It was a dark and stormy night. Also, I somehow broke a bone in my foot.

So I’m sitting here listening to the wind and the rain.  It’s blustering out there with all its might, and I look forward in the morning to the sight of tufty little evergreen branches all over the roads.

A couple of weeks ago I spent yet another delightful hour or two at the urgent care.  I’m thinking of having my magazines forwarded there.  Okay, magazine.  Maybe then I’d get a chance to look at my beloved Smithsonian before it’s Alphabet Share Day Featuring the Letter L! at the preschool and suddenly all the Lips! are cut out of anything with a mouth.

Anyway, I was there for this stupid pain in my foot that came out of nowhere, wouldn’t go away, and about which The Lovely Rhonda had wearied of my complaints.  They x-rayed it and didn’t see anything too obviously awry.  Based on this and several other urgent care experiences, I am fairly certain that there would have to be bones jutting out of something before anyone felt it might warrant medical intervention.   “But,” said the urgent care doctor, who had a name like an Italian Formula One driver but was disappointingly ordinary in real life, “since your feet are… well… since you’ve got, um… —  Well, anyway, I’m sending you to podiatry.”

I can’t blame the poor dear.  When the podiatrist remarks, “Wow, they really are flat!” you know you’re working with something a little special from the ankles down.  I try not to gloat but is it my fault such greatness is thrust upon me?

Finally I got in to see the podiatrist — the same one who made the remark, in fact — he pressed and prodded and wiggled things around with pretty unremarkable results, and then repaired to the control room or wherever the mysterious place is where they look at x-rays, to review my urgent care images.  Then he practically bounded back into the room, seized my foot, rather excitedly asked what did it feel like when he did THIS to it, and sank his thumb into a spot that had previously escaped his notice.

After I apologized for involuntarily kicking him in the beard, I asked that he kindly refrain from touching that particular spot ever again.

He then retrieved a model of the skeleton of the foot, which piqued the 7-year-old’s interest to no end, and spread the thing apart to point at a bone.  Don’t ask me which one, I’m a psychiatric nurse, not some kind of anatomy dork.  But he said, “You’ve got a fracture!  Right there!”

Really, it warmed my heart to bring such joy to the man.  I have a feeling he doesn’t get out much.