"Dr. Cuddy!" People came running from all directions, and Cuddy pulled herself out of her crumpled landing and straightened herself out. The pain in her ankle was demanding attention, but still, she managed to push herself up to a sitting position.
"Hold still." That was Dr. Owens, a general surgeon who had been crossing the lobby. He knelt down next to her, starting a quick examination. "You shouldn't try to move."
"I'm fine," Cuddy insisted. A crowd was gathering, and she cringed back against the stairs. "I think I sprained my ankle, but nothing else hurts."
"Better not to take any chances." Owens gripped her chin, looking into her eyes.
"Really. It's the right ankle, nothing else." A few visitors to the hospital passing through the lobby paused and came over to view this sideshow. Cuddy gritted her teeth, both from embarrassment and pain. "Let me try to -"
She didn't make it far in her effort to try to get up, as the pain increased sharply, shooting up from her ankle through her leg in a flaming arrow that took her breath away. Dr. Owens and two nurses who had pushed to the front of the group pushed her back down immediately. "Dr. Cuddy, please, hold still," one of the nurses said. "After a fall like that, you need to be checked out thoroughly."
Cuddy resigned herself to that much. Medically, they were right, and with any patient except herself, she would have insisted on it. "Okay. Get a wheelchair and help me down to the ER."
Owens considered. "We really ought to get a gurney. Your spine hasn't been cleared yet."
"There is nothing hurting except for my right ankle." To demonstrate, Cuddy moved her head back and forth and took both arms through a range of motion. "I didn't hurt my neck or my back."
Owens debated, then turned to one of the nurses. "Get a wheelchair, please. And somebody had better call Dr. House."
Cuddy abruptly pictured House charging at his best speed down to the ER on his already-weather-annoyed leg and falling himself. "No, I'll call him once I get there." She could reassure him herself then first thing, and a direct call would be less alarming than second-hand information. No matter what any messenger told him about her limited injuries, he would be much more worried that way, thinking that she was hurt too badly to talk to him herself.
The wheelchair arrived, and Owens and a resident from pediatrics gripped her on each side. "Do not put weight on that ankle," Owens warned, and they lifted her up. Cuddy obediently flexed her leg, letting her throbbing ankle dangle clear as they moved her into the wheelchair. In another moment, she was rolling away from the scene of the accident. She heard the lobby onlookers slowly disperse behind her.
Down at the ER, the physician there insisted on doing a general evaluation once she was laid out flat on a gurney, in spite of her protests again that the sole problem was her right ankle. Finally, the offended extremity was reached after everything else had been preliminarily cleared. Dr. Myers, the ER doctor, removed her shoe and studied the leg. "It's already swelling. I think there's probably a fracture." He started to order x-rays.
Cuddy shook her head. No, it wasn't broken. She couldn't have a broken ankle; a sprain was bad enough. "It's just sprained. I twisted it when I fell."
"I'll order you something for the pain, too. That will help you start to feel better."
"Not yet." She looked around. "Where's my cell phone? I need to call Dr. House myself; he doesn't need to get a message from someone else." Her scattered belongings had at least been collected from the foot of the stairs and brought along to the ER by someone, and the cell phone was promptly picked out and handed to her. She wished she didn't have to worry him at all, but she knew that if she didn't inform her husband, and that very promptly, somebody else would. No doubt that scene in the lobby was already spreading rapidly on the grapevine. She dialed his number.
"Department of Diagnostic Brilliance," he answered jauntily, sounding in an excellent mood. He had the answer on his patient now and was sure of it; she could tell.
Reluctantly, she burst his bubble. "Greg, I've got a problem."
He read more into her tone than she had intended, ruining the effect of her trying to break it easily. "Lisa? What's wrong?"
"It's nothing much, but I seem to have sprained my ankle."
"Where are you? Did they take you to the ER?" he demanded.
"Yes, but it's just a precaution. I'm fine, just twisted my ankle. Nothing else; it's only the ankle. I'll be all right, Greg."
"I'm on my way," he said.
"Don't get in too much of a hurry and -" The line dropped as he hung up. Cuddy sighed. Well, that, like much else in the last several minutes, could have gone better.
House arrived promptly, limping into her cubicle. The ER staff around her bed parted like the Red Sea, allowing him access. "What happened?"
"I fell and twisted my ankle," she replied.
"You fell? Why? Did you get dizzy? Any other symptoms?" He seized her chin and studied her eyes himself, ignoring the ankle for the moment.
"No. I just fell."
Dr. Owens, who was still hovering in the background, spoke up. "She tripped on the stairs in the lobby, Dr. House, and fell most of the way down the first flight. Purely a mechanical fall. There were several witnesses; she didn't seem to have any other symptoms that caused it. She was hurrying and just missed a step."
"I turned too fast." Cuddy felt annoyed with herself all over again at her carelessness. "I turned back while I was still going forward, and my foot slipped off the next stair. And I didn't have hold of the rail to save myself."
House seemed to accept that explanation at least, though he was still agitated. His quick, sensitive fingers had already probed her neck himself, and he moved down to all extremities, finally arriving at the right ankle. He studied it. "Medial malleolus, I think."
"That would be my guess," Dr. Myers agreed.
"But we don't have to guess, because we're supposed to have this wonderful medical invention called x-rays. Have you even gotten any yet?"
"They're ordered," Myers replied. "I did a quick general evaluation first." That order of priorities mollified House somewhat, and at that moment, the portable x-ray machine was wheeled through the door.
The series of x-rays was taken, and then House moved back up to her head. "Has anybody given her anything for the pain?"
"Not yet," Cuddy answered for herself. "I don't want anything yet. I need to know - but it's just a sprain." House shook his head slowly, and she felt her stubborn optimism puncture like a balloon. She could argue with her pain, with Dr. Owens, and even with the ER staff, but she couldn't argue with her husband's medical judgment. Even before the films were read, she knew all at once that he was right. Her ankle was broken.
"The girls," she realized. "And Thomas. We need to -"
"We don't need to tell them anything until we have the official word and a plan going forward here," he said. "I'll make all the calls in a little bit myself, but let's know exactly what's going on first. They don't realize anything is wrong now, so they're not worrying while waiting."
A few minutes later, the x-rays returned, and House and Myers crowded together as they read them. "Medial malleolus fracture," House said. "Slightly displaced."
"Yes," Myers agreed. "It's a definite fracture but not a complicated one, at least. With the displacement, though, it's probably -"
House nodded. "It's going to need ORIF. Might squeak by without it, but I wouldn't recommend it. A screw would help the prognosis and the healing time a lot here."
"It's going to need surgery?" Cuddy asked.
He left the x-ray huddle and returned to her side. "It will get better a lot faster with it, Lisa. One simple screw. This should be an easy one." His voice was tense; she could tell that he was trying to steady his own worries up against the medical knowledge. But the medicine was there to steady himself against; as a doctor, he was sure on this case. His worries were based on personal involvement, not on medical complexity.
She sighed. "Okay. Who's the best orthopedist, do you think? Brown?"
"Yes." He turned back to Myers. "Call Brown down here for a consult."
He turned back to her and squeezed her hand. "It will be okay, Lisa. This is fixable. A quick operation - probably tomorrow, give it tonight with elevation and ice first to help the initial swelling - and it should heal up fine."
"How long?" she asked.
"I'd say six weeks nonweightbearing. Probably three months before you're really getting around as usual without being aware of it all the time, and a while longer after that before it's unnoticeable at all. You might need to have the screw removed later on, but that's simple."
Six weeks. Three months. It sounded like eternity, but she reminded herself that that was nothing compared to his daily life and ongoing disability. The shoe might be on the other foot temporarily here, but she had to be strong and get through this.
She started to say that, to reassure him that she could handle three months, no problem, but the words that came out somehow were totally different. "I can't believe I fell like that. Should have been more careful."
He gave her hand another squeeze. "We all make mistakes now and then. It's okay, Lisa."
True enough, as Patterson would have told her, but still, why did she have to make that one? Wouldn't a little mistake have served as a reminder of her fallibility just as well? And how would this impact the girls? And Thomas? She sighed again.
