Starting Off on the Left Foot

It all started the way most bad things start: on stairs. Walking past the music rooms on the second floor, I was having a pretty good day. The afternoon was warm and sunny, and North Campus was calm. I had a meeting with Faith to work on a group project at Trophy, so I started heading downstairs. Suddenly, I heard a voice from a distance. It was Zach giving a tour of the campus. I tried waving to him, but he didn’t notice me. Then it happened. While I thought I had reached the bottom of the stairs, I missed one step, so, while my leg moved forward, my ankle was left behind. For a split second, I saw white. The next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground like Buzz from Toy Story after realizing he couldn’t fly.

I stayed down for a few minutes, trying to ignore the pain. I stood up but couldn’t help limping.

“Cole, are you okay?” Beth called to me from a distance. “What happened?”

“Oh, I just fell,” I answered through gritted teeth. “But I’m fine. I just need to get to Trophy.”

“Ok…do you need a ride?” she asked.

Regretfully, I said I would be fine walking. I didn’t want to believe anything happened, so I hoped to just walk it off. After ten agonizing minutes, I stumbled into Trophy Coffee and found Faith at a corner table. We worked on our project, taking notes and suggesting new ideas, but I was distracted by the throbbing pain. After about half an hour, I checked my ankle and discovered it had swelled to the size of my fist.

“Hey, I’m really sorry,” I interrupted. “But I hurt my ankle, so I think I need to go ice it.”

Faith peered over her laptop screen and let out a small gasp. “Oh yeah, that doesn’t look right,” she said.

I half limped half crawled up the stairs to my dorm room and flopped onto my bed.

“What happened?” McKay said confused.

“I fell,” I replied. I didn’t want to have to explain myself just yet.

After only a few minutes, my mom texted to remind me of my dad’s birthday dinner that night. I knew I probably shouldn’t be moving around if my ankle was bad, but I refused to believe I had sprained it. So, an hour later, I was driving into LA with my family. The dark wood interior of the restaurant reflected the dim ceiling lights. We turned the corner, and my heart stopped. The seating of the restaurant was located below a staircase. I slowly hobbled down the stairs, not ready for round two. As the waiter presented grand trays of pastas, appetizers, and seafood, my ankle continued to swell.

“See how it’s feeling tomorrow, then decide if you need it checked,” my mom told me after I explained what happened.

Trudging back into the dorm lounge after dinner, I found Kevin and Destannie studying.

“What are you doing?” Kevin asked as I crumpled onto the couch.

“I hurt my ankle,” I explained.

Without hesitation, they examined me for a minute before pulling out medical tape. It’s kind of nice having Pre-Med friends. As they wrapped my ankle, McKay walked into the lounge, scanning the room.

“What are you doing?” McKay asked confused.

“We’re just wrapping it for now,” Kevin answered.

“I…sprained my ankle,” I confessed.

“Oh…well, you better hurry because I’m about to watch “Brother Bear”,” he stated before disappearing onto the guy’s side.

Normally, this type of warning wouldn’t have bothered me, but “Brother Bear” has a special effect. Kevin and Destannie instructed me to hold still as they finished the wrapping. I quickly thanked them once they were finished, and rushed as fast as I could back to the room. Wes noticed me limping and offered me an ice pack and crutches he bought when he twisted his ankle. After the movie, I tried to get to sleep, but my ankle kept waking me up.

The next morning, I woke to a burning pain in my leg, and my ankle was roughly three times its typical size. I accepted the fact it was sprained and called out of work. However, this meant I needed a doctor’s note of approval.

Oh easy, I thought. I’ll just go to the Nurse’s office. After awkwardly clunking down the staircase, I was waiting patiently in the office before she popped into the room.

“Hi, so I think I may have sprained my ankle,” I started. “And my work requires me to get a doctor’s note.”

“Oh my word!” she exclaimed, seeing my ankle. “This looks really bad! Who wrapped it?”

“Some of my friends.”

“So you haven’t gotten this checked out yet?”

“No…”

“Well, you should definitely get this checked out. It looks terrible.”

Realizing I would have to go to a real doctor later, I asked for a note and climbed back to the dorm.

Adjusting to life on crutches was interesting. As a kid, everyone has the strange desire to have some sort of disability because they think it’d be cool. However, I’m here to tell you, a sprained ankle is nowhere near as cool as it sounds. From my crutches slamming on the gym floor during chapel, to tripping others in the caf, my sprained ankle didn’t have a lot of benefits, nor was it too easy to hide. Both professors and students would ask what happened, but there wasn’t a cool way to explain it, other than Kevin’s description of “a really intense stair”.

After classes, I walked across campus with Eliana when I came face to face with the stairs to the dorms.

“What are you doing?!” Molly cried from behind me, causing me to jump backwards.

“I’m going to my room,” I said plainly.

“But you can’t make it up the stairs,” another girl I didn’t recognize piped up.

“No I can do it,” I reassured them. Before I could even try, another girl ripped the crutches from my hands.

“It’s okay to need help,” she stated. “Let us help you.”

The group of girls formed a circle of protection around me as I hopped from one step to the next. They waved others out of the way to give me space. I turned to see Eliana, barely holding in her laughter.

On the complete opposite spectrum, the guys had a different response to my crutches. After limping back into the room from the bathroom, I found McKay and Kevin smiling at me.

“What,” I asked suspiciously.

There was no answer. I looked around and then realized.

“Where are my crutches?”

They burst out laughing.

“I don’t know, you’ll have to find them,” McKay replied.

Obviously, I didn’t want to give them what they wanted, so I just lay down on my bed and told them I was going to sleep.

“But I left you clues on your voicemail,” McKay added. He took my phone and played the recording.

I tried not to laugh as I listened to McKay’s voice offer random clues as to where “parts” of my crutches were hidden. Just as the recording ended, the door swung open, and Dillon was staring at us along with half the wing.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” he said after a long pause. Suddenly, all the guys started clapping. McKay and Kevin joined in. Then guys from different wings walked over and clapped. Even the campus security guard peeked through our door.

Despite being confused out of my mind by everything happening, I was happy my friends were still able to mess around with me. They all cared for me, even if they had different ways of showing it. My time in college has taught me to cherish the people I have around me because true friends can help you make the best out of a bad situation. Playful insults for me to “keep up” helped me get faster on my crutches, and, while a few of the nicknames stayed a little longer than I would have liked, my friends helped me to laugh at myself. As crazy as it sounds, I’m happy I sprained my ankle. It taught me that I shouldn’t be ashamed to ask for help, and it reminded me to be thankful for the friends I had.