#6 The Night I Shouldn’t Have Biked Home

Saturday morning, eight-thirty. I take out the papaya I’ve sliced the night before out of the refrigerator and walk to the church on the corner for our monthly extra rehearsal. I walk home, my papaya well-appreciated during our mid-rehearsal pot-luck break.

I bike to campus. I carry my bicycle downstairs into the windowless basement office. I work on the microscope. I draft a report. I confirm my entry for a 10-kilometer running race the following weekend. I work on a presentation for high school teachers happening later that week. I pay some bills.

Saturday afternoon, five o’clock. There’s a party happening at the on-campus bar for grad students. Free beer.

I call my boyfriend. Is he coming?

He says he will after video games.

I go. I try every beer on tap. There are four of them, all from the beloved local microbrewery.

I go for seconds on my favorite.

I haven’t had firsts on food.

A Canadian comments on my accent morphing from Texan-touched northeastern to rounded middle Canadian.

Saturday night, ten o’clock. I call my boyfriend. He has decided not to come.

I’ll go home.

Are you sure you’re OK to bike?

Yes, I say.

He asks if I’m sure. Call me when you get home, he says.

I descend the stairs to the basement, ascend the stairs to the windowless office, then reverse the ascent and descent carrying my bicycle on shoulder, backpack on back, helmet on head and clipped.

I push off into the neighborhood night. I pedal amongst the wide quiet magnolia-scented street. My usual left turn passes by. I notice and veer onto the next left turn before it passes by too.

A normally right angle becomes an acute angle. My bike drifts to the left side of the road. I steer it back toward the right side. Another angle too sharp, I turn the handlebars to the left. The bike leans. I lean right. It leans left. I can’t compensate.

Like an overcome sail, we both fall leftward towards the pavement.

My left foot extends left to play kickstand. It touches the pavement.

We’re too heavy.

The foot slips and twists at the same time.

My shoulder hits the pavement, THUNK — my helmet hits too.

A deep breath. Then another. Then another.

Ouch, I think. The motionless night answers not.

I’ll get up and go home and I won’t do this again, I think.

I bring myself to sitting. I lean my weight right, put my left foot on the ground, then lean my weight left.

A piercing pop and I topple onto my back, my two hands grasping my leg, my face wincing.

I’m an overturned turtle. Nerves everywhere activated to numb the pain in my ankle, I don’t know that I’m crying.

I call my boyfriend. He knows it’s too soon. He knows I’m not home.

I tell him where I am.

Twenty minutes later, I’ve pushed my bike to the right-side curb and crawled out of what would be the line of traffic if anyone decided to drive here now.

I see the harsh headlights of his Chevy truck.

“Babe,” he looks at the mess. “Oh my God what did you do?”

“I fell,” I said. He keeps talking to himself and at me as he scoops up my body and places me in the cab.

He scoops up my bike and my backpack and helmet out of the road and drops them into the bed of the truck.

He gets into the driver’s seat next to me, switches on the dome light. “Look at me,” he says. “Oh God, you’re drunk babe.”

He sighs. He switches off the light and drives to my house.

He parks in the street by the front door and almost successfully avoids all doorways and walls in my apartment house and he carries me through and places me on my bed. He pulls bags of frozen peas, corn, and spinach out of the freezer and places them on my left ankle.

He later tells me that he knew it was broken as it had swollen to the size of a softball. He decided I’d sleep the night, sober up, then go to the emergency clinic for X-rays and a verdict.

I don’t run the race the following weekend. My brother visits as planned and instead of me taking him around town, he drives me around town and into surgery.

I run my next race two years later.

In the meantime, I learn to swim better. I learn to sleep more. I learn to ask for help.

I ask my TA to come to me instead of visiting his fourth-floor office in the old physics building with a Pleistocene elevator. I coordinate with other graduate students to do experiments together, as it now takes me several minutes to go from one side of the microscope table, flip the mirrors I need to flip and turn the knobs I need to turn, and then return to the other side of the table to look at the control station to see if I’ve aligned the system. My peers can do it in 30 seconds.

Thanks to the scooter borrowed from the campus disabilities’ office, I can scoot from building to building just fine as long as flat sidewalks connect them and I can find the ramps and elevators.

I can go to class. I can go to the bar. To go anywhere else, I need help.

My boyfriend drives me to campus every day unless another friend gives me a ride. My boyfriend buys the groceries unless another friend does.

My boyfriend drives me home every day unless another friend gives me a ride.

I can do everything I want, if I can stay stationary to do it.

Everything else is negotiation, and appreciation.

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This is the sixth ‘chain link’ of ‘Don’t Break the Chain’ — a writing course by Cole Schafer. Today’s assignment — “describe a time when you were going way too fast — be it literally or figuratively — and something unexpected happened that caused you to slow down.” We were to dedicate equal time to describing both the “fast” and the “slow”.