It was a cliché, and extremely stupid thing to do. I realized it immediately after I began to fall. I groped at the air in hopes of grabbing on to a branch. No such luck. I just kept falling. It seemed as though I had found a way to miss every branch on the tree. So no, unlike in all of the cheesy movies, I didn’t grab a branch, and there was nothing to break my fall.
Crunch, leaves weren’t the only thing that broke beneath me. I sensed, more than heard my ankle break. Now if this were a movie, I’d have landed gracefully and ran off into the shadows of the woods to disappear. Yeah, but this wasn’t a movie. Instead, I landed on my ankle –the break—and collapsed to the ground.
“HEY!” I could hear a voice call down to me from the window. My heartbeat spiked, he could come down and catch me at any moment. It wouldn’t take much to catch a person with a broken ankle. This gave me the motivation I needed to get up. Despite the shooting pain, I limped as quickly as I could towards the edge of the trees.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Emily scrambling down the tree. She was on her bike and pedaling towards me. “Get on the handlebars!” she yelled as she stopped next to me.
With some difficulty, I jumped on the handlebars and held on tight. It was a bumpy ride, and I almost fell of a couple times but eventually, we made it to my garage.
“Are you all right?” Emily asked.
“I think I broke my ankle.” I said.
“Well yeah, you jumped out a window genius.” Emily’s voice oozed with sarcasm.
“Well I had to get out of there.”
“Have you ever heard of climbing? Seriously Brook can you do something normal for once?”
“Since when is anything we do normal?”
“Okay, you win there but jumping out of the window?! That’s just stupid.”
“I know, I know just let it go.”
“Well, what are you going to do about your mom? She’s going to notice your limp. You have to go to the hospital.”
“I know. I fell out of a tree.”
Emily nodded, understanding.
“Help me out. I have to face her sometime.”
Emily came to my side and put her arm around my waist. I put my arm around her shoulder. Together we hobbled to the back door.
“How did you get out?” Emily asked as we faced the plain white door.
“I snuck out the front door while she was in the shower.”
“So we’re set?”
“Yep,” I took a deep breath and raised my fist. With slight hesitation I rapped on the door.
It took only seconds for my mom to open the door for us. She looked at us first in surprise, and then in concern. She pursed her lips. “What happened?”
“I-I fell out of tree.” I lied smoothly, adding shame and a stutter to thicken it.
My mom rolled her eyes and looked as though she had known this would happen. Considering she didn’t approve of my climbing in places I shouldn’t, she probably had figured as much.
“Come on, we have to get you to the hospital.” she said. I was amazed at how blasé she sounded. “Are you coming Emily?”
I glanced at Emily, pleading silently.
“Yeah,”
“Alright, let’s go.” She walked around us towards the car. We hobbled along behind her.
My mom always had her feet planted firmly on the ground. She was the kind of person who never put her head in the clouds. She was also quite mundane. Her hair and eyes were both a boring shade of light brown. She was around medium height and a not so spectacular posture. She was like the person that no one looked twice at. Luckily for me, I only inherited her posture.
My feet were usually bare and up in a tree, my head in the clouds. My own hair was dark brown, with natural blonde highlights, but that was before I died it. Three years ago I had saved my money all year long and finally dyed it black and even got an electric blue streak in it. I’ve been maintaining it ever since. My eyes change color. Usually they stay between blue, green, and grey and never stay the same for more than two days. Everyone had to get at least a second look at me.
Now, we were sitting in the waiting room. Emily was on the phone with her mom who sounded quite angry that she had come along. Emily’s mom sort of hated me. I never figured out why but she never did.
“Brook Welch the doctor is ready to see you now.” the nurse behind the desk called.
Emily hung up on her mom and stood up. She helped me up and we resumed our position from earlier. We shuffled after the nurse down a long, overly bright hallway. She led us to an equally bright exam room that smelled of alcohol.
“Dr. Pontary will be with you shortly.” she said.
“Thank you,” I replied.
Without a response, she turned and left the room. Emily and I were silent. The only sounds were of the distant rings of the telephone and constant rhythm of footsteps.
A few minutes later, a dark haired man entered the room. Something about him seemed familiar. I glanced at Emily who was staring at the doctor with her jaw hanging open.
I cleared my throat to get her attention. She struggled to regain her composure but prevailed. Her head dropped to her phone where she was texting wildly.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Pontary. It says here that you believe you have a broken ankle. I’m going to run an X-ray on it just to make sure.” his voice was tense and he stared at Emily as he spoke.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I ignored it and said, “Alright, great”
“Just lay down and I’ll be back momentarily.”
I did as told and before leaving, the doctor positioned a machine attached to the table over my ankle.
“What is it?” I asked Emily when the doctor left the room.
Without saying a word she held her phone up. This was no help. I had already figured she had sent me the text. I rolled my eyes and stared at the ceiling as a series of clicks came from the machine.
As promised Dr. Pontary was back within a minute of his leaving. He shoved what I assumed were my X-rays into clips attached to a light box. “You were indeed correct. Your ankle is broken in three places. I will put it in a splint, get you some crutches and you will be on your way.”
“Okay,” I said.
Dr. Pontary pushed a button on his pager and within minutes a nurse was in the room with a tray of materials. First, they fit me into a splint. And then, they wrapped my ankle in bandages. With another trip out by the nurse I also had new crutches.
Within an hour we were heading out the door. In the car, I looked back at the hospital. The doctor was standing in the open doorway watching us drive away. I now felt compelled to read the text Emily had sent me.
The doctor bought the Grunge!
