It was the penultimate Con Law class of the semester. We were feeling good. It was almost all over and we were discussing summer, finals, and study strategies. But before we dove head-first into all the study madness, we wanted some nachos and margaritas. I had been craving Mexican food for a while. We walked into the staircase and within seconds the whole day took a nasty turn.

I stepped down the first step, fine... but the second step I took had me on my ass... BAM!!! I felt a terrible pain and looked to my right at my leg, which was bent at the knee in a weird 45 degree angle. As I reached around to pull it in front of me, the pain shot through my leg like a lightning bolt and I turned to my friend and said, "Shit. I just broke my ankle."

Sigh. Let the games begin.

I sat on a step in the stairway unable to get up. I was hoping that it was temporary and that I'd eventually jump up and limp to my car, laughing at my clumsiness on the way to the Mexican spot. But I knew better.

The pain.

So crazy that it deserved its own sentence... shit, its own paragraph. The pain was like nothing I'd ever experienced, and whoever was in the classroom right by that staircase experienced it too. I was screaming obscenities like a drunken sailor. "SHIT!!! FUCK!!!! GOD DAMNIT!!!! FUCK!!!!" I was cursing my ASS off!!! But the pain would NOT let up. It was so intense, so unrelenting that at one point, I remember having the urge to grab my leg and say, "STOP!!!" I just couldn't believe that it was still hurting like that.

When something like that happens, you kinda lose all perspective of time. So I can't tell you how long I was in the stairwell, or how long it took for the endorphines to kick in, but I remember there was a girl that poked her head in to see what all the screaming was about, and she called Public Safety. Thanks girl. LOL My friend stood there horrified and shocked at what was happening, but I had a clear head. I told the girl NOT to call 911, because all I could see were dollar signs and commas dancing in my head. Then I rewound to a conversation that I had with a friend before coming to school... when I was considering my career change. "So you gonna buy insurance?" the friend asked. I responded, "Nah... for what? I'm young, I don't even use my insurance now. What could go wrong in the next 3 years?" I swear I'll never ask that again.

So I lay there, screaming and clutching my leg. And I knew. All along I knew. But I rode the wave of hope that other people seemed to be surfing on. "It's just a bad sprain," "You'll be fine," they said. Meanwhile, I was in such pain that I broke out into a prickly, cold sweat - which I later found out was a sign of shock. But eventually, the pain started to subside. The endorphines were kicking in and as I sat calmly on the steps, my body started talking to me. "Lay on your back and hold your leg straight up in the air," it told me. I had no clue why my body wanted me to do this, but I have learned that when your instincts tell you to do something, you don't question it, you just roll with it. So, in the staircase, I lay prone, with one leg straight up in the air. It seemed to relieve some pressure and it actually felt better. I stayed that way for a while.

Public Safety came. By this time, some weird sort of euphoria had kicked in, I was laughing, joking... I was the life of the party. I had my friends, the Public Safety Officers, the Police that accompanied them, everyone was laughing and amused by my quick wit and smart ass comments. All I could do was sit there. Until the Public Safety Officer said, "Well, we've called an ambulance. It's on the way." AMBULANCE??? That terrified me. The last thing I needed was a huge medical bill for no reason. So I responded, "Wait, wait, no ambulance, I'm going to see if I can stand." I made a valiant effort, yet, I never really tried to put weight on my right foot... because I knew. I knew I couldn't walk. I sat back down... defeated... hung my head and waited for the ambulance.

The ambulance came. The police officer was hitting on me in all my broken legged glory. There I was broken and defenseless, unable to move and he was offering to cook me dinner, clean my house, etc. The offers came with a phone number that he slipped my friend as I was being loaded into the back of the ambulance. Amazing. Just amazing. *shaking head*

So I'm in the back of the ambulance and my friend, the driver, everyone is laughing at my quips and silliness. My friend and I laughed at a classmate who recently updated his Facebook status when he was in the Emergency Department, saying he was in excrutiating pain. I thought it would be "funny" to update Facebook while in the ambulance, so I did so. There was so much silliness and laughing on the way to the hospital. A mixture of denial, endorphines and adrenaline.

So I get to the Emergency Department. And I wait. I sit there and think of all the reasons why my ankle can't be broken. "Look, I can move it like this," I said, rotating my ankle. "And I can do this," I said, trying to flex my ankle. "It can't be broken!" But no matter how I tried to convince myself, I knew all along.

Then it was off to X-Rays. The radiologist took the first picture of the top of my ankle. He came back and said, "I don't see a break." And I responded, "Well if you're going to see one, it wouldn't be there." And he said, "So where do you think it is, let's see how good you are." And with pinpoint precision, I said, "Right here." And touched the painful area on the outer side of my ankle. He took a picture closer to that area and came back and said, "Yeah... I see something now, but it looks like a hairline fracture, so you might not need a cast." Then... he took a picture of the actual area I pointed out, came back into the room and said, "Yeaaahhhh... nooow I see it. And it's more than a hairline. There are actually two breaks." Great. Great.

So now it was confirmed. I had broken it. Then the ED doctor mentioned an ortho clinic where they'd let me know if I needed surgery. SURGERY!!??? The word shot through me like a bullet. What do you mean surgery? It's a broken bone, there's no surgery with broken bones, you get a cast and go home!!! But apparently that's not the case. And since I wasn't going to the ortho clinic for a week, I need to temporarily immobilize my ankle, no cast yet.

The splint.

I needed a splint. I didn't know that this would be one of the worst parts of this ordeal. Insane. The doctor and the intern told me to lay on my stomach and put my leg up at a 90 degree angle, bent at the knee. My foot is up in the air, and they were going to mold... MOLD (that word is important) the splint onto my leg/ankle. So they start and all I can say is that the pain up until that point had been outrageous, but never had I cried. I screamed, yelled, exclaimed, but I had never cried. The doctors had to insure that while my foot was immobilized, the achille's tendon was in a good position, so they had to first put my foot flat, at a 90 degree angle... Jesus Christ. My ankle was broken and they had to take my foot and flex it to a 90 degree angle - and hold it there - a position that became clear my ankle didn't want to assume. Then, once they got the foot right, and held it... they then had to mold and form the splint material around my ankle. OH.MY.GOD. I can't even describe the pain that put me in. I still didn't cry, but my body went into overdrive with the pain and I felt tears come to my eyes as they pushed and squeezed and positioned me. I thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest. When they were finally done, I felt like I had run a marathon. I was sweating and out of breath.

Then it was over, and by now my friend and I were starving - not having eaten... so my mother drove my friend and me to the very Mexican restaurant we intended to go to that day. And despite all the drama, we had our nachos and margaritas. And as upbeat as I tried to be, I don't know that I hid my despair very well. I struggled on the crutches. Struggled. Sweated. Panted. Plopped into the seat and the days, weeks, months ahead of me ran through my mind. This was going to suck. Bad.

And I'm home now and I feel like I can't do this. I have a week in this splint and then they're going to tell me what the next step is. Sigh. I just hope I don't need surgery. That would be the worst thing in the world to me.