Yesterday, on a mission to fetch foam core from the nearby framing establishment, I swooped down the office stairwell with great galumphing stomps, humming, if I recall correctly, the Elvis remix of which we spoke of late. My feet, neither broad enough for a normal case nor thin enough for a narrow case, were sloshing around in my low-top Doc Martens. I was glad to be in motion and generally rather pleased with myself.
I rounded the corner at a clip, stomped with my left, stomped with my right—and apparently the heavy sole of my Doc had hit the creaking stair at an angle, for I found myself rapidly stomping my foot into an unnatural perpendicular. Luckily, when propelling myself downstairs at unsafe speeds, I make it a practice to quasi-brachiate between the rails, and both my hands were thus engaged. I was therefore able to pull myself out of my stomp with both arms and, more impressively, I managed to make no sound as my ankle (so it seemed) dislodged from its pinioning tendons, rammed through several fragile muscles, and broke out through the skin to accuse me.
The above did not occur, but it jolly well felt like it did!
For long moments I stood, holding my weight on the rails and staring at my ankle, my mouth imprisoning all species of wail and curse. Finally, I reasoned that the best way to determine whether it was actually damaged was to attempt to walk, and even more finally, I managed to convince myself to do it. It hurt quite a bit, but it seemed structurally stable, and the pain was constant, not throbbing with each step. I limped out into the pretentious lobby, across the marble tiles, and to the glass door. Somewhere in the lobby, I realized I couldn’t breathe. My lungs, small at the best of times, now seemed the size of my cupped hand. Reaching the door, I clutched the handle and stood in the dazzling sun, trying to breathe deeply. I could not. My heart did not seem to be in my throat, but there was the associated feeling of intensity and dislocation throughout my chest. Finally, as the September sunlight dazzled into a white glow around me, it occured to me I might be passing out, and I walked over to the pretentious leather chairs, very overstuffed, that make their den in the lobby. I sat down, and watched with detached interest a troupe of sensations make their way through my body; The dislocation gave way to a crystal clarity that remained to sketch in detail the wave of heat and tingling wave of cold that followed, the sudden throbbing of my pulse in my arms, and the slowly-settling calm.
I realized my ankle felt fine, and that I hadn’t even limped to the chair. The sunlight had ceased its tumescence, and I stepped outside.
Comments
A note
I cannot decide whether my body reacted to my subconscious fear of being gimpy again with some sort of delayed panic response, or whether the pain was so intense I had to come off of it with more bits of me than just my logic center; or whether, in fact, I DID break my ankle, and the odd sensation was a brand new mutant healing factor kicking in.
If the latter, it was nice knowing you, and please lobby for my release from Weapon X.
Ow
When I was a wee lad of perhaps 11 or 12, living out in the sticks in Texas, I suffered an ankle injury. Dad and I were on a three-wheeler (or an ATV, as yew dang west-coasters seem to call ‘em) riding out to a site in the forest where we were building our new house. I was sitting in front, gripping the body of the three-wheeler with my feet on the pegs, and Dad was behind me, with his arms on either side of me and his hands gripping the handlebars so he could steer and operate the throttle.
We stopped for a moment to talk to my uncle, who we encountered going for a walk on the road, and I absentmindedly began poking at a small shrub with my right foot. I saw Dad go for the throttle again, and it crossed my mind that, with the front of my foot hooked under the shrub and the back of my foot resting on the peg, bad things might happen, but I thought to myself, “It’s just a shrub! My feet are strong and manly!” and I didn’t bother moving.
Sadly, I had overestimated the manliness of my foot and underestimated the stubbornness of the shrub, and I had not properly accounted for the determination of the three-wheeler to accelerate, nor for Dad’s reaction to the lack of acceleration, which was to give it more gas.
The result was that the shrub held tightly to the front of my foot while the peg held tightly to the back of my foot and my ankle did its damnedest to hold tightly to all of my foot, but alas, ankles aren’t meant to bend that way, and I screamed in pain as I imagined things ripping and tearing and breaking in my poor leg. Dad noticed my plight and reversed quickly, but not before the damage was done and the terrible throbbing pain had set in. As luck would have it, we were several miles from civilization, so I got to enjoy the pleasure of a bumpy three-wheeler ride back to the house while attempting to hold my ankle well out of shrub assault range and trying not to fall off.
To add insult to injury, the doctor said I hadn’t even broken anything. Here I was imagining bones shattered and damaged beyond repair, muscles shredded and torn asunder. I had prepared myself for the inevitable announcement that my foot would have to be amputated, and had even begun fantasizing about how much fun it would be when I got my new metal cyberfoot. But no, apparently, despite the pain, my injuries were minor. He gave me some ibuprofen and a cane - not even crutches! - to walk around with, which, as I’m sure you can imagine, made me OH so popular at school for the next few weeks.
So yeah. Ankle injuries suck, especially when they trick you into thinking they’re worse than they really are, and ESPECIALLY when you don’t even get the honor of walking around with a cast or crutches for your trouble.
Re: Ow
Wow. That sounds almost like a physics experiment in pain. “And now, when we turn on the gas, you will see…”
You’d mentioned the cane during my magic shoe interlude—and now the truth comes out. How awful for your 12-year-old self that such a manly ATV-related injury should be rewarded with a cane. MWA HA HA!
Re: Ow
ATV isn’t a west-coast term, but rather a city-folk term, I think. In Alaska, my relatives refer to them as three- or four-wheelers.
Re: Ow
(hack, spit) We call ‘em four-wheelers down in Suthurn Indiana. It’s a verb, too—four-wheeling.