So let’s say a girl sprains her ankle. The fact that she sprained said
ankle 3 jello shots and 5 beers in on a Saturday before noon at a kickball
tournament is inconsequential. The ankle is sprained. She cannot begin to
contemplate putting weight on her left foot for about 48 hours. During
this 48 hours her living room is transformed into an obstacle course
requiring all of her furniture to line up just so such that she could
support herself while hopping to the kitchen, as falling down on the way
won’t do her any favors. Random ziplocks of formerly frozen foods are
strewn about the kitchen. She didn’t have any ice in the house, can’t go
get any and can’t freeze enough fast enough in her single ice cube tray to
handle the supply required, so she’s resorted to putting any and all items
from the recesses of her freezer on the ankle. This includes a bag of
frozen peas, 3 ziplocks of year old chicken, year-old tomato paste ice
cubes and the occasional bag of frozen nuts. (Which by the way don’t
retain their chill particularly well. The peas were the best.) The only
clean spot on the hardwood floors of her entire apartment lays between her
bed and the bathroom- as all of her furniture is otherwise occupied en
route to the kitchen, she masters a brilliant butt-scootching maneuver
that both allows her access to the bathroom and conveniently dusts her
floor in the process.
So Monday morning arrives. With the exception of restroom breaks and the
occasional self-medicinal trip into the kitchen for more wine, she has not
left her bed since Saturday afternoon. Why? Because it freaking hurts.
Being the little trooper that she is, she valiantly attempts to ready
herself for work. As she’s hopping around the apartment, praying to god
she doesn’t pop a kneecap out of joint in the process, it occurs to her
that if she can’t figure out a way to walk the half block to the bus stop,
(which she can’t, because it never occured to her in the past to buy
crutches for no reason), then the odds of work being a good idea are
pretty slim. She calls her doctor and is told to ice said ankle every 20
minutes or so, keep it wrapped and elevated and otherwise just wait for
the end of the full 72 hours at which point the swelling should go down.
The horror that is daytime tv is a rant for another day entirely.
So, although she’s fallen down a couple of times and heaved herself around
her apartment for 90 minutes trying to get ready, the only option is to
call in sick to work. It might’ve been nice for this information to have
been received with sympathy and well wishes for a speedy recovery, but she supposes that riotous laughter over her plight was fine too. Fast forward to Tuesday morning. It takes 15 minutes to gimp the lone block between the bus stop and work. It takes another 5 minutes once in the office to make it to her desk, all of 50 feet away from the front door. She is told within 30 seconds of sitting down that she gets to go to a meeting across town with the senior partner right after lunch. She looks at her sexy
tennis shoes and sweatshirt and decides to go with the flow. The phone
rings for the next 4 hours off the hook. There is no lunch, no easing
back in, no respite from the necessity of stumbling to the printer every
10 minutes or so. She rallies after scarfing down her delicious yogurt at
her 4 minute lunch and quite cheerfully limps to the elevator behind her
speed walking boss who keeps looking back to find out what’s taking so
long. It’s possible she’d move a little faster if she wasn’t carrying all
the drawings and finish samples for said meeting in the arms that when free
she’s gotten pretty good at using as crutches themselves. It’s possible.
They do get a ride from another partner in the office who’s going in their
direction anyway. Its not at all a problem when dropped off at the street
corner the senior partner makes a run to beat the red light while crossing
the street. She certainly wasn’t almost hit by a car or anything while
trying to catch up. The fact that she’s new to the project, hasn’t met
any of these people before and was out of the office the day before
thereby missing any prep is not a problem at all as she realizes she’s
apparently running this meeting. Nope. And once the meeting is over and
there’s not a cab in sight, of course it makes sense to walk 4 blocks up
to a bus stop. She’s just sorry her boss is half a block ahead of her
most of the way. A few thoughts pop into her head that she wouldn’t mind
sharing, but that’s life, right? And although a skosh on the tired side
from all the heaving around it takes to get anywhere, its perfectly
acceptable that her bosses loaded her up with a sufficient amount of work
such that she can’t go home until 7:30. Right? They were kind in
telling her to take care of herself on their ways out the door at 6.
Those considerate people. Gosh, can a girl get any luckier?
Yeah, um, not okay.