Final Memoir - "Pinky"

Creative Writing Memoir

James Fischer

6th Hour

Pinky

I am an awfully careful person.  Never took too many chances.  That’s why it came as a surprise to me when it happened, because I didn’t exactly know how to handle a situation like that.  It was definitely the flip-flops that caused it.  Started off as a perfect day.  The sun had smiled down on the courtyard and She said, “Let there be outdoor Choir!”  And it wasn’t even Choir really, it was more along the lines of “do-whatever-you-want” day for the class.  And I wanted to play catch.  

We were having a joyous time of course, jumping up the stone steps, calling for the ball, rejecting the listless classrooms for our outdoor paradise.  We decided to organize our efforts and turn it into a game.  A competition.  Competition equals fun.  At least it should, until you get too caught up in it all but that’s beside the point, the main point is I got caught up in it all, and that was my first mistake.  

  I thought I would stand behind everyone else, and the ball would bounce through their hands and go straight to me.  It was a genius plan of course, especially in retrospect.  I stared up at the spinning ball, squinting in the light.  It was veering off to the right!  I quickly changed my footing, both eyes fixed on the relentlessly rotating object that I desired to catch so greatly.  All of my weight, flying to the right, leg extended outward and then suddenly a searing pain in my foot and the whole world rotated just like the ball and then I was on the ground in a blur of green and brown.  

I slowly got back up to see that nobody had even noticed my fall.  They were all still in front of me, playing on as though nothing had happened.  I had caught my little toe on a small tree and fallen over.  I limped over to the pavement and sat down again to get my bearings.  I looked down at my foot and noticed something odd.  Do little toes normally bend that way?  I wasn’t so sure.  I started to tenderly touch the toe and maybe, push it back into place.  But then I had second thoughts after the shock of pain flashed up my foot and leg.  Not a good plan, I realized, so I walked over to my teacher, mumbled something about needing to go to the office, and promptly limped back inside.  

Limped up the stairs, limped to the office, limped to the bed.  At this point I felt more than a little light headed, but I decided to get a better look at what was going on.  My little toe was bent outward at a 45 degree angle, and it wasn’t moving.  The nurse offered to pop it back into place, which made me cringe immediately.  

“No, no, I’d rather they do it at the hospital, they can numb it up there I’m sure.”  

My Mom arrived soon, and then it was deep breaths for me, all the way to the hospital.  I was trying not to look.

After several waiting rooms, I finally got some help.  The doctors took a look.  

“Before we make any decisions,” they said, “we need an x-ray.”

So I went back to that waiting room.  The lady was nice.  She told me to put my foot in several different directions for multiple pictures.  There was one in which my broken toe was pointing down at the table (it’s hard to picture without experiencing it).  I remember the feeling of the end of the toe touching the mat and thinking about what a strange angle my toe was actually pointing in for that to be possible.  

The x-ray revealed that the toe wasn’t just dislocated.  It was broken clean in half.  Completely broken like a little twig.  If the nurse back at the High School had tried to put it back into place, I would have had a bad time to say the least.  Thank God I didn’t go through with that.

So they decided that the best course of action was to put 3 shots in my foot to numb the area and then move the bones back into place as best as they could.  The doctor began to wash the area on my foot.

“I’m going to give it to you straight,” he said.  “This is not gonna be fun.”

Right when the needle entered my foot, every part of my body grew tenser than I have ever felt.  My neck was straining and my eyes clenched shut.  It was mostly because of my own anxiety that my body went into a state of panic.  And it was painful, more painful than anything I’ve ever gone through.  They were manipulating my foot and I could feel the numb movements.  It was a strange sensation, because I felt that my foot was being moved, and I felt the hands, but it was still incredibly numb.  Then I heard the CRACKing sound that I will never forget as they repositioned my toe to be straight.  It was a horrifying noise, and even though I didn’t actually feel the pain of the relocation, I was still terrified by the experience.    

When it was over I looked down to find my toe wrapped in a bundle of bandages and padding, completely protected.  The doctor told me that we would wait a week, and then I would see a specialist to check if it was healing correctly.  If it was still not completely straight I would have to get surgery on my little toe.  SURGERY.  For a pinky toe.  How ridiculous would that be?  

I would discover over the course of that week how much one broken pinky toe can really affect the health of the entire body.  I had to sleep with my foot propped up on some pillows every night, which kept me awake pretty much all the time.  This led to me being constantly stressed out, feeling sick, and I couldn’t even walk without hopping on one foot.  But the worst part of this whole ordeal was yet to come.  

As the week went by, I tried to stay positive about my situation.  There was no way I wanted to have to go through with surgery on my toe, for many reasons.  I was banking on it healing correctly on its own, and this was my mindset going into the appointment with the specialist.  

When the man came into the room, he asked some quick questions, very coldly.  He wasn’t a very likable or approachable person inherently, and I could tell that he wasn’t going to be very comforting.  He left for a brief period.  When he came back he had a large needle in his hand.  No warning at all.  

“I’m going to give you a few shots to numb your foot and re-break the toe to set it more straight.  They did it wrong last week.”

My heart sank like an anchor.  That was absolutely the last thing that I wanted to hear.  I would have to go through the entire horrible process again.  It was like reliving a nightmare.  I actually started to cry.  This was just more than I could handle at this point.  I was already looking at several months of recovery that would make my summer vacation essentially useless, and now I had to start all over from square one.  

This time hurt even worse than last time, probably because the needles were entering my already bruised and swollen skin for the second time in a week.  When it was over I looked up to see bloody papers and tissues surrounding my newly contorted toe.  This was really the final straw.  After all of that pain that I had gone through, this “specialist” had left all of the blood around it.  I’m not good with blood, and this just made me even more light-headed than I already was from this horrific experience.

After that it was simply just to wait and be impaired for the next several months.  This included prom, so I ended up bringing a badass cane as part of my outfit for that.  I guess that’s one silver lining in an otherwise completely negative experience.  I’ll never underestimate how much trouble one broken pinky toe can cause ever again.