The State of the Union
An hour before I broke my leg, Randolph told me to wear boots. The snow had come and gone two days prior, but Baltimore isn’t particularly keen on cleaning its sidewalks. He and I had learned, over and over that winter, each time we’d tried to go running after a storm, that Baltimore will plow and salt its streets and leave its sidewalks to wither under ice.
But the morning of my fall, the sun was out, and by the time I was showered and dressed, I’d forgotten the snow and slipped into a pair of clogs and out the door. I ran down the two flights of stairs that I’d been wary of when we first moved in—steep, narrow, with a handrail nominally screwed to holes in the wall. But it didn’t matter then because I didn’t touch the railing. I’d taught myself not to. Besides that, my hands were full with the bags I carried each day for balance—I always split my books and everything else into two bags to keep myself level. Otherwise, I ran the risk of falling during my commute. A mile from my door to Penn Station, where I’d take the MARC to New Carrollton, then wait twenty minutes in the station for a bus to take me directly to campus. Two hours, all told. But first, I had to start with the walk down Charles Street. And before that, I had to leave Maryland Avenue, a near impossibility once I saw the sidewalks.
I lived in New England for seven years before moving to Maryland for grad school. I was missing their historic winter as I stared at the islands of ice claiming wide swaths of the sidewalk—Boston would break its record for the most snowfall in a single month. They didn’t know where to go with it. They didn’t know how to unbury themselves. But I wasn’t in New England then. There hadn’t even been six inches of snow in Baltimore. But there it was still, frozen overnight, frozen over two nights: fields of compacted snow turned into ice all over the sidewalks.
I hesitated and thought only once of going back. I told myself I’d miss my train. I was so rarely early. The ice would slow me down, but if I pressed on, I’d be on time. So I went, and still, it proved too slow for me, so I literally took to the street. It was clean and dry and easy to navigate. I stuck to the edge, avoiding cars, and made good time to North Avenue. I stayed in the street another block. On Charles and Lafeyette, I was faced with a bus that had stopped at the intersection. No space for me to slip between its side and the curb—I had to go back to the sidewalk. I was there for two steps, maybe three. Had I looked up, I could’ve seen the bridge—the one over the tracks that led to Penn Station, the train I’d never ride again—but I was looking down, looking to avoid the ice, which was easy to spot without salt. The rest of the sidewalk looked like it had survived, at the very worst, a light rain.
What happened to me didn’t happen slow. Other injuries have. Other falls I’ve taken. Other paths to scars. I’ve seen time unhinge. In those moments, time opens itself, bleeds awareness freely. You are about to be hurt. You will remember this: your last moment before the pain. But first, you will hover in the instant when you see your injury born. You will watch each step taking you closer to injury. You will see between rocks and hard places. You will see the pedal snap before you feel your body lurch, as your bicycle crumbles beneath you. You will see the wall plowing toward you in the rain, as you squirm in the passenger seat of your father’s car, and even though you don’t drive, you will stamp your foot repeatedly against a phantom brake. You will see your hand thrown out like an underwater wave, to catch your scrawny fifth-grade body, propelled by a rollerskating mishap that will lead to your first two broken bones.
Time had, so often, given me access to the moments between who I was and who I’d become, had slowed and spread and nearly stopped the seemingly immeasurable moments during. But for my leg, time had no time for me. I was in the air, then on the ground, and it happened quicker than I could scream, so quick I couldn’t do anything but watch. That’s how my leg broke—twisted and split in two places, when I tried to land on my heel, my shin moved in a way bones can’t—I knew before I was told it was broken. I still see it. Nights when I can’t sleep. Days when I stumble or nearly fall. I see it again, my shin bending. I always make an involuntary fist.
I can’t help worrying that I’ll never get back to the person I was before, the person who can step onto a curb without thinking about it ten steps early, the person who can run and jump and land and not worry about potentially slipping, the person who walked ten miles each week, who jogged three miles besides, who took steps two at a time, who could walk and talk and laugh and get worked up without getting winded.
I’m worried about the person I am now, a person in chronic pain, a person with metal threaded through her bone, the tip of which protrudes from my knee—only when it’s bent does it tent the skin under my patella, but there are times when it hurts when I’m lying down. Worse than the pain though is wondering whether this is part of the healing process or part of some larger system of discomfort I’ll have to learn to endure. Either way, I won’t get it checked because I honestly can’t afford it.
When I fell, I’d bought insurance through school. Now, I have insurance through the state, which we pay hundreds of dollars for every month, but only to be the luxury it is: insurance. A back-up plan. A thing not to be used unless there’s an emergency. And my daily pain isn’t urgent.
Still, I’m worried that my refusal to see a doctor is dumb. That it’s something a dumb person would do, to wait out an injury until it proves “serious.” What does serious mean in this case? More than my body can handle? Dumber still, I sometimes think my pain is time’s means of telling me the injury is ongoing. Time couldn’t slow down my fall or that day because I’d see it again. The injury wasn’t just the fall, but it’s also my mind healing around the hurt. And every day until I’m healed will still feel slow and deliberate, even though the surgeon who opened my knee had praised the rate of my healing. Even though she told me, five months after she put two screws in my leg and three in my ankle, that spiral fractures can’t be called non-unions until nine months after surgery. Even though, the day she told me, she said neither break was even visible on an X-ray. Even though I made jokes about feeling like Wolverine, my leg was still broken.
Right now, I’m putting off putting on running clothes, and going outside to get it done. That’s what running and walking is now—a job I may never be good at, a thing I’m punished for doing either way. Do it and you’ll feel weak. Don’t do it and you’ll never be strong.
Today marks nine months since the day I broke my leg. Tomorrow, nine months since my surgery. After tomorrow, it’s officially a union, or so I’ve been led to believe. I can’t know and won’t until the pain eventually subsides. From here, the next milestone is February—a year since my fall—and after that, I hope, the luxury to lose track.
