When You Know

20 - Life has a way of beating the shit out of you like nothing else can.

We were also all in it together waiting in the emergency room at the hospital the next day.

There was nothing wrong with Morgan or Willow, who were still in the hospital a few floors up. It was me. I was the one that was dying.

Okay, maybe that was a little exaggeration. It was just a broken arm, which I received courtesy of the concrete and a bad fall at the skate park earlier in the morning; but boy did it hurt. Full-blown, F-bomb dropping pain.

Mum had taken me to the park in the morning while Ruben and Jet went to work for a few hours. They didn't usually work Saturdays, but they had a lot of jobs lined up and wanted to put a few extra hours in while they had the time.

Also, Mum wanted to talk to me about everything with Bree, and to give me another lecture about my behaviour at school. Jet's one was worse, though. He used brotherly disappointment to make me feel like shit. Mum just used her understanding of the stress caused by Bree.

I was attempting something new, on something a lot bigger than I probably should have, and I lost my balance and fell, landing with all my weight on my wrist. I heard the crack the second I landed, and I think Mum did, too, because she was next to me in half a second with my limp and bendy arm in her hands. It didn't look right, and it hurt like hell, and we both knew it.

We had ridden down to the park, so she didn't have her car with her to take me straight to the hospital. We had to ride back home to pick it up, with Mum calling Ruben on the way to tell him what happened. They were only working a few streets away on a small job that Ruben picked up from one of our old Italian neighbours, so by the time we made it home, they weren't far behind us.

Mum pushed me into Ruben's big Hilux and drove us to the hospital. I was trying my best not to cry, but it hurt so much, and I was failing miserably.

We parked and the four of us rushed into the emergency room, with me cradling my arm in my shirt, which was still sweaty from how hard I was skating to make that stupid ollie to backside crooked grind. A nurse looked at my arm for a few seconds, told me it was broken—duh!—then gave me some pills and told me to wait for someone to come back and x-ray my arm.

Considering this was an emergency department, I would have thought they would consider their patients with a little more urgency than they did. We waited a full half an hour before someone came to get me, and then it took another hour and a half before my arm was finally wrapped in gross plaster up to just below my elbow. I should have broken it better so the bone was sticking out of my arm or something, so they would actually hurry the hell up and fix me.

Emergency, my ass.

But, hey, it wasn't the worst break they'd ever seen, and it would heal in six-eight weeks. Lucky for me, I would be in plaster all goddamn summer, meaning I couldn't go surfing or even swimming at all during the hottest damn months of the year, and I would have to watch on from the stupid beach while everyone else paddled out into the cool water, which was now only a short eight-minute walk from my damn house.

Jet tried to make me feel better by saying that at least it would be healed in time for footy season next year, which was true, but that was still months away. I knew Mum wouldn't let me skate while it was broken, so ultimately, I couldn't do anything I wanted to do for months and months.

This sucks.

When they discharged me, we walked upstairs to Morgan and Willow's room, and I was bombarded with questions from them about what happened. I loved them, and I was happy to see them again, but I was sad and sore and just wanted to go home. I was also sick of smelling like sweat in my now-dry t-shirt, and wanted to shower, which I wouldn't be able to do without a stupid plastic bag on my arm.

Life has a way of beating the shit out of you like nothing else can, and this past week had left me bruised, broken and emotionally scarred in more ways than one.