A Broken Leg, Memories of Home, and Ill Tidings

Sayori laid in her bed. The rooms here were nice, nicer than she would have expected. Sure, there was the usual – now familiar – smell of chlorine and disinfectant, and the hum of the AC might have been punctuated by muffled moans of pain from the room a few doors down, but as far as walk-in clinics went, it could have been far worse.

Unlucky accident, all things considered. She'd been crossing the road, the one at the Muldraugh police station, on her way to pick up groceries and vegetables from the local greengrocer's, when tragedy struck, in the form of a Fiat Punto trying their best to run the red lights.

She should have paid more attention, of course – she was on her phone when it happened, sending pictures she'd taken to the girls back home, eyes on the screen and off the road until suddenly she found herself crumpled on the ground, a horrible pain in her right leg she was still too shocked to start crying over, her phone somewhere down the street...

She remembered trying to get up and her leg immediately buckling – not her knee – her leg, and then the pain really hit her and she fell on the asphalt crying and heard a car door slam shut and sudden yelling and...

The man behind the wheel was kind enough to realize his mistake. He called an ambulance, told her not to move, and when the police arrived in what seemed just seconds after he seemed to fully comply with them, as well.

Not that Sayori could hear much of it – at that moment she was strapped to a gurney, her right leg secured in place with some weird metal contraption, crying out about her phone and the pain and the unfairness of it all.

In the clinic – questions about medications, if she was on drugs, if she had medical insurance, some of the questions repeated because the doctors couldn't quite make sense of her accent, especially after administering Oxycodone.

A police officer came by later, after the surgery. He - Officer Callahan, if she remembered correctly - said that they had several witnesses including multiple police officers, which, considering where it happened, didn't really come as a shock to her.

He brought her phone back, as well, and it worked as well as it had before the crash – that is to say, quite poorly, and the newly-cracked screen didn't really make typing or reading messages much easier, but then again she preferred to save on mobile data as much as she could – the clinic had WiFi, sure, but she'd rather not pay for anything extra, and hated bothering the nurses or doctors for more prepaid cards.

Anyhow, the explanation she got was pretty cut-and-dry, all things considered. The suspect pleaded guilty, offered to settle out of court. The mentioned sum entailed a gasp from her, but considering what she'd heard about healthcare costs in America, didn't seem all that unfair.

She briefly considered bringing up Louisville, and the rape what he did to her, but decided not to – the officer seemed busy, and it was weeks ago, and trying to prove it would be a nightmare, and...

So, instead, she just laid in bed after he left. She got more Prozac just by asking and showing her papers from back home, and if she mentioned the pain in her leg to the nurse doing the rounds she'd get more Oxycodone as well, and there were books to read and journals to write in, although she never really felt particularly inspired during her stay – she'd initially intended on writing out a bit of a travel guide-slash-diary about the different rural towns in Knox County, but being bedridden and heavily medicated put a bit of a stop to that.

So, weeks passed by, the days punctuated by medicine refills and terrible food and the occasional doctor visiting and telling her that she'd be able to walk soon, once even placing a pair of crutches next to her bed – probably to make her feel better, but it kind of almost had the opposite effect.

She'd nervously check her calendar every day, scratch the itchy cast on her leg, wonder if she'd have time to take one last look around Knox County before she finally left for Japan, most likely for good.

Her last year of high school was about to start in barely a month, and after that she'd most likely go off to junior college – her grades were alright, nowhere close to the more studious kids in her class, hovering around or below the class average – but still good enough to not have to do too much extra work.

So, last year of high school, then junior college – maybe something about nursing? She didn't know. Nothing particularly interesting sprang to mind, especially not here in Kentucky, lying in a hospital bed with a broken leg and rain-clouds on her mind.

Last year of high school.

Last year of the literature club they still kept going.

Natsuki, Monika, Yuri and her.

Her closest, or perhaps only, friends.

Being an author would be the closest thing she'd have to a dream, but... perhaps it was best not to think about that. It was a pipe dream, at best – she'd written some things, short stories, occasional terrible poems she still cringed thinking about, futile attempts at longer stories that she never managed to finish...

Days went by, and weeks went by.

She'd turned off the TV in her room a long time ago, the sheer volume of advertisements annoyed her, and the upcoming election just made it even worse. At some point she took her first short, guided walk on her crutches. The pain had largely subsided, at this point, and her dosage was gradually cut in half. The food didn't really improve, although Kate (one of the nurses) seemed to take pity on her, and occasionally went out to pick up some fast food for both of them.

It kind of felt like she saw it as her own personal break time, as well. Kate was enamored with all things Japanese, a self-proclaimed otaku – Sayori didn't have the heart to tell her what the term implied back home – with a love for anime and a bubbly personality to match her brightly-dyed hair and multiple piercings.

She was maybe the closest Sayori had come to a friend during her stay in Kentucky, and while their "Fast Food Fridays" – as Kate started calling them – largely consisted of Kate bombarding her with endless questions and Sayori trying her best to answer them, they were still a welcome reprieve from the usual monotony.

Sometimes they'd talk literature, but would rarely get very far – Kate waxed lyrical about learning kanji and kana so she could read Nishio Isin's works "the way they were meant to be read", Sayori would find herself going on tirades about Thomas Pynchon – but as for actually discussing literature, whether it be works or authors...

It was rather just two people talking at each other.

Since she'd turned the TV off, Kate was also her main source of news from the outside world, sometimes bringing newspapers, sometimes showing videos, sometimes just telling her straight-up.

There seemed to be some sort of new disease spreading through Kentucky. It had hit Louisville first – Sayori hoped that he would be the first to catch it – then to Muldraugh and West Point almost in the same day.

"Guess I got lucky with that driver." Sayori said the second time Kate had burst into her room with news about the outbreak, weakly lifting her right leg with a slight smile on her face. "Silver linings, right?."

Kate seemed worried, though – and with good reason, Sayori later realized – the day after she told her about West Point and Muldraugh she burst into her room again, this time far more serious and a medical mask on her face, proclaiming that there were scattered cases in Rosewood now, and that they'd already started taking in patients who seemed to be in critical condition.

Ah well.

They'd both lived through COVID-19 and it's mutations. This wasn't the first large-scale outbreak they'd see in their lifetimes, and most likely not the last. The government would have it under control soon enough. A bit of social distancing, masks on public transport, self-quarantining, the old familiar song and dance.

As for Sayori – her only worry was how this would affect her coming back to Japan. Sitting two weeks in a quarantine cell felt even less appealing after spending a month in a hospital bed.

Oh how wrong she was.

Oh how wrong they both were.