The Beginning of the End Of My Life

Chapter 2

At the hospital, Coach drove up to the ER entrance and went inside to get someone to help me. A nice looking nurse came out, pushing a wheelchair. She helped me out of the car and into the chair, propped my ankle up, and rolled me inside.

And that was when I saw it for the first time – and I nearly threw up. I still had my shoe on, and my skin was pushing against the fabric of the back of it and spilling over the sides. But that wasn't even the worst part. It was already purple and angrily red all over. Overall, it just looked gross, and it made me wish I had never looked.

I wasn't given a room right away because the doctors had dying patients to care for first. One of the nurses who walked past told me it was a good thing that I was waiting, because it meant that I wasn't going to die. It didn't make me feel much better.

Meanwhile, my mom showed up. She was freaking out even more than I was, her mascara running down her face in black streaks from all the tears she was crying. Honestly, it was more than enough for the both of us. But my mom was an emotional person. She handled things with lots of tears. She kept telling me that everything was going to be okay while she was filling out the medical forms the ER receptionist had given us. It became a kind of mantra to my frazzled mind, and it did help calm me down a little. I'd stopped crying a while ago, and I could see and hear clearly and could comprehend what was going on around me. So when a professional-looking young woman in a white lab coat came walking toward me, I was grateful that it was finally my turn to get some help.

“I'm Nurse Amelia. I'll be taking care of you for the time being. Can you give me your name and date of birth?”

I complied. It seemed stupid that she had to ask me, as if I'd make up a fake name just for a broken ankle. But she seemed satisfied with my answer, and went around to the back of my wheelchair and started pushing me down the long, white hallway, with my mom trailing anxiously behind.

We walked for a while and went up a few floors on the elevator. They were so much weirder sitting down. We finally got into the room, and Nurse Amelia helped me up onto the hospital bed. She knew what she was doing a lot better than Coach and Mrs. Hill had. After sitting in the waiting room for so long, I just wanted to lie back and sleep, but Nurse Amelia wasn't done with me yet.

“So, how did this happen?”

“Um, basketball practice. A girl tripped and I tried to avoid her but I twisted and fell over her.”

“Okay. I'm going to try and examine it. How long ago was this?” she asked, starting to touch my foot in the same was Mrs. Hill had, but in a way that seemed more calculated.

I winced. She was pushing a bit harder than my nerves wanted her to, and was taking off my shoe and sock. There were indents in my skin from the fabric. I looked at the clock. “Um, about two hours ago?”

Nurse Amelia never took her eyes off my foot, but I could see her eyebrows crease with what seemed like concern or displeasure. “Do you think you could walk on it?”

I shook my head, hard. I didn't want to put any kind of pressure on it. She nodded, then turned to my mom. “I think we should do some x-ray testing to see if anything's broken. We can't really tell until we get a picture of her bones.” My mom nodded. She was starting to cry again, silent little drops rolling down her cheeks.

Nurse Amelia left the room to see if any x-ray examination rooms were open, so that left my mom and I alone in a hospital room, me on the bed with a purple ankle and her in the chair with a ton of used tissues in her lap. We sat there a while, neither of us talking. I didn't want to, and she didn't seem capable. Finally, the door opened, but it wasn't Nurse Amelia who was standing there.