Page 5 of It’s All in How You Fall
This makes me cough out a laugh and I regret it. “Everything?”
Sunny’s fingers hover near the side of my face and the strip of skin that’s raw enough I know without looking I’ve left a layer or two of epidermis on the beam. “Hang tight, that’s going to need some ice.”
She vanishes, and in her place Olga and Dad appear. Olga’s pulled taut by crossed arms and a stiff jaw as if she’s braced for the worst. All color has drained from anywhere north of Dad’s collarbones. He deals with medical catastrophes literally almost every day as an emergency room doctor, and yet, he looks as if he’s the type to pass out at the sight of blood. And I’m not even visibly bleeding.
It’s no surprise that Olga’s the one of them who speaks. “How’s your back?”
“If I say ‘just fine’ would you believe me?”
Olga doesn’t dignify that with a response.
I force myself to sit up, Peregrine pulling my hand to help. I work harder than I’d like to admit at keeping my face plain as my lumbar curve quivers and seizes through the range of motion. This isn’t the everyday ache—that initial searing scream at the base of my lower back widens into a banshee wail. Warm and pulsing and alive as the rest of my body turns to ice, my fingers quivering.
I shake my head and drop Peregrine’s hand, falling back into the embrace of the pillowy mat. My breathing is shallow and a struggle. Tears immediately re-form. I squeeze my eyes shut because I can’t look at anyone while I admit this day has just gotten much, much worse.
“It’s not fine. Most definitely not fine.”
3
Instead of Salad Bros and movie magic, my Friday night endsup being Dad, Olga, and I in the emergency room where Dad works, waiting for the results of my MRI.
As if my embarrassment about literally landing on my face while trying to prove a point could get any worse, the never-ending stream of well-wishers/nurses/EMTs/janitors/rent-a-cops who stop by my room makes me want to just die on the table.
I’ve been here before, of course. My gymnastics career and general recklessness have garnered me three broken bones—right arm (twice) and left pinky toe—plus damaged tendons in my right foot and left wrist. Oh, and one concussion too. Even Mom freaked out about that one from her hotel in Dubai when it happened. I suppose I’m lucky I didn’t get another concussion with the way I smacked my head against the beam this time, but they already checked me for that and said I’m good to go—my back took the worst of it.
Anyway, it’s actually such a common occurrence that my brother isn’t even here yet. He told Dad he still had an hour of drills left with his varsity basketball buds before he’d head over. Dad tried to push him into cutting it short, but I told him Nat just owes me a snack instead because I am physically and emotionally running on empty. Still, I wish Nat would waltz in with all his confidence and noise and distract them for like two seconds while I mow down a protein bar, because the tone at Kanza Basin Medical Center has never been quite this performatively sympathetic. Maybe Dad’s coworkers just want to get a visual on Olga, who I don’t think many of them have seen in person before.
I grab my phone and text Peregrine and Sunny:Can Spidey swing by ER room 12 and save me from Dad’s coworkers?Peregrine immediately responds with a gif of Spider-Man giving an in-suit thumbs-up.
Sunny isn’t playing along, though:Need us to come by?
Me:Nah.
Because that would just make it more embarrassing, honestly.
I just want the hell out of here.
And if I could so much as breathe without tremendous pain, I would get up and walk the two miles home while Dad and Olga field their admirers. Therefore, it’s an actual, honest-to-God relief when the ER doc on duty, Dad’s poker buddy Edgar, waltzes in with images from my MRI scan. He’s technically Dr. Holt here, but he won’t let me call him that. I’ve known him since I was in diapers, and he’s been a steady figure since Mom left, just one of a stable of guys who show up on shared off days because their medical brotherhood doesn’t flinch outside these hyper-sanitized walls. Plus, he’s been through the divorce rodeo three times and was quite the expert as Dad waded through that mess with Mom.
I stow my phone as Edgar’s arrival sends Sue the fourth-floor receptionist packing and the glass door blessedly and privately slides shut.
“How we doing, Caroline?” he asks as he extends his knuckles in an overly aggressive fist bump. I have no idea why he’s asking—he knows way more about how I’m doing than I do because of the scan results in his other hand. I bump his knuckles gently, careful of anything that might jar my aching back. The local anesthesia from my shot at Dr. Kennedy’s that made my workout ibuprofen-free for the first time in forever has worn off. “Same, Edgar.”
He putters around the side of the bed, headed for the light board. It clicks on with a low-grade buzz. I try to shift to see it better and fail, my lower back screaming at me. “Pain still a five? Not an eight or ten?”
“Nope. Five.”
He cocks a brow, and his eyes swing to Dad and Olga for confirmation. “Are you sure?”
“Her pain threshold is part of the problem,” Olga answers tightly. She’s tired enough that her nearly perfect American accent fails her, her mother-tongue Romanian shearing sharp sides to her syllables. People think she’s Russian because of her first name, but yeah, nope. You might lose an eye if you verbally assume such, by the way.
“Her five is someone else’s ten,” Dad explains.
“Well, that’s no surprise.” Edgar puts four scans of my torso up for display. Clip, clip, clip, clip. Two are straight on: front and back; two are from the side: left and right profiles. He speaks to the one that’s from the back. “Caroline, I am well aware that you have chronic back pain that would be at least a five for most people, who would right now be screaming ‘ten!’ in answer and begging for pain relievers.”
It’s a compliment and I sort of smile, but Olga’s right—it’s part of my issue to begin with. Chronic happens with overuse, and if you address things early, you can’t overuse them.
Edgar continues, pulling out some sort of doctor-official dry-erase marker. “What we have on top of your usual chronic inflammation is a severe lumbar strain. That means you’ve damaged tendons and tissues enough to cause acute inflammation.” He circles an area on the blue-black-and-white image, highlighting my left side. “Here and here.”
