Brittle Bones

Abstract

Brittle Bones Elisabeth Hanscombe (bio) Honor thy error as a hidden intention. —Brian Eno I have jaywalked my way through life, taking shortcuts wherever possible, until one overcast day in the spring of 2010 when I found myself cut short. On that day I walked into the path of a young P-plate driver in a white Cortina who was also in a hurry. We met in the middle. Her life moved on, but mine stopped, if only for a short time. Earlier that day I had helped my youngest daughter prepare for her school formal. She had been given the task of arranging the tables, all fifteen of them. My husband took her out early in the morning to collect flowers from an inexpensive florist. The school gave her a low budget, and so she decided to use old jars for vases, a large collection, all shapes and sizes. Some of the glasses still needed their stickers removed or a final clean, so at the last minute I ran a load through the dishwasher, packed the jars, rushed my daughter off to the hairdressers and then onto the Boulevard in Kew, where the formal was to be held. We managed to get to Kew by three and began to arrange the flowers. One of the teachers had tried to stick electric lights to a column. She brought masking tape to hold the lights in place, but the tape was visible against the white—and since I was already going to the chemist to fetch some antinausea medication for my daughter, who was feeling poorly, could I please get some clear sticky tape? I drove down to the nearest chemist in High Street and parked outside the old Kew post office. It was my fault, I know. I was in a rush. I was like a "headless chook," as my husband complains. I crossed the road at the High Street intersection to get back to my car. The lights were green, the little man was flashing. I held my purchases in my hands, and to save time I took the end of the crossing at an angle. It happened in slow motion. I did not see the car before it was upon me. I have the vague memory of a thud, certainly the scrape of wheels on bitumen, and then I was on all fours trying to pick up the sticky tape that had gone sprawling down the road. I felt something hurt in my leg, as if I had twisted it, and I sat on the curb with the driver, a young woman, and her companion, as we tried to decide whether or not I was okay. "I have to get back to my daughter," I said. My car was nearby, I told them, but [End Page 261] when I tried to stand, the bone in my leg gave way, as if it were no firmer than a licorice strap. My husband arrived ten minutes after I rang him, and once we had reorganized our daughter into the care of her older sisters, he took me to the emergency department at Cabrini Hospital. Several x-rays of my left leg later, and it was clear I had broken my tibia near the knee joint. I could not bend my leg for the pain. The emergency doctor applied a cast from the top of my thigh to my ankle and insisted I stay in hospital until after the orthopedic surgeon's visit the next day. For three nights I slept in a four-bed ward surrounded by old women, one of whom suffered dementia following surgery and another, her opposite, an articulate and intelligent eighty-six-year-old, who was about to go off for rehabilitation following a second hip replacement. A third woman, at eighty-four, had broken her pelvis. She had reacted to her medication, it seemed. She was in the bed diagonally opposite to me and spent her days vomiting into a green kidney dish. I was adrift on painkillers. My head thumped. My left leg was a dull ache until the bone settled behind the plaster. Only then could I wean myself off medication and begin...