He shrugs. “Gotta make sure my buddy is okay.”
“Jamie—” I say, but choke on whatever I was going to say.
“Go. Be with your boy. I’ll be out here when you’re done.”
There’s a lot I’d like to say, but I don’t say any of it. I accompany Aiden to the room they’ve assigned him, and the nurse goes through the process of checking him over, taking his vitals, the usual hospital procedures. Which is, as Jamie predicted, followed by another hour or more of waiting. Aiden is a trooper through the whole thing, staying patient and calm, despite the fact that he’s obviously in a lot of pain. Finally, the doctor comes in and examines Aiden’s ankle.
He orders an X-ray, just to be sure—which means another long wait for someone to take us to the radiology department, get the X-rays, and then another wait for the doctor to look at them and come in and talk to us about the results.
“Good news is, it’s not broken,” the doctor—a young man fresh out of med school—says. “Bad news is, it is a grade one sprain.”
“What’s a sprain?” Aiden asks.
“Well, basically, it means you wrenched the ligaments. You twisted them really hard, and now they’re all messed up.”
“What’s a ligament?”
“Ahh…kind of like a tendon.” He scratches his jawline. “Um, sort of like rubber bands that connect your bones around the joints, where your elbows, ankles, and wrists bend.”
“Oh.” Aiden frowns. “So, do I get a cast?”
The doctor chuckles. “Do you want one?”
Aiden shrugs, grinning. “I mean, kind of? My friend Bryan broke his leg riding his BMX bike last summer and he had a cast and everyone wrote stuff on it and drew on it and stuff, and it was cool. I don’t want a broken ankle ’cause then I’d have to have the cast for like weeks or something.”
“I suppose I can see how that might be a fun side benefit in a bad situation,” the doctor says. “But no, you don’t need a cast. Ice it to reduce swelling, wrap it in an ace bandage, and stay off it. So you will be on crutches for a few days to keep weight off of it, but you’ll be limping around on your own soon.”
“So when can I go back to playing football?”
The doctor bobbles his head side to side. “Well…it’s not something I can sit here and say, oh on this day exactly…” He indicates Aiden’s ankle. “It depends on how you heal. If you ice it, compress it, and stay off it, you could be able to start carefully using it in a week or so. Or, it could take longer, up to two weeks or so. No way to know for certain.”
“So how will I know when I can use it again?”
“When it stops hurting to walk, basically. Use the crutches and keep compression on it for two or three days at least, and then try carefully limping around on it at home, just to test it. If it still hurts to move the ankle, stay off of it some more. Eventually, you’ll be able to use it normally again and you’ll be as good as new. You just have to be smart.”
“Okay.”
“So we can go now?” Aiden asks.
The doctor smiles. “Soon. A nurse will come by and discharge you and get you a pair of crutches.”
“Okay.”
The doctor claps Aiden on the shoulder. “All right, bud, I guess you’re hoping you heal fast and can get back out on the field soon, huh?”
“I hope so. Thank you, Doctor.”
The doctor shakes my hand. “You’ve got a good kid.”
“Don’t I know it,” I say. “Thank you.”
Sending a nurse by with crutches and our discharge papers sounds like it should be quick, but…hospital time, so it’s not. It’s another twenty-five minutes before the nurse even reappears with the crutches and fits them for Aiden, and then fifteen minutes after that before a different nurse comes by with the discharge papers.
By the time we’re headed for the waiting room, we’ve been at the hospital for more than three hours. Aiden is exhausted and cranky and hungry, as well as frustrated with the crutches, which are trickier to use than he thought they’d be.
We find Jamie nodding off in the waiting room.
I gently shake his arm. “Jamie.”
