Full Circle

Color Infusion

"God, Maggie. Are you crazy or something? Are you flat-out nuts?" Brenda asks incredulously the next day when I casually tell her about my adventures on what locals informally call "Dead Man's Trail."

Unfortunately, Becky's striking fire-engine-red lipstick is all I can focus on as she chastises me. Words of caution and reprimand steadily roll off of her tongue. The receptionist at the medical practice I frequent, she is as close to a friend as anyone I've met here, though we rarely see each other socially. She probably thinks that I deserve the sprained ankle, too. It will teach me a lesson, and Becky is all about life lessons.

I could never pull that color off, I think, as she continues jabbering away, moving on to small talk about a bar brawl she witnessed on Saturday night. But I barely listen, still trying to envision my own lips bathed in such a brilliant shade.

I peruse the stack of outdated magazines in the waiting room for about forty-five minutes until my name is finally called. Becky leads me down the long hallway to the scale; I'm down five pounds. It's not good news since I don't really have it to spare. My strong body has always made me proud; this weight loss makes me feel weak and scrawny like I'm already losing the battle to reclaim my life.

"Hey, Maggie. So, I hear you've had a little incident with your foot on the trail yesterday," Dr. X says, never once looking up as she scribbles furiously on her notepad. The office's new computer system is fickle yet again today, so she's doing double-duty taking paper notes while still trying determinedly to enter my statistics.

"Actually, it's my ankle," I say, irritated. "And it happened in the parking lot, not on the trail." Apparently, Becky has already offered up her own version of the events. She modifies the pertinent details of nearly every story she retells to ramp up the drama.

"Wouldn't you agree it's a little dangerous heading up the mountain alone, especially this time of year?" she admonishes, still avoiding eye contact with me. I chafe, anticipating what I'm quite sure is coming next. And I'm right. "Didn't I hear that you and Bill broke up recently?"

In this extraordinarily small town, people tend to insert Bill into conversations about almost everything that goes awry for me, even though I seldom bring him up at all now. Accidentally forgot my cell phone at home? Must have been distracted pining away for Bill. No time for breakfast? That would be a loss of appetite due to heartbreak over Bill. Grocery clerk get snippy with me? Surely a member of Team Bill. 

Come to think of it, it's almost funny how once the word hits the street that you've broken up, the most mundane misfortunes – if you can even call them that, because they're mere blips compared to the true heart-wrenching tragedies that so many endure – must somehow relate to your relationship's demise. We're still the talk of the town, I think with a pang of regret. Same as when we first moved here without knowing a soul. We were a curiosity. Now they rehash everything about us, speculate among themselves about what derailed us. I'm in their crosshairs - a rare diversion from their insipid small-town lives.

"Yes. We did," I bristle, clench my hands. This gets her attention. She finally looks up from her notepad and directly at me.

"Well, I can give you something to take the edge off," she offers. "Just let me know, and I'll call it in," she says soothingly.

Since we haven't even discussed my breakup situation yet, I can't help but wonder: if the situation were reversed, would Bill's doctor have offered this as the first line of defense? Would his doctor have brought up the demise of his relationship during a routine office visit if he came in for an ankle injury? Somehow, I doubt it.

"Can you just look at the ankle and see whether it's broken? I need to know how long I'll be out of commission with my running," I say, circling back to the real reason I'm here in the first place.

A quick x-ray confirms it's a mild sprain, not a fracture. After I decline pain medication, Becky hands me an instruction sheet on how to care for the ankle, schedules a follow-up appointment, and says she'll call me soon to catch up. She wants me to attend some "mixer at the movies" thing since we're both single now. She'll fill me in on it later. I already know I will not be going.

As I limp out of the office, I give those flaming red lips a parting glance. I really wonder how that kind of thing would look on me, I think, as the door slowly clicks shut behind me.