I admire Karin Goldberg’s recent Writing It Real contest winning description of an accident she suffered and her description of waiting for help. Though in shock, she did what she could to remain in control. In the days after the accident, she comes to an insight of value to all of us writers.

Monday Morning at the Fracture Clinic
by Karin Goldberg

After giving my first name to the volunteer, I sit with my spouse in front of a woman behind a computer in the clerical office. She confirms my name, my birthdate, phone number and address,everything exactly as it was already entered the previous Tuesday when I was taken by ambulance to the emergency department.

I am all set now except for the two hospital bracelets that have to go on my good arm. One is the standard white with my name and the other is a red band indicating that I have an allergy to penicillin. Then Helene and I walk around the corner and join the ranks of fractures.

I am the wrist, broken in four places and still sporting an old fashioned heavy white plaster cast that was applied during the latter part of my twelve hour stay in emergency.

We wait our turn in the narrow room. I look at the man with the broken elbow. The clerk next to mine had asked him if he was filing a Worker’s Compensation Claim. “I’m self-employed,” he said jovially. “Have to take care of myself, I’m a writer.” 

In the waiting room, he tells his story to another patient. Helene nudges me and asks if I know him. I don’t, but we both agree that he looks like a writer. He has sparse brown hair that is unkempt. He’s wearing a knitted poncho in two colours of brown. His slacks are brown as well and his shoes are in need of new heels.

He turns and addresses a corner of the room like a comic doing stand-up.

“I told the triage nurse that I was a writer. She asked me if I was left handed. I told her I wasn’t.”

“Wow, it’s good you broke your left elbow then.”

“Isn’t that a hoot?” he asks a puzzled man in a wheelchair.

“It’s good you broke your other arm.” The writer repeats, his booming laugh making everyone around him chuckle.

“Would you like to dress more like a writer?” Helene asks.

I don’t answer her right away because I’m still figuring out why the one good hand is so funny. It must be that he needs to type, and with that I tell Helene that I would not wear a poncho.

My name is called, and I get up holding my heavy plaster cast with my left arm and follow the technician to x-ray. I know that my arm was x-rayed at least three times in emergency but I don’t remember the cast being applied. This is because I was put to sleep when the anesthetist and orthopedic surgeon finally got back to me and said that they were going to “reduce” the four fractures. The charming anesthetist who had

a South African accent told me that he would give me something for pain and then something to make me forget the whole procedure.

I wish he had given me a drug that would make me forget the shocking fall that I had around 9 am that morning. One second I was standing waiting for the light to change and the next I lost my balance on the ice and heard the horrible “thunk” of my arm hitting the sidewalk and the sound of my own words, “Shit, I broke my wrist,” uttered to no one in particular.

I rolled to sitting position and watched all the cars go by, some drivers rolling down their windows and mouthing “Are you alright?” I mouthed back, “NO” I realized that I had my new “Smartphone” with me and took it out of my left pocket and stared at it. “Slide up to unlock,” it said. “Ok,” I hit the green phone icon and then dully thought “How do I dial 911?”

Suddenly, I was an old woman who remembered rotary phones that were hardwired. I persisted and hit the 9.1.1 and remembered to touch the phone icon again. It worked. I answered some questions about my medical conditions, my age, and whether I wanted the siren on. By then two men had stopped and were gallantly waiting on the street just off the sidewalk so they would not fall. They stayed with me until the ambulance arrived.

The scene freezes and so does my butt. I am a 61 year old woman sitting on the corner wearing jeans, a sweater and a dark blue hoody. The ambulance arrives and the paramedics also check on me from afar. They tell me that they will scatter sand around me so that they can get the stretcher onto the sidewalk without all of us falling into a heap. As they scatter the sand, I feel like a rusted out car with a flat tire and broken down transmission.

We ride to the hospital, and my blood pressure which is usually high in stressful situations is so low that I am passing out. I feel as if I’m in a tunnel but I stay alert enough to phone Helene and tell her to meet me in the emergency. I am barely aware of going into the hospital from the ambulance but come to in the hallway and ask where my spouse can meet me. “He will be directed by a volunteer,” the EMS woman says. “That’s She,” I manage to say, proud of my gay rights even at this point.

Now, I wait with the EMS technician while the male half of their team tries to find a place for me in the emergency room. A helpful nurse suggests a comfy reclining chair in the hallway but when he takes my blood pressure again it is still so low that I cannot sit up. I am taken to a real hospital bed, hooked up to an IV, small rubber suckers attached to my body to monitor my vitals, a clamp put on my index finger to check my oxygen level and then spend the next 11 hours give or take a few minutes in x-ray and one brief foray to the bathroom, in a room of my own. The nursing staff is capable and kind. They tell me that morphine is on its way. I am momentarily excited because I have never had this drug for pain. Unfortunately the nurse who puts it into my IV says that it doesn’t do much good for bone pain when it’s administered this way. She’s correct. I am now under the influence of morphine and gravol and my right forearm is resting on a plastic mold. The hours go by; Helene is at my side and I am fine, even chipper for seven and a half hours. And then I lose it. I haven’t had water or food since 9 am. I am comparing my treatment to Gitmo. The pain is unbearable, I can’t move for all the wires and tubes. I hear myself saying that I am going to leave and fix this myself.

Finally, I am put out of my misery. I wake up with the cast and I am discharged with a prescription for Tylenol three after downing two before I leave. I am also given a note to go to the Fracture Clinic on Monday morning.

*

H­elene and I are now in the small cubicle of the clinic where we wait for the orthopedic surgeon to look at the x-rays and check my progress. He jovially greets me by extending his right hand. I extend my cast and he looks surprised. I give an inaudible sigh and remember a physician friend’s words about orthopedic surgeons. “You break, me fix.”

I am doing well, he says, “come back next week and we’ll change the cast.” Helene and I go home. I am still in shock and as I rest and start the slow healing process, I realize that I can’t wash myself, I can’t get dressed, or put my shoes on and my food has to be cut up for me. But the worst is that I am frightened of falling and I feel old. In fact, I catch myself channelling my mother. She died in a nursing home before her 91^st birthday, but I repeat phrases that she used about escaping through a small open window. I am 61 and living in a trendy downtown loft with one narrow window that opens.

And now, I start to realize the writer’s joke. I am left handed so I can write with one of my many fountain pens, but I am in pain, scared and feel like a burden to my wife. I try to work on an essay that I had started pre- accident, but I can’t think. I am in a muddled, pain-filled, angst filled space. I despair. One night, I am trying to type one handed. Helene comes into my office and I start to cry because I can’t write, and I have this dream of writing but I want to give up now. I am too stunned, too inept, too damaged to write.

This is the punch-line of the joke; “at least it was your right arm.”

I sob and tell Helene that I am not a writer, never will be.

She asks why and I tell her that writers write no matter what. They write during terminal illness so that their story can be read. They write when they’re incarcerated, tortured, as long as they can find a pen, a pencil or a piece of slate, they write.

Helene raises an eyebrow and asks, “Who told you that?”

“I don’t know, but that’s just true. I’ve only broken a wrist and look at me, I can’t do it.”

“Is this an excuse, or a real reason for your temporary inability to write?”

I stop and reach down into my long list of excuses useful for procrastination and wonder of wonders, it’s not there.

This is real. This is an obstacle. I start to feel better and in a few days I sit down with my pen and know what to do to start my writing life again. First, I must write about what I learned. I can’t compartmentalize myself. Writing is not separate from what happens in my life.  It’s not about what I’ve read in so many books that line my shelf. My life has a rhythm. I write, I work, I love, I breathe, and I fall down and get up again. But I need to allow myself the same compassion that a spouse or a mentor would give me. Only then can I wait for my creativity to come flooding back. Only then can I pick up my pen and explore my life. Only then can I breathe deeply and write.