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| Part 5 by Castgimp |
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| As I reached 300 I took my finger off the dial-tone button on the phone and pressed 0. Surely by now Scott would have had time to get away. The hotel operator came on the line almost immediately. "This is Mr. Weber in room 492. I need some help." My voice was pinched with pain. "I've fallen in the bathroom and I think I've broken my leg." I let the phone drop and I could see it slithering away from me on the floor back toward the toilet. I was worried that someone would ask me how I managed to get the telephone off the wall to make the call. I didn't know what I would say. And there was Scott's underwear on the floor in the corner. And there was water on the floor where Scott had stood and hurriedly dried himself. What if they didn't believe me when I said I'd simply slipped and fallen in the shower? Would they know someone else had been here? I didn't want Scott to be implicated. I'd told him I would keep him out of it. I'd promised him. I would have to think of something. Maybe the underwear was mine. How would they know? Maybe I threw a towel at the phone and knocked it off the wall and dragged the towel and the receiver toward the tub. Thinking about it made me tired. For now there was nothing for me to do except wait. I figured that the hotel would call an ambulance. I was prepared for the likelihood that several people would be bursting through my hotel room door and would find me lying naked and wet in the bottom of the bathtub. There seemed to be no way around that. If I could have broken my leg with my pants on I would have, but it just didn't work out that way. I tried to cover myself with the towels that Scott had thrown down to me.It was on odd sensation lying there naked and wet in the bathtub, knowing that my leg was broken, unable to get up and get out of the tub by myself, knowing that help was on the way. In some ways it was very peaceful. I was resigned to whatever was going to happen next. I knew that the events of the next several hours would be largely out of my hands-that it was my life, but that I would have very little control over it. In some ways it was a welcome relief to let go. I even quit worrying about whether they would know that Scott had been in the shower with me. There was truly nothing I could do at the moment except to wait. Since I had let the telephone receiver go there was no way for me to even make another phone call. If the telephone operator didn't send someone up to help me, I would have to lie there in the bathtub until the maid came in to clean the room. Even that didn't seem like such a terrible option. I was in pain, but as long as I didn't try to move my leg it was bearable. It was a steady deep throbbing. I concentrated on lying very still. At all costs I wanted to avoid that sharp fiery electric jolt of pain in my leg that came every time I tried to move. I closed my eyes. I thought I might even be able to go to sleep. I was so tired. "Mr. Weber! Mr. Weber!" Someone was kneeling over the tub shouting at me. I tried to open my eyes. I couldn't seem to focus on the face that was bent down close to mine. It was a man-a young man-maybe even a teenager. "Mr. Weber can you hear me?" He was still shouting. I could hear him, but I couldn't formulate an answer. "Mr. Weber! There is an ambulance on the way! It's important that you try to stay awake sir!""I ammnn...I ammmnn...aaaagghh..." My lips were thick. I wanted to say I am awake. My tongue was stuck."Oh God don't choke sir. Don't try to talk. Just lie still. Try to keep your eyes open." And then his face was gone, and I was alone in the bathroom again, and I welcomed the quiet. This was not so bad, I thought to myself. Even the throbbing in my leg seemed to be subsiding. In fact I didn't think I could feel any pain at all. Maybe my leg wasn't broken after all. I was suddenly convinced that my leg was not broken, that this had all been a terrible mistake. I needed to tell this kid whose face had just been in the bathtub with me that I didn't need an ambulance after all. I just needed to rest. Just needed some sleep and I would be fine. I was so tired. "And tell them to hurry the fuck up! This guy is in bad shape!" The shouting was coming from the bedroom. It was the voice of the young man. "And get somebody else up here! It's creeping me out being alone with this guy! I don't even know if he's still breathing!" And then it was just dark, like the lights went out. And there were noises around me, but I couldn't identify what they were. And then it was quiet. And then I am travelling. In a car? A truck. An ambulance! I can feel my shoulder blades digging into a board. With the bounce of the wheels over the uneven pavement I can feel that familiar shooting pain in my leg and I am suddenly wide-awake. I am indeed riding in the back of an ambulance. My head and neck are immobilized in a rigid cervical collar. My left leg is encased in a long rigid foam splint, which is strapped to my right leg, and both legs are strapped to the backboard to which I am strapped. I can feel the straps cutting into my hips and my arms. I could not have moved even if I had tried, but I do not try. There is a needle in my arm that is attached to a thin clear plastic tube that is attached to a clear plastic sac of colorless fluid that hangs above my head. I can not move my head, but looking straight ahead I can see my toes sticking up at the end of the board, the left ones surrounded by light blue foam rubber, the right ones next to them completely naked. And seeing them reminds me that that I am naked. I am covered with a blanket, but underneath I am naked, and I am embarrassed by my nakedness. There is a woman in a blue uniform in the back of the ambulance with me and I know that she has seen me naked. I know that she has touched my naked body-has helped strap me to the backboard. I can feel my face grow crimson and warm. She is reading a monitor, and talking into a radio. "Blood pressure holding. Heart rate steady." I don't try to speak, for fear that I will not be able to. She looks over at me and sees that my eyes are open. "That's better Mr. Weber," she says. "How are you?" "O.K." I manage. It isn't really true and she knows it. "I know you're uncomfortable. We're nearly at the hospital." And then I remember the ambulance doors opening and being lifted onto a stretcher, and the woman walking beside me holding the sac of fluid above my head. And I remember being x-rayed every which way-my leg, my neck, my back, my head. And then being wheeled into a small bright room where they drew a curtain closed around me. And then nothing. More waiting. I was hungry. I had a headache. My leg was still throbbing. For the first time I thought to worry about the meeting I was supposed to have attended that morning. I wondered how long they had waited for me to arrive. I wondered if they had called the hotel. And I wondered where Scott was. Finally, after what seemed like hours, the orthopedic surgeon came in to my room. He confirmed what I knew all along, which was that I had indeed broken my leg. He explained that what I had was a simple fracture of the tibia, which meant that the bone was broken, but it had not broken the skin. In fact, he said there was no real soft tissue damage, which was good. The fracture was complete, however, which meant that the bone was broken all the way through, and not simply cracked. There was also some displacement of the bone, which meant that the two pieces of the bone were no longer perfectly aligned with one another. The fracture was just below my knee. He said that the fibula was not broken, which was good news and bad news. He said with a complete tibial fracture while the fibula remains intact, there is a tendency for the tibia to be pulled out of alignment as it heals. He presented me with two different treatment options. The first option, which is the one he recommended, would involve an open reduction of the fracture-that meant surgery. He said he would cut open my leg, align the two pieces of bone, and secure them with a metal rod or spike. Then he would enclose my lower leg in an external fixator, which he explained was like a metal frame or cage. The advantages of this option were that I could begin to put weight on my leg in as little as three or four weeks, while I was still wearing the external fixator. He explained that the sooner I began weight bearing, the greater the likelihood of a good union forming between the two bone fragments. The metal rod in my leg would minimize the chances that the fibula would pull the tibia out of alignment during the healing process. The downside, he said, was that with any surgery there is the risk of infection. The external frame would minimize that, as the insertion wounds would be open to the air, instead of under a cast. He said there was also a slight possibility of an infection in the bone itself from the insertion of the rod. My other option was a closed reduction. This meant that he would align the two pieces of bone manually, without surgery, and then immobilize my leg in a long cast. The long cast was necessary he said because the fracture was so close to the knee, and because of the tendency of the fibula to pull the two pieces of the tibia out of alignment. He said that the downside was that I would be incapacitated for a much longer period of time. He said I would need to be in a non-weight bearing long leg cast for six weeks, and then a short leg cast for another four to six weeks, with gradually increased weight bearing. He said the risks were that the delayed weight bearing would delay the union process, and could result in malunion or nonunion. He also said that without the metal rod to secure the bone, there was some risk that the tibia would move slightly, and that if that movement were significant, the misalignment of the bone would require that the leg be refractured surgically, and then pinned or secured with metal plates. He said that to achieve the best results with a closed reduction it would be necessary to start with a plaster cast, which could be molded to my leg more precisely, and would better immobilize my leg. He said I would need to stay off my feet almost entirely for the first two weeks, in bed with the leg elevated, to reduce the possibility of twisting the leg during the critical initial healing phase as the callous is forming between the two pieces of bone. He said after two weeks, I could begin to move freely about with crutches, but without weight bearing until week six. He said that at week three he could put me in a fiber cast instead of plaster, if I wanted it. He said the fiber was much lighter, and would make getting around on crutches much easier. He also said that depending on my progress at week six, he might put me into a weight-bearing long leg cast, rather than a short leg cast, and that the answer to whether or not the fracture would have to be rebroken and reset would likely not be known until week ten or twelve. He said the open reduction and external fixator would reduce my recovery time by almost half, and that in his judgment, the risks for infection were low, but that the decision was mine. He said the more conservative and more traditional treatment would be the closed reduction and long leg cast. He also said that a longer period of more rigorous physical therapy would be required with the conservative approach than the more aggressive approach, because there would be more muscle atrophy and loss of muscle mass, and because my knee joint and my ankle joint would be immobilized for a long period of time. That was a lot of information-more than I wanted, but my choice was an easy one. I told the doctor that I really did not want to have surgery. I told him I didn't want the anesthesia and I didn't want a scar and I didn't want a metal rod in my leg and I didn't want to risk an infection, and that I was willing to deal with the longer period of convalescence and recovery. All of that was true. What I didn't tell the doctor was that there was no way in the world that I was going to pass up an opportunity to spend twelve weeks with my leg in a cast. Nothing could be less sexy than the idea of my leg in a wire frame with stitches and scars-and nothing could be sexier than looking at my long leg covered in a hard cast. As much pain as I was in, I couldn't help being secretly pleased that I was finally going to have an opportunity to have my leg in a cast. The doctor did not question my decision, and in fact in the end he told me that he thought I had made a reasonable choice. He said if it were him, he would have chosen the open reduction, but that the prognosis was almost equally good with both treatments, and that he understood my reluctance to undergo surgery when it could be avoided.The process of setting the bone was awful-but mercifully quick. They gave me some pain medication, the first since I'd arrived at the hospital, and then laid me out on a table with my broken leg bent at the knee, the lower leg resting on a raised flat surface of some sort, almost like a shelf. They actually strapped me down so that I couldn't move. Then, while two orthopedic nurses held me still, the surgeon grabbed my lower leg, leaned hard into me, and threw his weight across me, twisting my leg slightly as he did so. I could feel almost a pop in my leg at the same time that an awful and piercing shock of pain shot through my entire body. But that was it. He x-rayed my leg again, to make sure he'd gotten it right, and then sent in the ortho-tech guy to put the cast on my leg. This guy was an artist. He molded that cast to my leg perfectly, matching the wet plaster to the curve of the arch of my foot and the contours of my ankle and calf and knee. He bent my ankle just slightly, so that it was flexed at a little more than ninety-degrees, as if I were flexing my toes up slightly toward my shin. He also bent my knee slightly, so that my leg would not lay flat-in fact to be able to lay on my back my cast had to be supported with foam pillows. The plaster was heavy and wet, and the ortho-tech told me it would take 24 hours to dry completely. I was wheeled on a gurney to the orthopedic ward where I was to spend the next 48 hours. It was a big open ward with beds lining either side of the room, and curtains on frames that could be drawn around each bed to offer some modicum of privacy. When I arrived it was mid-afternoon, and most of the curtains were open. You could see everybody lined up in their beds with various limbs casted and splinted and braced. It was like a dream come true. There were a lot of guys who were is worse shape than me, and it looked like there were a lot of guys who were going to be in casts for a lot longer than I was. My left leg was encased in plaster from my hip all the way down to my toes, but the guy on my right side had casts on both legs. It turns out he had fallen down the stairs and broken both heels and his right tibia. The guy on my other side had his leg casted from top to bottom and the cast was hoisted up in traction with metal pulleys and straps. He told me he'd been hit by a car and broken his femur. And so it was up and down the ward. The only downside to the whole thing was that all those guys in all those casts were making me very horny, and there was absolutely no privacy for jerking off. To make matters worse, I was still naked for all practical purposes. I'd arrived at the hospital without any clothes, and they only thing they'd given me to wear was one of those flimsy hospital gowns. Which meant that I had nothing between my hard pecker and the rest of the world besides one layer of cotton. And not that I could have stood up, but if I had been able to, my naked ass would have been hanging out for the whole world to see. I tried to fold my arms down over my crotch to hide my erection and I called for a nurse. I told him I was cold and needed a blanket, which he readily provided me with. He gently covered me, trying to leave the damp cast exposed as much as possible so that it could dry. I don't think there is any way he could have missed my erection poking up there in the bed, but he was kind enough and discrete enough not to say anything. Once I was covered I lay back more comfortably. I was exhausted from the whole ordeal, but I couldn't sleep. There was too much light and noise, and even with the pain medication they'd given me, I was still very uncomfortable, and my leg throbbed and ached. The wet plaster generated heat as it dried and hardened, which was an oddly comforting sensation, almost as if my leg had been placed under a heat lamp of some sort. I stared at my toes sticking out from the end of the cast, which looked as they had looked in the ambulance, only now instead of being surrounded by blue foam rubber, they stood out naked and tall against a base of hard white plaster. They reminded me of Scott's toes and the way his toes looked sticking out of his cast. And that thought made me exceedingly sad. There was nothing in the world I wanted more than to see Scott. I longed for the comfort of his company, and his warmth next to me in bed. I knew he would understand my feelings and my pain and my frustration, and even the odd feeling of having my leg immobilized by a cast. But Scott was not there, and he wasn't likely to show up during visiting hours. In fact, Scott would have no way of knowing what hospital they'd taken me to, and he wasn't likely to try to investigate and find out, even if he had wanted to see me. He had sounded so frightened and so paranoid that morning when he flew out of my hotel room on his crutches with his hair still wet that I doubted I would ever see him again. The risks were just too great. As he said, his entire career was at stake. Aside from the titillation of being surrounded by so many guys in casts, my hospital stay was pretty unremarkable. It turned out that it was hard to sleep even at night. I had trouble getting comfortable on my back with my leg stretched out in front of me, and it never really got dark enough or quiet enough to sleep soundly. I also think the pain medication interfered with my sleep. In any event, I was very happy when on the second morning after my arrival, the orthopedic surgeon came in to examine me and declared that I was fit to be discharged. The plan for my discharge was a bit complicated. The surgeon wanted me to stay in the area for a few weeks, rather than travelling home, and in fact he said he didn't want me to fly for at least two weeks. Obviously I had nowhere convenient to stay, so the hospital social worker had worked with the hotel I had been staying at and had gotten them to agree to let me stay on there for as long as I needed to, free of charge. It turns out that wasn't too hard to do. They were very worried about a lawsuit, since I'd been injured on their property, and they were more than willing to accommodate me in whatever way they could. In fact they said they had prepared one of the handicap-accessible suites on the first floor for me, and had even moved all of my clothes and belongings from my original hotel room down into the suite. I arranged to rent a wheelchair and a pair of crutches from the hospital pharmacy. The surgeon wanted me to stay off my feet as much as possible for the first two weeks, but encouraged me to practice moving short distances using the crutches. After the first two weeks he said I would be free to move about as much as I was comfortable moving about. I planned to spend those first two weeks in bed, watching TV and feeling sorry for myself. I knew it would be agonizing to be staying at one of my favorite hotels on one of my very favorite beaches in the world, and yet be unable to go outside or walk in the surf. I didn't know how long it would be before I could walk in the surf again, but I knew it would probably be quite a long time. |
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