I waved my hand, trying to act less concerned than I felt. “Tell ‘em this won’t keep me down. They don’t have to stay. They can get back to work.”
“They want to.”
A slice of pain shot up my lower leg as Rowan dabbed gently at the open wounds with antiseptic. After a couple of minutes, once the blood was cleaned up and the injuries were treated, she straightened up and smiled reassuringly at me, paging Dr. Shaffer, who had run to check on another patient. He was back a moment later, smiling kindly at me.
“Ready for that x-ray?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Who knows,” Shaffer said, helping me transfer to a wheelchair as my knee continued to swell. “It could be nothing.”
But it was something. And the x-ray determined that.
“What are we looking at?” Hansen asked, his arms folded across his chest as Doc Shaffer showed us the x-rays of my leg and knee a while later.
“This here is what we call a patellar fracture,” Doc Shaffer said, pointing at what looked to be a small crack in my knee cap. And then there was another. And one more. “It’s a fracture in your knee cap.”
“Okay, so at least it’s not my whole leg, right?” I asked, struggling to sit up on the bed. My knee was howling with pain, but I’d refused pain medication. “Easy fix?”
“It will require surgery,” said the doc. “There are usually two kinds of fractures like this in the knee, okay? A displaced fracture, where the broken bones aren’t lined up correctly. But you have a transverse fracture, which is a two-part fracture.”
“Okay,” I said warily.
“These two-part fractures are most often fixed in place using screws or pins and wires and a "figure eight" configuration tension band,” Doc Shaffer explained. “The figure-eight band presses the two pieces together, giving it time to heal.”
“Fine, whatever,” I said with a wave of my hand. “Whatever will get me back to work soonest.”
Doc Shaffer was quiet, and I feared what he was about to say next. I looked at Hansen, who was focusing intently on the x-ray. I knew he was thinking the same kind of bad thoughts that I was.
“Unfortunately, Korbin, you will be in a cast while the bones heal,” Shaffer said. “And you will need rehabilitation to keep your joints strong while you heal.”
“Fuck,” I said.
“No kidding,” added Hansen.
“How long before I can get back to work?”
Doc Shaffer sighed. “Most patients will be able to return to normal activities within three to six months, depending on various factors.”
“Damn,” I muttered. “I can’t take that kind of time off.”
“You’ll have to,” said Shaffer. “Because you can’t be running calls with this kind of injury, Korbin.”
Silence settled over the room, a silence so harsh and so smothering that I wanted to shout, to scream, to pound my fists against the wall.
“I guess that’s it then,” I said finally, garnering the courage to look at my mangled leg again. “I don’t really have a choice, do I? Let’s do the surgery.”
A light rap on the door tore my attention briefly from the doctor, and Rowan poked her head in again. “Korbin, you have a visitor here to see you,” she said. “Do you want me to let her in?”
“Her?” I repeated. “Who is it?”
“She says her name is Amanda. She was at the fire.” Rowan shrugged, looking mildly bored. I glanced at Hansen, who also shrugged, then nodded at Rowan.
“Sure, let her in.”
Rowan nodded, and a moment later, the same young woman from the scene poked her head in. She spotted me lying on the bed and smiled sympathetically, stepping into the room.
“I’m sorry to barge in like this,” she said, one hand fluttering to her lips in surprise. “I felt so terrible that you were hurt and wanted to ensure you’d be okay.”
