Chapter 14: What My Soul Does When I Am Asleep by Stephen Simpson

We rush to Accident and Emergency at the same hospital where my grandma is currently residing. He carries me into the hospital and then an attendant steers a wheelchair toward us. Taking care not to bump my leg, my dad eases me into it, and when he stands up straight again, he pushes his palms to his back as if to push out the creaks and pains.

I look up at him with a frown, feeling insulted. “I am not that heavy.”

He looks down at me and raises his eyebrows as if to say, 'Yes, you are.'

A doctor comes out to see us soon after we arrive, but as soon as he has a proper look at my ankle, he tells my parents to take me for X-rays.

My dad walks behind me, pushing my wheelchair down a corridor to another section of the large building.

Once we are in the X-Ray room, my dad lifts me up onto the table. The attendant positions my leg, and I wince with pain.

My parents are made to leave the room, which makes me feel alone and afraid.

The attendant pulls the large machine above me down and positions the camera part with its black lens over my swollen ankle. It looks as if I have one normal ankle and one 'cankle'. Like when a person's calf is just as big as their ankle and forms one solid leg without any shape whatsoever.  She slides a metal plate in under my leg. Her fingers bump against my ankle and I try hard not to moan.

She leaves me and walks into a little room adjacent to the room I am in. She looks out at me through a large square window. It looks like a bunker from the movies I have seen wherein they test nuclear bombs.

I hear the machine making two whirring noises, and after a couple of minutes she comes walking back out of the little room, which I assume is the control room, and then she opens the door for my parents to come back in. “Take this with you to the doctor back in A&E,” she says as she hands my mum an oversized brown envelope.

My dad lifts me up off the table again and sets me gently into the wheelchair.

Isaac stands next to my dad and asks me, “Why are you keeping your foot on the footrest?”

“Because that’s what it’s there for.”

“You are being so silly. Look.” He bends down and pulls a metal arm from the side of the chair. “You can rest your leg on this instead.”

“Good idea, Isaac,” my dad says as he helps me to lift my leg. “I am sure you are supposed to be keeping your leg up anyway.”

“Well spotted,” I compliment Isaac.

“That’s better,” my dad says as he straightens up again. “That will keep the pressure off your ankle.”

Back in the waiting area where all the other people are also waiting to see a doctor, we only have to wait for a little while before my dad wheels me into a small consulting room.

The young Indian doctor sitting behind the desk looks up when we all cram into the small room, and my mum holds the envelope out to him.

He takes it from her and pulls out the X-rays. He says apologetically. “Usually the X-rays are forwarded digitally, but our network is down for some reason. We have to go old-school today.”

I am not sure if he is trying to lighten the mood, but we are not falling for it. My mum looks as if she has sprouted a few extra grey hairs in a period of less than twelve hours and my dad still has not shaved this morning, so he looks seriously haggard. Isaac has a sleep deprived look on his face, and he probably went to sleep too late the night before, and thanks to me, he had to wake up really early this morning.

After studying the X-rays, the doctor looks from my mum to my dad before his gaze settles on me. “You have a medial malleolus fracture.”

My mum asks, “Meaning?”

“Well, a medial malleolus fracture is a break in the bony part of the tibia, which is the bigger of the two bones of the lower leg. Her bone is split right up the middle.” The doctor asks, looking at me again, “How did this happen?”

My dad answers him, “She fell off the bed. How can this happen from a simple fall?”

I interrupt my dad, “I don't think I actually fell off the bed. I can remember standing up, and then nothing.”

Now they all look at me worried. The doctor says, “Tell me in detail what happened.”

“I woke up feeling nauseous, and I remember lifting myself up onto my elbow. I know I got up from the bed because it felt as if I was going to throw up, but then the next minute I was on the floor and my parents were looking down at me. I honestly don't know how I ended up on the floor.”

The doctor frowns. “Did you black out?”

“I don't think so. I was feeling sick and then I was on the floor.”

My mum says, “She must have fallen, because after we heard the crashing noise we were there within seconds, and she was still fast asleep.”

The doctor makes a few notes in the file on the table. After a couple of minutes, he looks up at me again. “Did you feel a rolling sensation in your ankle after you fell?”

“I did, but only when my dad picked me up from the floor.”

He looks at my parents when he says, “When rolling an ankle, stress is placed on the tibia and medial malleolus. When this stress is traumatic and beyond what the bone can withstand, a break in the medial malleolus may occur.”

I really have no idea what he is talking about, and at this specific moment in time the only thing I am aware of is the throbbing pain in my foot and ankle. I really wish someone would give me a pill to kill the pain, or at least something to numb the feeling.

My mum asks, worried, “But how can this just happen? In simple English, please.”

The doctor glances at her, and he looks a little bit annoyed. His bedside manner is not the best, but then again he is working in Accident and Emergency, so I suppose he has a lot of stress and does not have a lot of time usually to explain things in detail or even in plain English. “Well, a break like this often occurs due to an awkward landing from a jump or from a fall. However, when the ankle rolled back into place, the pressure caused her tibia to crack up the middle, and we will have to fix them together with a plate and screws to stabilize the fracture.”

I wince at the idea.

Isaac says from behind me, “Awesome,” as he taps me on the shoulder.

“When?” my dad asks.

“I am going to arrange for you to see an Orthopaedic Surgeon, but it will probably be today. Her leg looks bad. I am also going to schedule a CAT Scan to eliminate possible concussion from the fall, and a suspected loss of consciousness.”

“What?” my mum exclaims. “Then why are we still sitting here? This sounds serious!”

The doctor looks as if he said too much, and quickly he pushes himself up off the chair he is sitting in. He looks young, probably just finished medical school and his accent also lets him down now and again, I suppose. As he leaves the room, he informs us, “I'll just let the surgeon know to come down and see you.”

My mum and dad give each other a look.

I am starting to get a numb, needles and pins feeling in my lower leg.

Nobody speaks, not even Isaac says a word. I study the posters on the walls of what I look like on the inside, and ten minutes or so later, the doctor comes back into the little room.

“Okay, Dr Barnard will be with you shortly. If you could wait in the waiting room?”

My parents stand up from the ugly brown chairs they have been sitting on, and my dad moves to stand behind the wheelchair and then awkwardly manoeuvres the chair around in the cramped space of the small office.

As we leave the room, my mum asks the doctor, “Will we have to wait long?”

“No, no, no. He'll be here shortly.”

“Thank you.” My mum manages to smile as she says it.

My dad mumbles, “Thank you.”

We wait in the waiting room until a portly doctor comes walking into the room. He has a presence about him, and as soon as he enters the large area filled with people in varying degrees of coughing fits and snotty noses, I know he is the doctor we are waiting for. As he approaches us, he smiles, and this puts me at ease should I have to go under the knife on this monumentally awful day.

He stops next to my wheelchair and looks down at my leg. He leans down and starts to prod the swollen skin around my ankle, which is starting to turn a funny shade of blue. When he straightens up again, he gestures to my mum and dad to follow him.

I watch them go and, as they speak, I cannot hear what they are saying, but I am studying my mum's facial expressions. Isaac says something to me, but I lift my hand to get him to stop talking so I can see what her face tells me. So far, it does not look too bad.

After a long discussion, Dr Barnard turns and leaves the waiting room, and my mum and dad walk back to us.

When they reach me, my dad steps in behind the wheelchair again, and then he pushes me through Accident and Emergency toward a corridor deeper into the hospital.

I crane my head up to look at him while I glance at my mum walking beside him. “What's going to happen now?”

“You need surgery.”

“What surgery? What are they going to do?”

“The surgeon will make a cut in your skin near the ankle, and then the bones which have moved out of place will be put back into position.”

I cringe a little at the thought.

“Then they are going to fasten all the bones in your ankle together with plates, screws and wires.”

Isaac asks, excited, “Will they take the screws out again, or will she forever be the Bionic Girl?”

My dad laughs, but I am not amused. “The metalwork isn't normally removed, so yes, Gaby will from now on be known as Iron Maiden.”

My mum chirps in, “Iron Girl.”

“Not funny. Trust me to end up with a family who has no sympathy.”

They respond by laughing.

My mum smiles down at me. “We are taking you upstairs now. The doctor arranged a bed for you in the Orthopaedic ward, and from there you'll go into surgery.”

I feel a little scared. “Will I have to be put to sleep?”

My dad jokes, “I sure hope so. You wouldn't want them to cut you open and drill screws into your legs without anaesthetic, would you?”

“No,” I say. Maybe it is more of a whimper.

Continue reading Chapter 15/19

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