It was the early morning after Women’s Day. I woke at the unearthly hour of 1.20am, got up to get a drink, and slipped and fell on the slate floor.
The moment I hit the floor, I knew was in trouble. My foot was hanging at a strangle angle and when I got up, it felt as if I had no leg.
What to do, what to do? My son, Nicholas, was asleep nearby and I didn’t want to traumatise him. I called my landlady Antoinette, who came through with her husband, Jannie, right away. She called an ambulance, and my ex husband, Jacques, to pick up our boy.
The ambulance took some 20 minutes to arrive, and somewhere in between strapping me to a stretcher and Jacques arriving, Nicholas woke up. Not one of the great moments of my life, but even in my shocked state I realised I had so much to be grateful for.
Antoinette and Jannie for being there, Jacques for coming through and, yes, my medical aid about which I whine from time to time, but which now meant the difference between government hospital and a private clinic.
I spent a few hours in casualty, trying hard to think of anything except the two bones being pushed into place.
Next stop was admission. I found myself leg in the air in a ward, complete with pain-killing drip, as I awaited the orthopaedic surgeon’s verdict. It was a serious break, the kind usually sustained in car accidents. He was going to have to operate, and would prefer to do so by this evening, provided the swelling went down.
And if the swelling didn’t go down, I managed to squeak? Well, then we would have to wait, which could take up to a week. A thought I did not want to contemplate as I grasped for the page-turner I had managed to grab on my way out to the ambulance.
Fortunately by the evening the swelling had gone down. The rest of the night I spent in anaesthetically induced cloud cuckooland, only to be rudely awakened to the reality of not being able to bath or go to the loo. (Bedpans are not for sissies.)
By the time I was discharged, I had been up close and personal to certain things that were going to have to be done very differently and much more slowly, or not at all.
One of the lights of my life during these long days in hospital was my domestic help, Grace. Grace brought me toiletries and clothes. She brought me hope and she brought her boyfriend Robert to take me home when I was good enough to go.
At home, she walked every step with me, told me to take it slowly, lest I slip again and fall. The lowest step, the slightest change in the paving, the gradual incline in the walk to the front door of my cottage, became my personal Mount Everest.
Once inside, new challenges awaited. But first, Grace made me sweet tea. While I drank it, she rearranged the furniture to make my not-quite-sailing as smooth as possible. And once my pulse and heartbeat had settled down to a dull roar, she helped me tie up the leg with a rubbish bag and masking tape, so I could take a shower.
Since then she has been here for me. If she couldn’t make it, she sent her eldest Dumelo, her youngest Vanessa, or her beautiful son – and Nicholas’s best friend – Tebogo. While I lie on the bed, which is about all I can do when I’m not at work (where I sit with my leg on a chair piled with jackets), the Magnificent Mashifanes make sure the dishes are washed, there’s food on hand and, above all, love and kindness on tap.
And they’re not the only ones. It was with a lovely jolt that I realised how much kindness there is in the world, how much compassion and helpfulness are unleashed in a situation like this. All you have to do is accept it, and say thank you, thank you, thank you.
I think of my friends who braved the building alterations at the hospital, waiting about 20 minutes to get parking just to come and see me. Jacques who brought Nicholas to see me every day. The whole gang who rocked up on the Saturday afternoon with flowers and wine and chocolates and cake to cheer me up.
Through it all, as I lay there, listening and laughing, and sometimes in pain, I thought, this would not have happened, had I not broken my foot.
Don’t misunderstand me. I do not for a moment recommend broken limbs as a way of building bridges. But my injury has taught me so many lessons, about friendship, compassion and kindness, about humility and gratitude, and about the real definition of love.
Love is “being there”.
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