“So how did it happen?” the nurse, the orthopedist, the X-ray technician all ask.

“Ah, a wrong move.” They nod. And you tell them, no. No foot twisting one way, body the other way. Nothing, but there was this awful pop, you tell the air in the room as the doctor pecks out his evaluation before telling you to go home and use your foot.

Use your foot! You crawl on all fours to the bathroom, in tears. Use your foot? Heel swollen and throbbing so badly you can’t even put the tip of your toes to the floor. Terror of hurting your supporting leg makes you crawl back into bed as soon as you can.

After 24 hours of no sleep, you beg your doctor for something to knock you out. She prescribes you something and tells you to go see another orthopedist in a trauma clinic.

The medication takes the edge off the pain but makes you so dizzy you feel like you’re falling, falling all night. At the clinic, the orthopedist barely listens to you, prints out a sheaf of anti-inflammatory prescriptions, tells you to go for an ultrasound and see another orthopedist. One with a six-month waiting list.

And to use your foot.

You get home and collapse. The house is going to rot. The laundry is piling up, sinks overflowing. Freezer empty. You haul yourself back out of bed and crawl to the laundry basket. Shove it in front of you, hop to the machine. Stuff a load in and hop back into bed, sweating from the effort.

Your husband asks if you want crutches. No! you howl. Crutches are for people who break their legs and have nice, big white casts or at least a bandage to show for it.

He brings home conciliatory prizes — ice cream, cakes, confections. You lie in bed and imagine the fat cells you’ve spent a lifetime trying to shrink expanding gleefully and capering with abandon up and down your bloodstream, clustering around your vital organs. Building fortresses you’ll spend another lifetime trying to dismantle.

You eat.

The days are never-ending, full of all the things you need to do, none of which you can do. You swallow so many pills that if someone shook you, you’d rattle.

This is good, everyone says. You need to slow down! Now you can write The Great Novel of the Century. Organize 14 years of digital photos. Put your recipes in order.

Woozy from either pain or pain medication, you do nothing but wallow. Read. Play mindless word games through the haze. Try to sleep through what sounds like a herd of elephants learning to tap dance on the floor above you. Try to ignore another neighbor drilling a hole through your gray matter.

The ultrasound shows it’s not a torn ligament. Maybe a little plantar fasciitis, lots of inflammation. Exercise, says the doctor. That didn’t end too well last time. Walk on it!

But you can’t walk. You force yourself to take your kids out, to a store across the road, where you lean heavily on a shopping cart.

“What happened to your foot?” Neighbor trumpets.

“I mumble mumbled it.” What are you supposed to say?

The problem with limping in public is the invitation it gives any random acquaintance to ask what happened.

Another problem is that you can’t pretend you’re in a rush.

You keep a mental gratitude journal going. You spend time over each brachah — pokei’ach ivrim, matir asurim, thank You for my eyes, for my hands, for my other leg, thank You for this leg that’s not paralyzed, shattered, irreparable. Thank You for a bed, a roof over my head, food. Thank You for a husband, children, family. For a functional brain, for the gift of being.

And then you crawl back into bed and cry because of spilled grape juice that no one wiped up and everyone walked over, creating black streaks of stickiness you can’t deal with. The self-criticism is a never-ending stream in your ear. How dare you complain. Look at those people who’d do anything to be in your place.

It doesn’t take away the pain, just makes you feel worse to talk about it. Maybe you’re not allowed to say anything, maybe it makes you ungrateful for all the things you have.

There are hostages in Gaza, soldiers dying. No one cares about your stupid foot.

And still you limp. You lie down after walking, tears stinging as rods of fire play around the heel that has nothing wrong with it.

A fraud, that’s what you are. If you can’t do all the things that make you the person you think you’re meant to be, who are you and what does that make you? Existential questions no one can seem to answer.

You remember feeling this way once, on bedrest. No cooking, no cleaning. Kids acting out and you in bed, helpless. But back then you were bringing a soul into the world just by breathing.

Now you’re nothing.

You laugh, bitterly, at your reflection and a bottle of serum in your palm. Why bother? You’re 40 years young, betrayed by your body. Anti-aging… really?

You meet Neighbor again. “Still with the leg?” she asks.

“Yep. Still with the leg, surprise, surprise.” And then haul yourself away as fast as possible, before saying something untoward like haven’t yet figured out how to leave it at home.

Acceptance. Acceptance acceptanceacceptance.

You mouth the words, practice them: This is the way it’s meant to be. This is how it should be.

Cheshbon hanefesh. Maybe this is to sand down an inflated ego. You have been judgmental; maybe those people you thought could have taken better care of themselves really couldn’t.

How dare you complain.

You teach yourself to stop asking why and to start asking for what purpose.

There are no answers — yet. Everyone still needs clean clothes and everything still takes you so. so. long. to. do.

There is no happy ending yet. This story is not over… but maybe it’s not about the ending.

Maybe this is a story of how a little nothing can be the end of everything.
Or the beginning of something else.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 926)