“I’ll take that as a compliment. Hopefully the drugs worked and you didn’t feel much.”
“Uh-huh. Can I go home?”
Dr Ramsey shakes his head. “You’re going to be with us for a while, I’m afraid. That chest tube needs to come out, and then the surgeons need to look at your leg again. We did what we could downstairs, but you’ll likely need some rods inserted to help the bones reset.”
“Surgery?”
“Yes.”
“What else is wrong with me?”
“What are your other injuries?”
I nod. “I know I broke my leg... I felt it, but I don’t know what happened to the rest of me.”
Dr Ramsey sets his clipboard down and fixes me with a gaze that’s somehow kind and intense at the same time. “Well, you fell pretty far. I think the tree you were working on was around thirty feet tall, but the van roof broke your fall a little.”
“Super.”
“Yes, I thought so. If you’d hit concrete from that height, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
I’ve got nothing. Literally nothing.
Dr Ramsey gives me a moment, then continues. “Okay, so your lung collapsed on impact, so we inserted a chest tube to expand it, and then I worked to free your leg from the tree while my colleague patched your head wound and kept you breathing. You gave us a bit of a scare on the chopper, but you’re young and fit, so your lung held up. I’m confident you’ll recover fully from that injury.”
That injury.The ominous throb in my leg reignites, settling deep into my shattered bones. “What about my leg?”
The doctor’s gaze flickers with something I can’t decipher. “It’s hard to say. The damage to the knee is severe. It will take some time to ascertain the best route for repair, and it’s unlikely it’ll ever be quite the same.”
“But I’ll be able to walk?”
“Yes. Perhaps even go back to work, but you need to be prepared to make changes. Adapting is how we survive, and youdidsurvive a fall that should’ve killed you. Try to remember that when recovery kicks you in the tits.”
I blink, unprepared for the good doctor’s bluntness. It’s so unlike anything I’ve ever heard from a health professional that I have no sensible response.
Clearly taking my silence as a sign the conversation is over, Dr Ramsey stands and plucks latex gloves from the dispenser on the wall. “Right then. Let’s get rid of this tube.”
Three
Ludo
His name is Aidan. All the nurses call him Mr Drummond, but I saw his name on his chart when I retrieved his morphine pump from the floor.
That was yesterday. His face, twisted in such terrible pain, has haunted me ever since. From time to time, I hear his ragged groans. They’re loudest when I’m asleep, and match the wretchedness in my soul so absolutely, I wake surprised to find my own leg is whole.
“Ludo?”
I tear my gaze from the curtains drawn around Aidan Drummond’s bed and scowl at thetwodoctors who have woken me up—the surgeon who operated on my arm and the psychiatrist from the clinic attached to the hospital. “Hmm?”
“You have a slight infection,” the surgeon says. “Nothing too major, but as you’re without a spleen, I’d like to keep you in until it clears. Dr Farsi is going to update your lithium prescription so we don’t get that wrong again, and I’m going to order some IV antibiotics for you.”
“IV?”
“Yes.”
“So I’ll be stuck in bed?”
“We’ll get you a pole,” Dr Farsi interjects. “So you can use the bathroom and move around. I know you don’t like to be confined.”
