RE: Trailer Trash 63 pt 2

    Tabitha was on the edge of the passenger seat of Sandra’s Acura and fidgeting with anticipation as they pulled into the strip mall plaza attached to Springton’s Food Lion. Although they would be returning to Springton General Hospital later to get X-rays taken of her skull and evaluated for physical activity again, the Macintires had arranged for her cast to be removed here, at a nearby orthopedic clinic that shared a parking lot with the grocery store. 

    “Would it have been more convenient to just have both appointments at the hospital?” Tabitha asked.

    “Ehhh,” Sandra gave a shrug as she pulled into a parking space. “I think it’s basically just that the hospital in Springton? Is not a big place. Springton is not a big place—University of Louisville Hospital has its own orthopedics stuff—ward, department, whatever you wanna call it. Springton General is mostly for emergencies, and then they’ll refer you to clinics around here that specialize in this or that for a lot of other things.”

    “I see, I see,” Tabitha nodded along as she unbuckled her seatbelt.

    Truth be told, she probably could have inferred all of that on her own. Tabitha knew some of that, albeit in a pretty vague way, because she had been an adult and lived a lifetime in this area, already. It was funny to think that if some teenage kid had asked future Tabitha why they were going to a smaller clinic for cast removal rather than Springton General, Tabitha would have likely said the same ehhh and then extrapolated the same basic answer after a moment of thinking about it.

    But—I’m the kid, right now, Tabitha told herself. Not the adult. I get to be the one just asking whatever questions pop into mind, when sometimes I could probably figure out the reasons based on what limited information I DO already know.

    It was a peculiar feeling.

    As Mrs. Macintire shut off the engine and they both opened their doors and climbed out into the morning air, Tabitha even felt a little guilty—as if she was abusing this privilege of youth she had reacquired through who-knows-how. At the same time however, it felt good when she stuck to her role and just let herself be a teenager. Asking questions and looking to Mrs. Macintire for support helped solidify familial bonds Tabitha had never really enjoyed in her first lifetime.

    Because—dad would have given me some non-answer like ‘heck if I know, sweetie,’ or ‘that’s just what the doctor on the phone said, who knows what goes on in these people’s heads,’ and mom back then would have snapped at me or been belligerent—whenever I had a question for her she didn’t know how to answer, she felt that I was challenging her authority and got real grouchy.

    Being in the position to finally enjoy a ‘normal’ mother-daughter relationship was honestly intoxicating, and as Tabitha hopped up to the curb she couldn’t help but give Mrs. Macintire a huge smile.

    “Looks like you’re in a good mood, this morning!” Sandra chuckled. “C’mon, kiddo. Let’s go get that stupid thing off.”

    Tabitha followed after Sandra inside the reception area of the orthopedics clinic like a baby duckling, and she waited beside her at the front counter as they checked in. She did feel bubbly this morning, but excitement and anticipation for herself had given way to raw appreciation for this woman in front of her. It had taken her a few months to really settle in and adjust to having a solid, dependable mother figure in her life, but once she had? Tabitha wasn’t sure she could live without it.

    I’m not sure how I DID live without it, Tabitha spaced out as Sandra finished their business at the counter and then led her over to wait at one of the seats. I don’t know that I blame my real parents—they did their best, in their own ways. Just. They were—are—broken people, and they have their specific limitations that made raising me into a normal well-adjusted person… impossible? Improbable?

    It was still the time before even rudimentary smart-phones, so waiting at the doctor’s office meant Sandra grabbed a couple of Lifestyle magazines from a corner table, taking one for herself and passing one to Tabitha. She leafed through the pages in amusement, skimming through article titles and realizing that most of the magazine was advertisements. It was strange to think upon the magazines as precursors to the future media content that one might scroll through endlessly—that back in this time publishing companies worked to codify everything into print and then ship these magazines across the country in physical form.

    Really, I suppose the only major difference between this and future feeds you would scroll through is the time lag? Tabitha mused. A magazine like this would have been put together a week or a month ago, and newspapers would be just a day or two old. Rather than seeing nonstop INSTANT content of whatever was going viral at right this current second.

    “Tabitha Moore?” A woman in light blue scrubs called from an open door.

    “Um!” Tabitha rose up out of her seat. “That’s me.”

    “Right this way,” The woman said.

    “Good luck!” Mrs. Macintire called. “Break a leg.”

    “Hah ha,” Tabitha turned to stick her tongue out before following after the nurse.

    The woman in scrubs led her a short trip through past the reception area and then down a little hallway, and then Tabitha was asked to take a seat in a small exam room. The seat offered here was covered with a disposable sheet of hospital paper, and as she cast nervous glances around the sterile room she saw ordinary cabinets, a sink. A rolling stool, a waste bin with hazard stickers and a bright orange liner. On the wall there was an inoffensive but uninteresting painting of two ducks swimming along a marshy pond covered with lily pads.

    “Tabitha?” A doctor in a white smock peeked through the open door. “I’m Doctor Schwartz. Let’s get you a quick X-ray first, right on down this way. Good morning!”

    “Good morning!” Tabitha chirped with a nervous laugh.

    Despite only just arriving at the exam room, Tabitha followed the doctor down to the very end of the hallway for X-rays. There, she donned a vinyl apron that seemed to be weighted with lead. She was led to sit in a similar paper-covered seat, where the doctor placed her cast up on an adjustable platform, and told to carefully hold it in place. The X-ray machine itself was an enormous ceiling mounted contraption that swiveled down and was carefully lined up into place, at which point the doctor turned off the lights and then cautioned her to remain as still as possible while he went into the other room to activate it.

    I had never broken a bone before in my previous life, but I HAVE had dental X-rays in the future, Tabitha thought as she marveled at the antique metal apparatus. I remember them being… about the same size as a desk lamp? Just a sleek little plastic thing on an arm that swivels down. They didn’t switch off the room’s lights for that, either! I wonder how ordinary room light interferes with diagnostic X-rays, back here in the nineties?

    The man came back in and helped her twist her arm up at an angle so that he could take another X-ray, and then the lights were out again as the big device did its thing. After that, she returned the safety apron and was led back to the examination room—where she spent fifteen excruciating minutes staring at the ducks painting. Because rather than results popping up instantly on some screen through digital magic, in the nineties developing and printing out X-rays onto those sheets was a tedious process.  

    Calm down, calm down, Tabitha told herself, fighting to keep her leg from kicking with impatience. Just a little bit longer.

    “Alrighty,” The doctor said as he finally returned with a folder. “How are we doing today?”

    “Um, good,” Tabitha answered again. “Hopefully you have good news?”

    “Hah, yeah hopefully,” Doctor Schwartz chuckled. “I think we’re probably okay, but always safer to make sure and take a look. Let’s see, here…”

    Dark transparencies were drawn from the folder and slid into a wall-mounted lightbox that Tabitha hadn’t noticed before—she’d assumed the thing was a cabinet or storage or something. She couldn’t recall them using lightboxes in the future. A pair of spooky skeleton hands appeared on the sheets when he turned the thing on, and Tabitha leaned in close so she could examine the bones with interest.

    Wow. Yep, that’s a bunch of bones, alright. I… honestly have no idea what I’m looking at. I don’t see any big jagged dark breaks, so… I hope I’m all healed?

    “Hmmm—” The doctor donned a pair of glasses and traced the outline with the edge of his pen. “Colles fracture healed up nicely, can barely see a thing. You see this little bit here? This is your fifth metacarpal, this part here was broken. It’s looking… pretty good.”

    Anxious, Tabitha sat up and squinted at the messy jumble of bones… but couldn’t tell what she was supposed to be looking at.

    “Yep, alrighty,” He switched off the lightbox and withdrew the sheets. “I think we’re good to go! Let’s get that cast off.”

    “Great!” Tabitha sagged with relief. “Thank you.”

    Less than a minute later, Tabitha was watching in fear and wonder as Doctor Scwhartz held her cast in one latex-gloved hand and gripped a handheld oscillating saw with the other, cutting a neat line down the familiar contours of her rigid fiberglass cast. She could feel the vibrations as the saw gnawed through the material and then she could feel the sudden strange sensation of cool air. There was apparently no danger at all that he would accidentally cut her skin—although at the same time, she couldn’t help but imagine that, because getting a cast cut open was a uniquely vulnerable experience.

    He switched off the saw and pulled the cast apart in a broken mess of gauze tufts—and then the reek of very old sweat smell hit Tabitha, and it was hard not to wince in absolute embarrassment.

    “Ooh yeah, was getting a little ripe,” Doctor Scwhartz chuckled at her reaction. “Definitely ready to come off, hah. Sink’s right over there, and we can wash you up a little bit. How are we feeling?”

    “Um,” Tabitha lifted her now free hand, unsure of how to answer.

    It felt… weird. She had imagined that her forearm there would be stick-thin and emaciated from muscle loss, but it was only a little bit thinner. Moving the limb about without the ever-present weight of the cast felt very strange, floaty, and Tabitha awkwardly waved her arm through the air as she stared at the long-lost appendage with a perplexed look.

    “Can you open and close for me?” Doctor Schwartz prompted.

    She complied—very slowly, and with awkward movements the fingers of that hands closed some of the way and then reopened. Then she tried to stretch out and splay her fingers, but that felt unusual too, and it seemed like it would be a while before she relearned her old range of movement from before. Moreover, the whole forearm was a ghastly shade of pale and it smelled, it had a peculiar old sweat stink so pungent that she almost wondered if there had been chemicals inside the cast—formaldehyde, or something.

    “I can, a little?” Tabitha said, nervous all over again.

    He had her drop her weakened hand into his, and then he leaned in, readjusted his glasses, and closely examined as he pulled her fingers through several motions. It felt strange and almost uncomfortable, and Tabitha felt as though she was bracing herself for sharp twinges of pain from the breaks—but none ever came.

    They were healed.

    “Well, I think…” Doctor Schwartz paused for dramatic effect with a grin. “You’re good to go. That wasn’t so bad, was it? You can wash up right over there, soap’s in the little push dispenser.”

    “Thank you—thank you,” Tabitha blurted out, trying not to tear up.

    She awkwardly shifted forward off of the chair to the sound of crinkling disposable chair paper, and then stepped over to the sink and ran her hand beneath the faucet. The smell was strong and the water was cold in an eerie, intimate way—it was the feeling of wetness after months upon months trapped in a bone-dry cast—and Tabitha still felt like the hand wasn’t quite hers again, just yet. She scooped up a bit of foaming soap from the dispenser and then slathered it up and down across her wrist and forearm, reaching around and then carefully twisting her strange, clumsy new hand beneath the flow of water as she scrubbed.

    Scrubbing felt good, and her own probing fingers couldn’t help but delicately work up and down the sensitive areas of skin that had been untouched for all of this time. All of the itches she hadn’t been able to reach were now scratched, all of the long-neglected little muscles there were massaged, and the gritty gross areas between her fingers could finally, finally be swabbed completely clean. It was amazing, and Tabitha spent a little more time than necessary at the sink before shutting the water back off again.

    Her hand was examined one more time, and he had her stretch out her hand as far as it could reach and also close into a fist as tightly as possible. She managed both, mostly, but there was a definite disconnect still there where she was struggling to treat the hand as her own. Over time as she had acclimated to the presence of the cast, she had started to forget the thing was even there. Now that the cast was gone, however, Tabitha discovered she had a tendency instead to hide her weak hand in against her chest, as if she needed to protect the fragile thing from everything.

    Doctor Schwartz chuckled and gave her reassurances, and told her to take it easy on that hand for another few weeks until she felt it was back to normal. Then, she was guided back out to the reception area to the expectant gaze of Mrs. Macintire.

    “Well?! Let me see!” Mrs. Macintire teased, rising up out of the chair. “What hatched out? A normal hand? Or, something else?”

    “Uhh, I got one of these?” Tabitha giggled, carefully swinging her hand out away from her body so that Mrs. Macintire could take a look. “It’s just like the one I used to have, mostly!”

    “Ohhh, that’s good, that’s good,” Mrs. Macintire crooned, taking the hand as gently as possible and looking it up and down. “No bruises, at least! Everything’s fine? Everything’s in working order?”

    “He said everything’s fine,” Tabitha reported. “Oh, uh—but, that I should take it easy, until it feels one hundred percent?”

    “What percent does it feel now?” Sandra gave her a smirk. “Fifty? Sixty?”

    “Ummm?” Tabitha couldn’t help but smile—she had no idea how to gauge her weird fledgling weak hand in terms of percentage. “I’ll give it a bit before I do anything crazy with it?”

    “Alright, alright,” Mrs. Macintire beamed. “It does smell funny.”

   “I-I scrubbed!” Tabitha withdrew her hand and cradled it in against her chest. “I did scrub it. I’ll wash it again.”

    “You’re fine, you’re fine—I’m just teasing with you!”

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/// Probably more detail than was necessary, but hey. Not everyone has broken a bone or had a cast taken off, and it's a unique sort of experience I wanted to share. Have had three broken arms, a broken wrist, some broken fingers, and some bones in there for my thumb got crunched up pretty bad once as well. Fell of a picnic table as a kid, fell off monkey bars. Pushed into a curb while playing street hockey... and then yeah all of the other ones were from getting smashed with (mostly) safe battlegaming weapons, I did Dagorhir. Padded or not, physics is physics and sometimes leverage and force or momentum just win out over bones, especially the little ones in your hands. Have actually never broken a leg, but have had some reeeal nasty ankle sprains.