A Broken Leg
The last thirty-six hours have been something of a whirlwind. While playing rugby on Sunday afternoon my youngest daughter tripped, fell awkwardly, and broke her leg. The first we knew was that she was down in the middle of the pitch – then after a paramedic arrived that had been watching the game, we heard her voice – from 100 yards away. I've written before about knowing your own child's voice in a busy play-park, and you also know the difference between a play-acted cry, and the real thing. My other half dropped everything and ran.
I'll spare you the next few hours, which involved a lot of gas and air, syringe after syringe of morphine, and an ambulance. A helicopter was nearly involved. I went with her in the ambulance while my other half raced around London in our car to meet us. She beat the ambulance, much to the surprise of the crew. En-route, my daughter seemed most impressed that we had the sirens and lights on...
“Why do they have the sirens and lights on?”
“For you.”
She was pretty out of it on painkillers. Her memory of the accident was almost non-existent. Thankfully her memory of the sight of the injury had also gone. The crew let us know that might happen, given the medication they threw at her in order to get her on a stretcher. She was so brave. She nearly broke my fingers as they pulled her leg straight, but then I told her to do exactly that.
Several hours later we sat in a hospital north west of London – my other half at our daughter's bedside, and me in a waiting room on the other side of the hospital – surrounded by the typically entitled emergency room time wasters you might imagine. One girl demanded to see a specialist about her headache – “I could drop dead right here, and it will be your fault”... She walked away from the unimpressed receptionist, murmuring “c*nt” to anybody within earshot.
We were sent home at about 10pm. Given COVID restrictions, and another story about her being checked into an adult ward that I also won't expound on (they're moving her tonight), we left her to sleep off the elephant tranquilisers they had hit her with.
Today has been somewhat less stressful. After being allowed to visit mid-morning and chancing upon the consultant while waiting outside the ward door, my other half and eldest daughter were allowed in to see her, and perhaps most importantly to deliver a bag of essentials (she had arrived at hospital with nothing). Of course, the most important belonging for a teenage girl should have been obvious – her mobile phone.
We're home again now, playing the waiting game. Waiting for the call that she has arrived back in the ward after surgery on her leg. When the word comes my other half will race off to visit once again, and return late this evening. I'm staying behind to make dinner for the rest of the family, given that only one of us will be allowed to visit at a time.
I'll write more as we know more.