What’s worse than a fractured foot? An injury that has no story. You know,  something like “I was being chased by a bear and fell off a cliff!”, or “I tripped while saving a baby from a burning car!”, or “I was whitewater rafting, hit some rapids, flipped into the water, and hurtled downstream into some rocks!”

Sadly, my story is…nothing happened, except I’d been walking around on a sore foot for a few months.

My podiatrist took some X-rays, fiddled with my aching appendage, and said, rather ominously,“You’re not going to like me.”

But, of course, that could never be true. He’s the doc who used a titanium plate, eleven metal screws, chewing gum, bailing wire, Super Glue, and who knows what else to reconstruct my formerly broken other leg.

“You have a stress fracture.”

“Why! I didn’t do anything,” I protested. “I didn’t fall or exercise too much! Hell, all I do is walk a few miles every morning. That’s what I’ve been reduced to.”

He nodded and spread both hands. “I’ve had my hip replaced and rotator cuff surgery. The result of old sports injuries. That’s what happens to athletes.”

Isn’t that sweet that he said I was an athlete and not, “Well, you’re old and paying the price for your misguided youth.”

So the story is some old foot injury that never healed properly, after decades of abuse, just fractured. Maybe it was 25-plus years in ice skates. Or 40 years of sports officiating. Or skiing some of those slopes I didn’t belong on. Or maybe I’ll blame my mom who accidentally dropped a freezer on my bare foot when I was a teen. Who knows?

“You still have your boot?”

I took a deep breath as I remembered the plastic-strapped contraption I’d worn while learning to walk again following my surgery. “I do.”

“And you have the lift for your other shoe?”

I wrinkled my brow, as he referred to the divice that keeps boot-wearers level when they walk. “I don’t know.”

“It’s in the boot,” he said with such confidence that I wondered if he’d actually been in the corner of my closet where the boot has resided since I was finally freed from the thing.

“Don’t walk without your boot,” he said. “I’ll see you in three weeks.”

I can’t say I didn’t whine all the way home. Then, I slid back the closet door, dug out the boot, and you know what? That shoe lift was exactly where he said it would be.

I’ll ask him how he knew, in a few weeks. In the meantime, I’m working on a better story.

I’m open to suggestions.

Anne Montgomery’s novels can be found wherever books are sold.

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