I was a freshman in high school, and my brother and I had just scored a real treasure from the creek behind the farmers’ co-op: a big heavy pulley in almost perfect working order. OK, since a pulley is a simple machine, it’s hard for it not to be working. This one had a wheel on a hook, and was designed to have two bars, one on each side, connecting the wheel’s axis to the hook; one of those bars was mostly broken away, and the rest was a little rusty, but the whole thing was sturdy and seemed to work just fine. And we knew exactly what to do with it: ZIPLINE!!
The only rope we could locate was a roll of clothesline, the rubber-over fiber kind, but there was enough of it and it seemed strong enough to hold our weight. I climbed first into the willow oak to tie it securely a little more than head-high for the lower end. Then, while I climbed as high as I could into the walnut tree across our yard, Duane, Joe, and Travis wandered over to see what was going on, and stayed to participate.
Everyone wanted to go first, but logic dictated that either I or Duane, the two heaviest kids in the yard, should probably test the zipline before anyone else rode it. Duane tried to claim that place, but my brother intervened; for anything fun or nice, girls always always always got to go first. Besides, I was already up in the tree.
So they passed the pulley up a relay of climbers, and I hooked it over the clothesline … looked out into the bright blue sky, planned ahead for how to catch myself against the willow oak at the other end, took a deep breath through a wide grin, and pushed off.
Exhilarating! No other word for it! And I caught myself neatly on my feet at the willow oak, laughing. The clothesline had stretched far more than anticipated, though, so I was right at the very bottom of the tree, now sitting on the ground with the line arched like a bowstring above me, my left foot resting on a gnarled root peeking above the dirt. Still laughing, I announced it was all perfect, and let go of the pulley, expecting it to stay right where it was while I got up.
Instead, with the sudden release of my weight, the clothesline snapped upward, launching the heavy industrial pulley skyward.
Before I absorbed that unexpected fact, the pulley came back down, and landed right on my left shin, conveniently still propped a couple inches above the ground by the root beneath my foot. I screamed.
Then I caught myself. I was not crying in front of everyone. No way. My brother came over to see if I was all right. I said I was, but we could both see blood beginning to seep through my jeans. He said maybe he should get our mother. No!! I did not want the kind of trouble that would follow her coming outside to find me crying in the dirt over a little bit of a bump. I scrambled to my feet, found I couldn’t really put weight on my left leg but could just almost fake it if I held my breath to keep from crying out.
My brother started for the house. Limping, biting back the sobs caught in the back of my throat, I hurried after him; when he paused to look at me, I passed him and made it inside first. At least I could tell my mother in person that it wasn’t anything big. And maybe a glass of tea and a few minutes on the couch with a book would be all right, too.
My mother made me roll up my now-bloody jeans leg, then declared that maybe we should let Dr. Ryan look at it. No way; I didn’t want to put a doctor visit in the middle of my afternoon! But my mother was adamant. I looked like a ruffian, though, so she sent me to shower and put on some proper clothing so we could go. My brother slipped outside to dismantle and hide the zipline before my mother realized that “fell while climbing the tree” wasn’t exactly the whole story.
I did these things, although I couldn’t help noticing that my leg looked far worse beneath my skirt than covered by my jeans. It was clean now, and no longer bleeding, but an ugly black bruise was spreading over most of my lower leg.
Walking to the car, I remember my mother chastising me for limping. It was beneath me to “put on,” and I wasn’t getting any sympathy for doing so. I did my best to stop, although I still couldn’t really manage to put weight on my leg.
~~~
We slipped in the back door of the clinic as we always did; priests’ families didn’t have insurance then, and Dr. Ryan, like Dr. Avery before him, simply treated us out of his office without putting anything in the books, most of the time. (As an adult, I realize he had to have accounted for vaccinations and all the rest somehow. He probably covered those costs himself. But as a child, I just knew we were never supposed to sign in.) After looking at my leg for just a minute, he announced we needed an x-ray. My mother objected, said we’d go home and see how it was tomorrow, but Dr. Ryan silenced her with a look and scooped me up in his arms like a doll.
He carried me all the way across the parking lot to the emergency entrance of the hospital, and then there was an x-ray, and waiting, and my mother irritated at how long this was all taking when she hadn’t finished her lesson prep for the next morning yet.
After the x-ray was read, Dr. Ryan wrapped my leg in layers of plaster and we had to wait for it to dry. There was a clean break through my tibia, and likely bruising but no obvious fracture on my fibula.
I left the hospital on crutches, my leg unnaturally heavy, already itchy, and still hurting. I hated that I couldn’t touch it through the thick plaster cast.
~~~
Six weeks later, after I’d discovered how incredibly quickly I could actually zing around on crutches, Dr. Ryan carefully cut the cast away, and I was free. Now my leg felt unnaturally light. He cautioned me to keep using the crutches for a few days, a little less each day if I could, until I got the strength back in my leg.
So the next morning I went to school for the first time that grading period with no cast on my leg. Such a huge improvement! Heading down the stairs for gym class, though, I unbalanced on my crutches and tumbled; I wasn’t used to the crutches on the stairs without the weight of the cast, and something just didn’t quite work right. This time the school nurse took me directly to the hospital, only a few blocks from my school, where I got a new x-ray.
I’d broken my leg right through the previous fracture, where it was still weak and incompletely healed.
Dr. Ryan came over from the clinic, and the cast went right back on for another six weeks.
But that time, I managed not to cry at all.
~~~
Next time we made a zipline–with the same pulley–we did it at the creek where we couldn’t get caught, and we used rope that wouldn’t stretch. And everyone had a turn to try.
Melange 