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Content Warning: This post contains graphic depictions of bone injury and mentions of vomiting.
I look across the parched grass to my younger brother’s foot as he kicks the soccer ball. He’s still working on his passes, but this one is almost perfect. Following its trajectory with my eyes, I find the ideal intersect point a few feet in front of me. Glancing up, I see my friend in the goal. Her feet are flat on the ground, her weight leaning more on her left side. A shot to her upper right and I’ll surely make it.
My left wrist aches in its brace, a reminder of falling through a tree last night, but I ignore it. It’s just a sprain. I’ll bounce back, like I always do.
I take one step, then another, feeling the uneven field beneath my feet. One more step and the ball and I are perfectly in line. My left foot planted firmly into the ground, I bring my right foot back, toes pointed toward the earth. I don’t have time to breathe. I swing forward, counterbalancing with my torso. Laces connect with faux leather and the ball launches into the air. It soars as my friend attempts to move, but she’s too late. It lands perfectly in the corner of the net, above her head. Perhaps one of the best goals I’ve made, although as a defender I’ve made few.
At the same time as the ball flies, my right foot sinks into a hole in the field. I feel, and then hear, a sickening crack, like the sound of a wooden bat launching its target over the stands. It’s followed by a pop, so loud I’m convinced the neighborhood across the street can hear it too. My leg crumples and I collapse, silently, to the ground.
My brother and friend come running over, asking if I’m ok. I can’t speak. I don’t feel pain. Instead, a sensation that something is wrong on an almost molecular level. A discomfort crawling up my leg like a spider in search of prey.
I take off my right shoe and stare at my foot. It’s hard to believe my eyes. A lump sticks out of the top right side of my foot. A lump that definitely wasn’t there when I woke up this morning.
“Oh my god,” my friend says, but I ignore her, frantically trying to remove my sock. As I pull it off, my fear is confirmed. There, about halfway up the top right side of my foot, is a hard lump which is clearly bone pressing against tissue.
The pain hits, and if my brother or friend speaks, I don’t hear it. A hot fury stronger than a thousand bee stings explodes from my joint, running fervently up my leg. I yelp, the sound of a bear cub caught in a trap, and turn to heave onto the grass. My stomach is empty— thank the gods I didn’t eat breakfast today— but it tries to vacate itself nonetheless.
If you know me, reader, you know that even at this point in my life I have a ridiculous pain tolerance. With migraines as long as I can remember and more injuries than I can count, I’m no stranger to pain. I often joke that you could shoot me in the foot and I would just wince. It’s only partially a joke.
This pain, though, overrides my entire system. For a few moments, nothing exists except the white-hot sear coming from my foot. My vision is blurry and my sense of self slipping. I think I scream again, but I can’t tell through the haze.
Taking a few deep breaths, trying desperately to win myself back, I tell my brother to go get the ball. My friend helps me up. Stubborn as I am, and believing that showing pain is a sign of weakness (thanks, Dad), I’m determined to walk home.
I try putting weight on my foot with my friend’s support. Nope. I yelp again, barely managing to stay standing. My brother returns with the ball.
“Grab our stuff,” I stop to breathe, fighting back more nausea, “and bring it. Over. There.” I point to a nearby tree, my words hard to get out. He nods and scurries off.
My friend helps me get to the tree, one hop at a time. All those years of mimicking my father by hopping on my left foot is paying off, but there’s still a new jolt of pain with every landing.
By the time we get to the tree, I’m exhausted. I fall to the ground again, dirt this time, groaning and retching once more. Tears flood my vision. I know I’m not making it home on foot, and I know I really messed something up. I call my mother, but she doesn’t answer. Silence still on the second call. I call the house phone, relieved as my sibling picks up. I tell them to wake our mother. Twenty minutes later, I’m headed back to the Emergency Room, less than twelve hours after leaving with a sprained wrist and bruises across the left side of my body.
Starting off spring break with two consecutive ER visits wasn’t on my 2019 bucket list, but two Walter Reed ER trips are even worse. Military healthcare wrote the handbook on neglectful patient treatment. By the time you leave, you’re not a person, just some numbers with invalidated understandings of what happened to you.
This particular trip was eight hours. The first two were spent in the waiting room. Without an ounce of food or painkillers in me, I gritted my teeth through each fresh stab of pain. At least we had my father’s old wheelchair, so my foot was marginally cushioned. At some point, they took me for X-rays. They probably asked me to put weight on the foot. I probably cried. It’s blocked from my memory.
The next six hours were spent primarily in an optometry room, because the ER was too full to give me a proper bed, although I did get painkillers. By the time they got around to seeing me, their orthopedic specialist had gone home. So they had to bring in the specialist on call, one of the residents training at the hospital.
She enters my room after looking at the X-rays. “Well, you definitely broke it,” she says.
No shit, I’m thinking, I can see my bone through my skin. I haven’t waited seven hours for you to tell me that.
“You have an avulsion,” she explains, meaning a piece of my bone broke off and was twisted out of place. “It’s incredibly rare for someone to break their metatarsal in that spot, let alone with an avulsion. I don’t know how you did it.”
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That’s me. Finding the strangest possible ways to injure myself. “So, what are we looking at? Does it need to be set? A cast? Surgery?” Anxiety tightens the words on their way out of my mouth.
“Honestly,” she says, “I don’t think there’s anything we can do but give you a hard-soled shoe. If you stay off it, it should heal soon. The bone should settle back into place.”
I’m shocked. When I fractured the growth plate of my left foot, they gave me a cam boot. But just a glorified shoe for an avulsion and some of the worst pain in my life? I want to protest, but she’s the ortho specialist, I tell myself. Surely she knows her shit.
A nurse returns fifteen minutes later with the shoe. It’s a cheap-looking, flimsy thing, with no ankle support to be seen. At least it will keep my foot straight. Unable to use crutches with my wrist brace, I leave the ER in my father’s wheelchair, the same way I had rolled in.
Two weeks later, my wrist healed, I crutched my way into the orthopedic clinic to see the head doctor there.
“Why don’t you have a cast? Or at least a boot?” he asked mere moments after entering the room.
“Ask your intern. She’s next door,” I wanted to say. Instead, I told him that the specialist at the ER had said I didn’t need one. Better not to be confrontational with these doctors.
Uncertainty wavered his voice as he spoke to me. He explained that I should have had my bone set and been given a cast. Now, it was too risky to try to fix it. Rebreaking the bone could cause even more problems. The best we could do was try a cam boot with crutches, then slowly ditch the crutches. So she didn’t know her shit, I thought.
“If you follow that plan, I’m sure you’ll heal within a few months. Probably. You’ll be able to play soccer again.” Neither his eyes nor his tone conveyed the arrogant assurance I’d come to expect from doctors.
I left the building in fearful tears. My faith in the medical system, already shaky after years of maltreatment, was crumbling beneath my crutches.
Ashton Rose 
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