Page 6 of It’s All in How You Fall
Yeah, that would make sense. I swallow. “What’s the treatment? Time off? Until it heals?”
“Actually, they don’t want you on bed rest. Activity is good for something like this, as long as you’re gentle and not doing a… what was the skill you fell on?”
“An Arabian.”
“Yes, that.” He gestures and sort of does a weird ski squat like he’s demonstrating a skill… that looks nothing like a standing Arabian. The effect is very Mr. Bean, which he must realize at the last second as he straightens and pats down his white coat. “The cortisone shot you got should kick in and help with this too. So, good on you for preemptive care. Are you psychic?”
“If I were psychic I wouldn’t have done that particular Arabian.”
“Oh. Yeah. Sure. Of course.” He laughs a little too hard. When the seal bark of it dies, Edgar resets in a way that is… unsettling. Gone is his smile and playful demeanor. All of his bedside manner falls away, revealing the truth of what his bad jokes and over-the-top personality were hiding. He looks like he’s got a bomb to drop but isn’t sure where to set it down so it won’t make a mess. The dry-erase marker wavers in his hand but he doesn’t cap it. Instead, he glances to my dad and Olga.
Dad knows this man well enough to feel the change in his demeanor harder than the rest of us. His back straightens in the guest chair as he blinks at his old friend, lines gone slack around his brown eyes. “Edgar? Is there more?”
The doctor looks at the marker in his hands. “Yes, Jimmy.”
Edgar smooths his coat yet again, the marker still awkwardly held in his hand. He glances at me for a brief moment before returning to the safety of speaking in Dad’s general direction. “I’m curious—you saw the sports medicine doctor today, correct?”
All three of us nod.
“Did he happen to perform an MRI as well?”
Dad and I shake our heads.
“No CT scan? Or an X-ray?”
Again, we shake our heads. Dad explains, “It was an initial consult with Graham Kennedy at Sports Solutions—questionnaire, physical exam, etcetera.”
“I see,” Edgar says before dropping his chin to his chest. When he draws a deep breath before continuing, my own lungs stall. “I’m not as well versed in this area as Dr. Kennedy, and perhaps he needs to examine these scans, but…”
At the pause he’s no longer Edgar, this man who never fails to show up to poker night with Corn Nuts (ew) and margarita mix, but an honest-to-God authoritative doctor figure from any medical drama. This is how my dad must look to people who don’t know him, who are relying and hanging on his every word.
Thedoctorturns to the profile image of my body facing to the left and circles a spot about an inch wide at the deepest curve of my lower back. “In looking at these images I noticed something more…permanent. Spinal stenosis.”
Dad shoots to his feet. In two lunging steps he’s nose deep into examining the image, blocking it from both Olga and me. “What?” Olga asks, though it doesn’t seem to be as much of a question as a curse. She ends up standing too, hitting her tippy-toes to look over Dad’s shoulder at the light board. Meanwhile, I’m left on the bed with this bombshell that I totally don’t understand and only the backs of three heads to read.
Dad leans into a more normal posture, arms crossed, and answers both Olga’s verbal curse-question and my nonverbal one. “Narrowing of the spine.”
That… does not sound good.
“It’s either congenital or, probably in this case, caused by degeneration through heavy use.” Dad sighs. “Basically, there’s so much inflammation, it’s left little room for the spinal cord and there’s a pinch point.”
Suddenly, the quiet is screaming in my ears, the fluorescents above flick into stage lights, and a wave of nausea floods over me as all I can smell is the tang of Purell and bleach. “A pinch point… in my spine.”
“This is likely the source of your chronic pain.” Edgar is the type of guy to quote Adam Savage fromMythBustersand loudly proclaim, “Well, there’s your problem!” And he’s not doing that right now. He’s actually super reserved and… quietly respectful? It’s confusing but I appreciate the fact that he doesn’t do the Dr. Kennedy smile when he meets my slack-jawed expression. “I would call on your sports medicine doctor for his confirmation, but this is something that, while manageable, could require surgery if you incur any further damage.”
Surgery on my spine. The thing that allows me to walk and jump and flip.
I’m going to be sick. Half-digested Honeycrisp apple on hot-wash-abused sheets.
That’s more of a gymnastics death sentence than the not-so-gentle suggestion of a dumb-ass sports medicine doctor who didn’t even do an MRI and knew I was toast without investigating the cause.
I was already pissed with Dr. Kennedy, but now I’m extra mad that he suggested I quit without even driving this particular nail in the coffin first.
Dad looks as mad and shocked as I do. Instead of the pale-faced terror he exhibited beam-side after my fall, color rises on his cheeks. He rakes a hand through his light brown hair. His medical brain must be running a mile a minute. Dad understands the seriousness of that MRI just as plainly as Edgar.
All three of them pull away from the light board, and from my place on the bed, I squint at left-facing me. My vision is twenty-twenty, and though I’m ten feet away, I can make out the narrowing in blue-black-and-white relief. It’s just a little dip between my L4 and L5 vertebrae maybe the width of a fingernail.
Something terribly small that means something so crazy big.
