NirvanaFunClub

“Is it going to hurt? A lot. I mean, is it going to hurt a lot?” I was sitting in my shorts and a cropped shirt I bought 5 days ago. I was wearing that same shirt for the last 5 days, with intermediate washing. It was the first thing I have bought that was showing a shape of my body. I think that was the reason I was sitting in the halfway between the x-ray room and the bone setting rooms. 10 A.M. placed under the white hospital lights crouching over my left hand in my lap. I was holding it in my right hand. I was holding my fist like a wounded bird. A small one.

Sitting in the halfway and looking up towards a man dressed in white pants/shirt and an appropriate short sleeve white jacket with medical clogs on his feet. He was pacing left-right, up and down in front of me. He didn’t answer my question.

“I mean, I know it will hurt, of course it will, I would just like to be comforted, if possible, sir? 

He stopped pacing and looked at me from above. He looked at me from standing 5’’ away from me. He looked at me and I knew I was in the right hands. This man knows what he is doing. I knew that when I broke my hand I will be able to meet someone that will reassure me about the human race. Of course, I needed to hold on to some meaningful behind this randomness and pain. Very human.

“Follow me.” he said. Finally.

I got up, holding my left hand in my right, carefully. At one point during the night when Boris was a sleep beside me, turning and tossing and I couldn’t sleep at all, because the shock of the entire thing started to wear off and my hand started to hurt 6 hours after I had fallen, I had the reflex compulsion to hit my hand against the wall. I wanted to detach it from the rest of my body. I wasn’t even crying, I just felt like this will not end well and I need to apply all of the trauma handling mechanism I had learned growing up. And I did, it was easy and frustrating that I have to go back into surviving mode. Back then, I was surviving by myself, I couldn’t have asked for help, but this, breaking your hand is not something to be embarrassed about, I was supposed to ask for help! And get it! You should get the help! But that would mean you are in a loving relationship or at least in the ‘I like you’ relationship and Boris felt neither of those things, but I wasn’t aware of it. No one showed me how love should feel like, and that is a standard around here. Not knowing how to be loved.

We entered the room with the treatment table in the middle, table with the state of the art monitor on the right and some white cabinets on the left. Everything was clean and I was frightened. The man I was following leaned over the monitor, touched the computer mouse with his right hand and x-ray appeared on the screen: “You really did a good job there. I don’t think you could’ve done it better. Very impressive fracture.”

“What do you mean? I am scared.” I said sitting on the bed.

“Lay down, please. Of course you are scared, it would be strange if you weren’t”

“That is true.” I was lying down and looking at the light above my head attached to the bed. One of those big lights that are installed on the beds in the dentist rooms. My fear grew bigger. 

“There were thousands and thousands of people laying in the place you are now laying. I have treated some of them. Majority even. This bed has seen a lot of similar situations as the one you are in right now. Think about it this way: if they could do it, you can do it. This happens to a lot of us and we are all humans. You are a human.”

“I knew you’ve done this a lot of times.” I loved this man. His brain. He was beautiful. Walking around like a proud peacock, making me feel better just sharing his thoughts. I have realised later on that he wasn’t flaunting around, he was stretching his body, preparing himself for what is about to happen.

He sat next to me. “Just give me your hand. This will probably be the most painful part.”

I’ve handed my hand to him;), he put it on a hard small pillow, I have looked away.

He put something in my hand. It was a needle, it felt like a bit wider needle than the needles that were piercing my skin before. Taking blood. It hurt like someone was putting a needle between some rocks in the park, some rocks laying on a muddy floor. I felt like the needle was struggling. Tears started streaming down my face. I couldn’t control it. I was awake through the entire night, it took me 10 hours to come to the hospital. We had to take a 2 hours drive to the emergency room where they provided me with the first aid “We do not have an x-ray machine on the island”. They replaced the palm tree branch that was sticking out from the bandages they had in the camp with same sort of a metal grid they put my hand on to bandage it. They also poked my shoulder with some medicine that did not change anything in the pain department. “We do not have a helicopter nor an emergency speedboat. You can ask in town, maybe a private one. You just have to wait for the first ferry at 5:30.”

“Oh, I remember when that kid was bitten by a viper, and they put him on a ferry. He was vomiting around the boat for 2 hours until he got to the emergency room on the mainland.” My sister said, later that day. “Lucky they didn’t beat you up in that emergency room. Every time I get there they look like they would like to beat me up for making them do their job.” Our neighbour Rose added.

On the ferry, Boris was sleeping on a blue couch while I was sitting near the window with tears streaming down my face. Counting time. Using my survivaltraining-copingmechanism. I thought, at times, I am not gonna make it. Not die, but I’ve feared something will happen. I will fall asleep and wake up with my hand not being there anymore. I have cut it off in my sleep. 

“What happened?” A lady sat next to me on a ferry. She was sitting there already, eating when I asked to sit next to her. I wanted to put my feet up so I had to change the seat and move away from sitting neatly and calmly, like a cotillion participant, next to Boris. 

“I have broken my hand, I think.”

“Oh, I am sorry to hear that. Maybe you just sprained it. Can you move your fingers?”

“I could when it happened. Nooow” I’ve tried to activate my mussels “I can’t, it hurts too much.” I started to convulse my face in an emotion of despair.

“Oh, dear, don’t do it. It will be ok. My son has broken a hand, a wrist like you, twice, once playing basketball, he came home, showed me the ark and we immediately went to the emergency room, but the second time he thought he just sprained it, so it took us two days to get him to the emergency room. He is still alive and kicking.”

“Really? He plays basketball?”

“No, he is a doctor. He lives in Dubai now. He struggled living here so he decided to move, they pay for his apartment and everything. He said mom I would definitely like to come back but I just do not know what to do there. I told him to stay in Dubai. There is nothing for him here. And what do you do?”

“I do law. I was working for myself for years but I’ve closed a collaboration with my last client a year ago and I can’t find another one.”

“Oh, I am sorry.”

“No worries, I will think of something. And your son, is he alone there?” I am tall and I am not gonna lie, when she said her son played basketball I was kinda interested. The mind is always rolling, and I didn’t like my current situation. I was afraid of Boris. I knew something was wrong with him. I had let him sleep, not only that, I have fought for him to be able to sleep because I knew I needed his help and I needed to bargain, balance it out to get at least the essential parts. 

“Oh, no dear. He is there with his family. They went there with one and now they have two children. It is hard to gain friends but the stability and the way he feels appreciated is really important. He can always visit.”

“Lucky, he is not alone. It is all a lot simpler when you are not alone.”

“Are you alone here? Do you need help?”

“Oh, thank you, that is very kind of you. No, I am not alone, my boy, friend, boyfriend is sleeping there. I will be fine.”

“Yeah, you will be, don’t worry.”

“Thank you.”

“Maybe you just sprained it. You never know.” She touched my elbow

“Yeah, maybe…”

Two men entered the room I was lying in.

“This should be ok.” said the man that just finished putting needles in my wrist, between my bones. “Maybe this side part is gonna make some problems, but I think it will be fine, I cannot do it better.”

“Ohhhh, I remember when we were fixing that Dutch guy. Do you remember that? This summer, the huge guy, only 22 years old, he looked like a rugby player. I had to hang myself with my whole faight on his hand while others were holding him.” said the shorter from the two men that just entered the room. He was shorter with a longer hair, like Antonio BAnderas during the 90′. Quite pretty, in another circumstances.

“I wasn’t there then, who did you do it with?” added the man who was with me in the room from the beginning.

“I don’t know, Petar maybe. Not sure.”

“Oh yes, Petar is craaazy, he does amazing work, but he is not consistent.” Said the third man, the bold one, he looked like a sweet, emotional kind, usually quiet.

“That is why I am saying, we need a bone setting table. Maybe it is not the best way to set the bones but when you are doing 28 settings per day, you get tired and the table helps. The three of us are gonna do great now, but imagine you are alone during the shift, after 10 settings you get tired and the work suffers and with the table you are always consistent.” Added the guy that was in the room with me first.

“Oh, kid, you really nailed it. What a fracture.” said the longer haircut man.

I was just looking up at him. “But don’t you worry, you are in the best hands, Siniša is the best here. He’s been doing this for years. Guys, who will pull out the fingers?”

“I will” said Siniša. “You do the forearm and Ivica will pull the elbow.”

I guess Ivica was the calm one.

“So, you are doing this often?” I dared to ask

“Yeah, everyday, you are lucky you are not in some other town doing this. I was just in Solin the other day, they do not have anyone there to do this. Anyone. We had to send people to other hospitals. I was just twiddling my thumbs. I cannot change their ways. You’re lucky.”

Siniša touched my hurt hand. “Ok, let’s do this.”

They, the three of them, took my entire hand and started cracking my wrist. First Siniša took my hand and pulled it up from my forearm, then he pulled it down. I tried not to look, but my head was going around in agony, not in pain, but in agony because of the sounds of cracking coming out of my body. I have automatically lifted my right leg up and was moving it from my knee: up and then down and up again. I didn’t make a sound. I did not move my hand away from the men trying to fix it. Siniša was hanging with his entire body holding my fingers. “Ok, now fix it. Stand here.” He went to fetch a plaster he prepared. It was a piece of fabric covered in some yogurt-like paste. He put it on my hand and folded it around it. Then he moved around, like a godmother of Cinderella dressing her up for the ball. “And done, you are done! You will go take another x-ray now, and we’ll see what we’ve done.”

“Oh, so you don’t know? And how long will it take to heal? A month?”

“Oh, no, it will take minimum month and a half, if you do not need a surgery. You probably will, I have done this so many times, your fracture is a school example of a surgery-needing case.”

“I am sorry?”

“Go do the x-ray, then we will know more.”

“Do you know that all the people I’ve met after the fall have told me I have sprained it. My sister, a medical student said he knows what happened, that I had broken my radius and it will take 6 weeks for it to heal, not much. Other people asked the stupidest questions, like, does it hurt? – when were you planning to go home?  – maybe there is a nearer hospital that the one back home and so on.”

“People are idiots. It was visibly broken. Your wrist was on your forearm.” Siniša said.

“Come with me to look at the x-ray, doctor Filip needs to sign the papers.” The longer haircut man was a doctor and his name was Filip. 

Siniša and I entered the bigger room where I was admitted when I got there by this very young doctor, he looked at me with fear in his eyes, but Filip was completely relaxed, sitting on his turning chair, the one you sit on when playing piano. He turned to me: “Sit, so, Siniša did an amazing job. I am not sure how we fixed it, but we did, all the bones are aligned. Siniša and the other calm guy were leaning in towards the monitor examining the x-ray on the other side of the room. “Look, I am not gonna lie, this is a surgery material. It will move. Now it is swollen, when that subsidies, your hand will be loose inside the cast and that is when it will move and you’ll need surgery.”

“Wait, can you do something about it? Now?”

“Unfortunatelly, no.”

“But, what?! We are just waiting for it to move and then to operate?! That is just stupid.”

“Look, go and get examined by someone that knows what they are doing. You need someone that knows what they are doing.” Said Siniša while I was standing up and he approached me leaning near my ear, in a conspiratory way.

“Ok, thank you.” I did not want to move away from Siniša. I really liked him. “Do you know they do not have an x-ray scan on the island?”

“They do.”

“They said they don’t that is why they couldn’t tell if I have broken it.”

“They have it. They have one in the main town and one in the other one. They probably did not want to open the practice and use it because it is Saturday.”

It happened when we were camping during this music festival in a town on the island very near the main land but not near other towns on the island. There were 300 people in the camp and 2 toilets. They were quite clean but I just couldn’t use them. I do not go camping. I’ve decided on that topic when I was a kid, I just like comfort and a toilet too much. I do not know why but I have decided to join my boy, friend, boyfriend, Boris, a couple of days ago and then, after 22:00 I have decided to go to the toilet, finally, after a day of constipation. It was a town so there was no appropriate forest areas near me. I have been checking the entire day. I’ve decided to go in the sea. I was walking around the stone beach, in the dark, without the light, I have left it in my bag. I do not know why I did that. All of the sudden I have lost the ground beneath my feet and I started shouting Booooorrrrriiiiissss!!! Long story short, I have fell into a one meter deep hole in the sea. I am 1,83 so it was a pretty big fall and I have hit my hand on the edge of the hole. Then I farted. It turns out I didn’t need to go to the toilet after all. I have immediately felt like I did it on purpose. I was confused, did I do it on purpose? I have just moved my things to Boris’s apartment. I have found a job that I hated. Did I do it on purpose?”