And so the morning passes on Ellison 6. Someone comes to bring me menus for the day, and I order breakfast, lunch, and dinner, while hoping I won't still be here come dinnertime. I talk to my mom on the phone, and text back and forth with my husband, my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law. I take Instagram photos of my splinted leg for sympathy. When breakfast arrives, I eat my yogurt and English muffin happily, and drink my coffee like it's the last cup on earth.
At some point in the early afternoon, a gentleman comes in with the gear for my cast. He introduces himself as Craig, and he the next in line to do terrible things to my leg, but he at least entertains me while he does so. As he attempts to hold my foot at a 90 degree angle and wrap it in fiberglass, he tells me about the time he went for a pedicure and it's one of the best things he ever did for himself. He also tells the story of when he was out with his two sons and someone referred to him as their grandfather, and they called him "grandpa" all day.
As Craig manipulates my mangled limb, he soothes me by saying that I'm very strong and most men would be screaming in pain at this point. I very much feel like screaming, but his comment makes me chuckle and distracts me, so I allow the gender essentialism. I also am almost certain that he's right.
It's over soon enough, and as he is leaving, Craig asks me what my favorite color is, and I tell him, green. He agrees.
"Take care now, Amy. You're the best," Craig gives me a fist bump on his way out.
"No, you are," I reply. I mean it. I've been tended to very well during my stay in the hospital thus far, but this is the first time I really feel cared for.
I now have this monstrosity in place of a leg:
After The Castening, the rest of the afternoon passes about as quickly as the last few hours of work before a vacation. I eat lunch. I watch YouTube videos on my phone. A physical therapist comes to teach me how to use crutches. She walks behind me as I hobble down the hallway, making sure my hospital gown doesn't fly open and treat the entire 6th floor to a full moon. I get to sit in a recliner. I go for another set of x-rays and realize I'm probably the only Ortho patient in the entire hospital who is under 65. I sit for a full 30 minutes in a hallway waiting for someone to take me back to my room and I have forgotten my phone, so instead I swap complaints with an elderly patient with a bad back.
Finally, finally, Colleen comes to my room and tells me that everything is looking good and that I'll be able to go home soon. It's maybe 3 PM at this point, and I anticipate leaving within the hour. To celebrate, I try and fail to take a nap. I'm woken up a couple times, once by another nurse I haven't seen yet who is just checking to see if I'm doing okay, and once by my buddy Craig, who is back with the green fiberglass wrap for my cast. He wraps me up and pounds it out again, and I dub my new leg accessory, "The Green Bastard (from Parts Unknown)":
Colleen comes in shortly after Craig leaves, with a folder containing my discharge paperwork. Then, as I'm waiting for someone to come with a wheelchair to bring me downstairs, I make the first attempt to struggle into my clothing. I drop my underwear on the floor and kind of stare at them for a minute, and Colleen leaves and returns, bringing me the gift of a grabbing hook thingy, which makes the Underpantsing go much more smoothly. Once clothed, I crash around the room trying to pack all of my things into the overnight bag I never really ended up needing. As I'm doing so, I notice that my husband has stuck a field guide of Massachusetts birds in my bag, presumably to cheer me up, which at the moment makes me sad because I just want to go home to him and I don't know why it's taking so long.
Maybe 20 minutes go by and I receive a phone call from my equally frustrated husband, saying that he has been waiting out front and the hospital concierge or whatever is telling him to leave. I suggest that maybe he loop around and come back, but I have no idea what the situation is, or when someone will be there to get me.
10 minutes, another phone call; he moved to another area within the drop-off and the concierge found him again and he needs to leave immediately. It's now 5 PM, two hours after I was told I can go home. Not meaning to, I snap into the phone, "I have no idea when they're coming to get me. I've been waiting for thirty minutes now. I have been sitting around and waiting basically this entire day."
Of course, at this exact moment, a young man walks in with my ride. He apologizes profusely, they are understaffed today, so then I start apologizing even more profusely, and I'm just about ready to jump out the window if it means I get to leave faster. We head towards the elevator, downstairs, then out into the drop-off area, where my very frazzled-looking husband is waiting behind the wheel of the car.
Immediately, the concierges pounce on me and at first I'm afraid they're going to lecture me, but now they're helping me out of the chair and loading me into the backseat of the car like boxes from IKEA, which is fair, as I pretty much feel like a disassembled POӒNG at this point. I apologize for being a crank monster, and we head home to Thai takeout and the beginning of this journey into the unknown...Parts Unknown.
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