doctor from the back, where she’d been wondering why it had been so quiet.

Dr. Awesome immediately has me transferred to a gurney, hauled into the back and…  I only kind of remember what was happening at this point, but I remember the big old bag of blood, getting sticky pads on my chest and a plastic mask on my face.  

Some time later I remember waking up and feeling MUCH better, at which point I wanted to sit up and ask everyone what they were doing to me out of legit curiosity.

Dr. Awesome did a very good job of explaining

• that we were going down to get an X-ray
• what an X-ray was
• That my not getting radioactive fire breath from X-rays was kind of a loss
• WOW OK
• So this bone is called your Tibia, and this is where it’s broken.
• That IS a really big gap for what’s supposed to be a sold bone, and all my blood was leaking out of there, so we’re going to have to reset your leg and put it in a cast-
• Yeah you won’t be able to walk but you should eat as much ice cream as possible
• Tell your mom that the Doctor said that-
• What’s all that noise?

MEANWHILE, out in the waiting room, Dad had arrived to comfort Mom and be there to see me, followed shortly by the Police.

“Sir, Ma’am, can I see your IDs?”

“Sure, why?” Said Dad.

“Is the child that was brought in here earlier yours?”

APPARENTLY, when Nurse Horrible told Mom to sit and wait for the doctor, instead of telling the doctor there was a dying kid in the waiting room, she’d called the police to report a kidnapping. So  now the cops are there, Horrible is trying to convince them that My Own Mother Has Kidnapped Me, Dad is beyond confused, Mom’s ready to cut a bitch and Things are getting real tense when Dr. Awesome stops the conversation with:

“[HORRIBLE], THAT IS NOT THE PROCEDURE, AND THAT KID CODED. CONSIDER YOURSELF FIRED. PLEASE ESCORT HER FROM THE PREMISES.”  then hastily explained to my parents that my heart hadn’t stopped for long and given that I was asking informed questions about the nature of radiation, I probably didn’t have brain damage.

“YOU CAN’T FIRE ME!” Shreiks Nurse Horrible, and while she might have been right about the correct precedeures regarding the firing of a medical professional in the state of California, she was wrong to pick up and throw the vase of fake flowers at my Mom, which even I managed to hear from the back where I was eating Jello with the Much Cooler Nurse.

At the sound of the Crash, Much Cooler Nurse ran to the doors and started giving me a play by play:

“Aw, now she’s done it the crazy B-” She glanced back at me. “…uh, butterfly.”
“Yeah, Yeah! Dogpile!  Get her out of here!”
“Oh great now I’m gonna have to stich up his hand too.”
“C’mon what did they teach you at cop school?  Cuff her!”
“Your momma is fine, sorry kid.  Been waiting for her to lose it for a while now.”
“Yeah that’s right, walk away and leave me with all the paperwork again.”
“Ok Sweetie your parents can come in now, do you need anything else?”

“Was Dr. Awesome right that I should eat as much Ice Cream as possible?”

“Yeah, also you should get sprinkles.”

“I like oreos better.”

“Them too then.”

I ended up being in the cast for five months and my foot STILL sticks out sideways.  

---

(if you got a laugh out of this, please consider donating to my Ko-Fi or Paypal, as telling funny stories online is my only means of income)

What I’ve learned is that the two of us should never hike alone together because we are both terrible at reacting to serious injuries in a proper human manner.

I can’t react with enough worry to my own injuries but tend to wildly overreact to other people’s injuries, so on average the two of us together probably react about right.  

Also we need to invite @jonphaedrus and form the Coalition of Mountain Cryptids with Near-Death Expiriences. We can have funny hats and cake.