GLIMPSES of how Canada worked: a writer's memoir.

37. Life happens, darn it!

"LIFE IS WHAT HAPPENS WHILE YOU ARE BUSY making other plans."

John Lennon of the Beatles immortalized that expression in 1980. (It's attributed to American writer Allen Saunders in 1957.)

Early on Saturday March 5, 2016, I walked out of my apartment building in downtown Toronto, carefully stepped around a bit of black ice which had been a small puddle the night before, and went to fetch a newspaper. The temperature was -3C, the sun was in a clear blue sky, there was no wind. Snow was everywhere, but sidewalks and streets were cleared. This was March in Toronto at its brrrrrisk best!

A small pot with cooked buckwheat was keeping warm on my stove. It could wait. So could the Saturday farmers' market a few blocks west. After picking up a paper and dropping it into a plastic bag I wandered between snowbanks for a while, enjoying  freshness and silence in the early light. By the time I returned I'd forgotten about the black ice.

I slipped and fell, thinking as I went down don't hit the head!  It got only a light tap at the back. An old down coat padded my knees and hips so they weren't even bruised.

Sprawling on a sidewalk is both unhelpful and undignified! Try not to do it.

As I pulled legs and arms together I knew beyond any doubt that some part of my right wrist was broken, yet adrenalin had kicked in. I sprang up so fast I surprised myself. But then I was afraid to move although the ice was half a meter away. The pain in the wrist increased quickly.

A passing stranger asked how he could help. "Call 911, please."  I took my keys out of my pocket and asked him to go to my apartment, turn off the burner under the buckwheat, and bring me a small green purse that was waiting to go to market. He returned, mission accomplished, just as an ambulance with two young men arrived.

I asked for an ice pack for my head and held it at the back. After my forearm was splinted with another ice pack on the wrist, I was strapped on a stretcher and slid into the back of the ambulance.

Brian drove while John and I chatted. He said I'd picked a good time to go to the Emergency Department: "This early on a Saturday morning hardly anyone's there." The plastic bag, now containing the green purse as well as the newspaper, lay on my chest and my left hand kept the ice pack in just the right place at the back of my head. The hospital was about 10 blocks from home, through downtown Toronto.

I had ridden with patients in ambulances, sitting beside a stretcher as John did, but never before as a patient. I'm surprised by how clearly I recall the ride. I'd asked Brian not to use the siren, so we moved slowly, stopping for red lights. Buildings were familiar, but every turn confused me. I wasn't expecting that street to be next, or to see that view after....  It was a total change of perspective, a new game! I felt like asking Brian to go back so I could try again.

Suddenly losing control of one's life is absolutely unhelpful. Really annoying, in fact, when it's your own fault. I SAW THAT ICE less than an hour before I slipped on it.

In the "Emerg" of a huge urban hospital, a long line of specialists function at top speed. Brian and John wheeled me through automatic doors to the first triage person (a nurse), then the second (a physician), to a cubicle where I moved from their stretcher to a gurney. Across the hall was a door with "washroom" on it. That seemed like a good idea before I began waiting for who knew how long.

John helped me off the gurney, across the hall, and said "I'll wait for you."

Good thing he did because there were a couple of final manoeuvers I couldn't manage with one hand. I opened the washroom door, he reached in to help, then led me back to the gurney. After John and Brian were gone I could recall nothing about them -- hair colour, eyes, beards, mustaches -- I'd paid no attention.