Broken Bones

By Robert Rysdam Jr.

                                                                     

              September 22, 1997 is a date that I will never forget. I was twelve years old when my little brother and I went up to the Mt. Emily gravel pits with my dad, and our peddle bikes in the back of the truck. We pulled our bikes out of the back, and rode around for a couple of hours. My brother and I raced around the gravel pit before my dad told us it was time to go home because it was getting late. I asked my dad if I could ride my bike down the mountain, and he said yes. My brother decided he wanted to ride his bike down as well. My dad told him that he could as long as he stayed in sight of the pickup.

              I decided that I wanted to race down the mountain and beat them both home, so I began peddling as hard and fast as I could. When I made it to the first cattle guard, there was herd of cows crossing the road. I weaved in between them without slowing down. After crossing the last cattle guard, I rode my bike through a small puddle, still peddling as hard as I could down the mountain. I didn’t realize that my dad had stopped and picked up my brother. I had just about made it to the Dump Hill road. All that stood between me and the long down hill road was a sharp turn with a small ditch and a rock wall on the other side of it. I was having so much fun riding down the mountain that I didn’t realize how fast I was going. I tried to turn the sharp corner going at about forty-five miles per hour, and when I realized I was going too fast, I grabbed a hold of both brakes, but it was too late, and the brakes were too wet.

Next thing I knew, I saw my dad grabbing my bike and tossing it into the back of the truck, and picking me up and running me over to the passenger seat. I couldn’t remember what had happened after I tried to slow down. I looked down at my wrist and saw that the bone had snapped in two places. That was when I noticed the blood on my shirt, and I realized what happened. I didn’t make the turn. I ran full force in to the rock wall. I glanced back down at my wrist, and could see that the force of the wreck had not only snapped the bone in two places, but the impact forced the bone to become unaligned with the rest of the bone. The bone was in such a position that my wrist looked like a horse-shoe, but it didn’t scare me, instead, I thought it was kind of cool looking.

              Half way down the dump hill road in the truck, I got an itch on my bottom lip so I reached up to scratch it, and my dad told me not to touch it, and that was when I became worried. I tried to lower the visor on the passenger side with the arm that I thought wasn’t broken. Then I realized, both my wrists had broken. I asked my brother to lower the visor so I could look at myself in the mirror. My dad told me not to look, but I did anyway. What I saw was my top and bottom row of teeth protruding through my lips.

The next thing I remember is waking up as my dad pulled into the hospital parking lot. Then I was in the emergency room with a doctor holding a gas mask over my face telling me to breathe in and out slowly counting down from 100.

              When I woke up, I had a cast on each arm and stitches in both my upper and lower lip. Still groggy from the gas they had given me, I looked over and saw my sister sitting in the chair next to me. When she noticed I was awake she said hi to me, and I said hi back. Than all of a sudden she went white a ghost, leaned forward and passed out, and out of reaction I grabbed the buzzer next to my bed, and began calling for help.

She apologized to me, and I told her she had nothing to be sorry for. I knew she was really squeamish. After my sister left the room, my dad came in asking how I was doing. I told him that I was still really groggy but ok. My dad saved my life, and I knew that, and I made sure that he knew it as well, though he never acknowledged it. I know I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for him.

              After getting home from the hospital, I finally got to look into a mirror, and what stared back at me, looked like a cross between part cat, part human and part sucker fish. My lips swelled up like two hot-air balloons, and the stitches looked like whiskers jutting out of the side of my lips. I couldn’t believe that I was looking at my own reflection. It was like someone had stolen my reflection and replaced it with a monster. My aunt asked if she could take a picture, and I felt so ashamed of what I looked like, I looked at her and angrily told her no. I knew she didn’t mean any harm, but I felt so embarrassed that it made me angry. I didn’t want to remember what I looked like after the crash. I refused to ever have my picture taken, and I couldn’t even stand looking in the mirror anymore.

                After awhile I was finally able to go back to school. I was so nervous because I had no idea what the other kids would say about how I looked. I still had stitches in my lip, but the swelling had gone, and that was the one thing I was worried about. When I finally made it to school, the teacher and kids stood up and told me welcome back. I could see some students with almost a look of horror on their faces, even as they said welcome back. I told everyone in that class that if it hadn’t been for my dad, I wouldn’t be alive. One kid looked at me and asked me if my lips hurt, I told him no, then he made the comment well they’re killing me. I know all he was doing was trying to cheer me up, but once the words came out of his mouth, he realized it wasn’t the best time.

              Finally, the day had come to get the casts off. The doctor told me I had healed well. He informed me the remaining stitches in my lips would eventually dissolve as and would no longer cause me discomfort. For the next couple of months I had to wear a wrist brace on my left wrist, because the break was so severe in that wrist it wasn’t back to full strength yet.

              The final stitch had finally dissolved, and my lips were completely healed. No one could believe I had stitches because there were no scars, not that they could see at least. Even now when I look into the mirror, I can see the scars on my lips plain as day. I can still feel the stitches, even though they’re gone, dissolved away so many years ago.

Sometimes when I look in the mirror I can still see the stitches protruding from my lips.   I thought that if I didn’t have pictures taken that I would never have to remember what I looked like back then, but it seems like every time I start to feel the tiniest bit of confidence build I glance in the mirror, and the image of the twelve year old boy with stitches in his lip shows his ugly face.