Serves Me Right (cont.)

On the fifth morning after I broke my foot, I got up, dressed in twice the amount of time it usually took, and donned my brace for my first day back at work. After easing myself into the driver’s seat of our Chevy Malibu and maneuvering my brace to the inside near the center console, I looked down at my left foot and experimentally rested it on the accelerator. Not bad. I pivoted to the brake pedal and back, wondering if my left foot would respond in an emergency. I shuddered at the thought of my right foot pumping inside the brace as my left foot dangled ineffectively and I helplessly smashed into the back end of a car that had stopped short in front of me. Thankfully, driving with my left foot proved easier than I expected.

My resignation, effective in two more days, made going to work seem anticlimactic. Still, I was happy to be back, and grateful that my classroom was just a short walk from the parking lot. I thought that my students would call me a chicken for missing the graduation trip to Six Flags, but they had more interesting things to talk about.

“What did you do to yourself?” asked my fourth period TA.

“Nothing! I just decided I am not enough of a fashion victim. I’m taking it to the next level. This is my half-gothic beach cripple look,” I said, lifting first my one black orthopedic boot and then my platform flip-flop. She raised one artificially chiseled black eyebrow and gave me a piercing look.

“So, did you get mad and kick a wall?”

“No, it was a freak accident. That kitchen linoleum is more dangerous than it looks!” I retorted in mock horror.

“Um, that’s pretty pathetic, Mrs. K.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. I’ll miss my bow-staff class this summer. I may lose my black belt.”

Missing half of my last week of school was less than ideal, but it could not be helped. I was extremely immobile at first. I read six books in four days, reclining on the couch with my foot on ice for fifteen minutes out of every two hours. Every time I got up I would have to ease my leg into the brace, close the Velcro on the fleece that surrounded my ankle, and secure four wide Velcro straps that pinned my leg firmly to the back. My cat was afraid of the noise I made, as well as the sight of me crab-walking unevenly around the house like the hunchback of Notre Dame.

On Tuesday my mom came by with two large bags of shoes, all with lifts high enough to match the orthopedic boot. I chose a flip flop and a leather sandal, each with a three-inch heel. The right shoes went back in the box and straight into my closet. I won’t need a right shoe for six more weeks, I thought. I’m gonna miss the simple pleasure of picking out my shoes to wear every morning. Like my red Crocs, even though Uncle Dale says they look like Tupperware. Just thinking about my brand-new off-white beaded slides lying new in the box all summer makes me sick! All of my normal shoes were way too flat to wear, since I think that tall people don’t need to wear shoes that make them even taller. When I did get off the couch, I would sidle casually up to Craig and eye the top of his head, trying to see if my new platforms made me taller than he is. Apparently not, although I still check the vacation photos to see if there are any pictures in which I loom large and lopsided.

My students weren’t the only ones who loved to comment on my foot. “Auntie Krista is part robot!” my nephews screamed as I walked toward them in my new footwear ensemble. I did look a little artificial, in a Darth Vader sort of way. I wasn’t sure at first if the boot was an object of fear or admiration. Clomping around the grounds of the condos the family rented for summer vacation, I sounded like something out of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Step scraaaatch. Step scraaaatch.

“What is wrong with that lady?” children would point and wonder loudly before being shushed by horrified parents who would explain sotto voce that I was hurt and it wasn’t nice to draw attention to other people’s malformations. Actually, a neon sign saying LOOK EVERYONE, I HAVE AN OWIE! couldn’t have attracted any more attention than I was already getting. People of all ages couldn’t help bringing up the subject of my injury, even if they said nothing else to me. I discussed my case with the cat’s veterinarian, the bank teller, the librarian, and the bagger at the supermarket. My favorite comment was “Did you hurt your foot?” What does one say to this? Is it possible that I didn’t hurt my foot but put the brace on this morning in a state of sleepy confusion? “No, I just wasn’t sure if it would snow today or not and thought I should wear ONE ski boot just in case,” I would reply brightly.

I had more conversations with perfect strangers in my six-week convalescence than perhaps my entire adult life. In Grand Canyon National Park I rested on a bench while Craig took a ten-minute walk to a lookout. A nice older gentleman approached me, asked how my foot was healing, and then kept me company as he told me the story of his wife’s rafting accident in Something-Hole-Wyoming. “Three days into our tour she was climbing down the metal stairs to the dock, but they were tilted and she slipped off. Her shin scraped the step hard enough to expose six inches of bone. It took one hundred and forty-eight stitches to close the wound. They have excellent health care in Wyoming. The doctor told the nurse to do a basket-stitch to close the muscles back together, but she didn’t know how to do it and so the doctor did it himself. Her boot looks just like yours. She feels much better now, but she can’t get off the tour bus and we have a week of our vacation left!”

I was stopped in Best Buy by a woman my age who pulled off her sandal to show me a blue, swollen foot similar to mine. “I have a brace like yours in the car, but I stopped wearing it after three weeks. It was so hot I couldn’t stand it!” I could definitely agree with that statement. The black boot was like a greenhouse, trapping my leg in a bath of its own sweat. A week into my convalescence Craig started giving my leg warm baths, and I was moved to tears by his considerate pampering of my poor foot. Two days later the stench reached my own nose and I realized that I stunk so badly he couldn’t stand to sit next to me. During the drive to Kentucky I would take off the boot and scrub my leg with antibacterial wipes to keep the odor from overwhelming the cabin of the car.

Approaching weeks in the brace, I was definitely tired of other aspects as well. The cushy, shock absorbing foam that had allowed me to walk on my foot in those first tender days was mashed down and lumpy. Now it felt like walking on gravel, and I was tired of carrying around a visual advertisement of my recent medical history. While hobbling across the Lexington Mall, I noticed a salesman sailing confidently towards Craig and me. Suddenly, he stopped, his eyebrows shot up to his hairline, and he beat a hasty retreat, hiding behind his kiosk until we were safely past. I couldn’t help laughing out loud when I turned around and realized that he had decided it was a bad idea to sell a pair of roller-skate shoes to a cripple.

“Craig,” I mused over a latte at the Starbucks on Reynolds Road, “what if wearing the brace is a big medical conspiracy?”

“Hmm?” he stared back at me, probably thinking that the rocking motion of my walk had shaken my brain into a state of psychiatric confusion.

“What if this brace doesn’t help your foot to heal, but is just a punishment for being careless enough to break a limb in the first place? If it is, it’s working. I know I will seriously reevaluate the way I walk across the kitchen from now on.”

“If it is a punishment, wouldn’t it just be simpler to make you wear a sign or something?”

“Yeah, or a temporary tattoo that says I NEED TO BE MORE CAREFUL across my forehead.”

“Krista, you look so normal!” Craig remarked admiringly when I walked tentatively sans brace around the house three days later. He sure knows how to give a girl a compliment. I figured that if the woman from Best Buy could go cold turkey after three weeks, I could ditch the brace after just under five. I had a berry-red sunburn on my right knee from rafting down the Deschutes River, but the rest of both legs glowed winter white. My legs burned with the exertion of getting back on my bicycle, and when I got down off the bike my leg muscles wobbled with disuse. It wasn't the best way to introduce myself to the rolling hills of Lexington after avidly riding in the flat plain of the Central Valley. Truthfully, it would take weeks more for me to feel normal, but a whole new world of shoe choices opened up to me right away, and it felt great!