The cab ride home was definitely going to be a miserable one. Aubrey’s excitement and enthusiasm ended the first time she stood erect. The blood rushed down her leg causing it to hurt and throb. It was almost as bad as the initial break. No one had really warned her of just how much it would hurt.

It was then she was reminded that her leg was broken, her freshman season was over indefinitely, and that she was in for twelve long weeks of inconvenience after inconvenience. The cast on her leg was about to be the bane of her existence.

The cab ride was going to be very long. It was going to be about as fun as the x-ray process. It wouldn’t be as bad as having her leg set, but it would definitely be as uncomfortable as the casting process. The hospital she had been taken to was 45 minutes away. Normally 45 minutes was easy, but usually she wasn’t positioned uncomfortably in the back seat to accommodate a recently broken leg or freshly applied full leg cast. At least the hospital was paying for the fare. That had been the least of her worries though.

As she sat silently in the back seat while her crutches rode shotgun with the driver she began reliving the events that transpired earlier that evening. It was definitely a night that would live in infamy for the rest of her life. Hopefully she wouldn’t go through something that could possibly push the events of the night out of her mind.

The game had been going beautifully. The game was in the second half and they were winning by a very healthy and comfortable amount. Everything was just great, until Aubrey and Katie both jumped to block a shot. Katie succeeded with the block, but failed the landing. As Katie’s feet planted on the ground she lost her balance and fell against Aubrey’s left leg. Legs were not meant to bend like that. Time slowed almost to a stop. She felt the pressure build against her fibula first. She felt the snapping of her fibula reverberate though her entire body from the tips of her toes to her hair follicles. People’s ears perked as the sound of the bone breaking reached their eardrums. The tibia soon shadowed all the fibula’s work. The shockwave was much more intense and the sound of the bone snapping was twice as loud. Her neurons were firing like machineguns. Her synapse resembled a metropolitan traffic jam.

Aubrey didn’t remember falling to the ground, but she remembered feeling like the only person in the world at that given moment. She instinctually clutched at her mangled leg, which she couldn’t even feel, and writhed around on the ground.

The paramedics seemed to take an eternity. It seemed as though an adhesive were attached to their shoes that prevented them from running faster than slow motion. It seemed like an eternity, but was only a matter of a minute or two before they were kneeling by her side ready to help. Everything from that point on was a blur of screaming, painful manipulations of her leg, and needle pricks to her arm.

It wasn’t until the cab reached campus that Aubrey realized she was going to have to explain what happened to a million and half people a million and a half times. At least she could count out her volleyball teammates. A few down the rest of the population to go.

If she had her way she wouldn’t have to tell anyone about. She knew her mom would rightfully freak out, and her friends back home were definitely going to make a big deal out of it. Aubrey wasn’t an avid fan of attention. In fact, she hated it. The attention she got from her broken hand had driven her crazy, and that was only a splint on her broken hand. That wasn’t a hard cast on a very long leg on a tall girl.

Her leg was definitely going to elicit large quantities of unwanted attention. She didn’t want to feel everyone’s eyes on her as she crutched across the green at school. She didn’t want the quick glances at the fiberglass monstrosity on her leg. There was absolutely nothing she could do about it. She couldn’t just hop a train to some unknown place where no one lived or cared about girl’s with broken legs. She was just going to have to deal with it.

Aubrey rested at the back entrance of her dorm perched atop her newly acquired arm extensions. Since volleyball wasn’t a revenue producing sport like football or basketball the school couldn’t afford to put the girls up in their own dorm like the aforementioned sports. Unfortunately for Aubrey she couldn’t afford an apartment like some of the older girls so she was stuck in a 5-story brick hell called Gaines Hall with a roommate from hell.

Aubrey glanced at the dirty 5-story dormitory with an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. She felt like Dante in the Inferno. She felt like she was standing at the gates of hell. Beyond the door before her was an entirely different world. A world that stole glances at her cast. A world that stared and asked too many questions. That train to that imaginary place sounded so tempting.

The slow yet increasing painful throb in her shin brought her back to reality and gave her the strength to enter that new world. She didn’t really have a choice though. She carefully crutched up the front steps like the woman at the rehab floor showed her. Punching in the code wasn’t a problem. Pulling the heavy door open, and simultaneously crutching through was a bit of a task.

Her first stare came as she waited for the elevator. She could feel the eyes of the night staff guy in the front office glued to some part of her cast. At 6’ she knew that cast had to look huge. Aubrey slowly turned her head and gave the guy a weak smile, but he was too busy consuming her cast with his eyes. She then returned her attention back to the anticipating the arrival of her vertical taxi. He was still staring. She could see his reflection in the window to her left. His eyes were definitely bigger than his stomach or whatever the sight of her cast excited.

As the elevator ascended to Aubrey’s haven on the fourth floor she hoped and prayed that her roommate, Brandy, was asleep. She didn’t want to deal with Brandy. She wasn’t in the mood to endure anything Brandy could possibly say, not say, or do. She just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep away the next three months.

Aubrey’s heart was in her throat as she slowly and awkwardly crutched down the long hall. It was times like now where Aubrey wished that her room wasn’t at the very end of the hall. She would have given anything to have the room equidistant from the elevator and bathroom.

She was relieved when she finally did make it to the end of the hall. From her vantage point a couple feet from the door she could see that the light was not on. No light meant, no Brandy. No Brandy meant goodnight. Aubrey was further relieved when she realized that Brandy had left the door unlocked for her. Aubrey’s keys were in her gym bag. Her gym back was in a locker. The locker was in the athletic complex. The Athletic complex was very far away. Brandy was a very deep sleeper, so any attempt to wake her would wake the entire dorm before it would wake Brandy.

Aubrey was thoroughly impressed with her ability to navigate the room in the dark while on crutches. Navigating the room when lit was a task in itself. That was about the only thing Brandy and Aubrey had in common, they were both slobs that left clothing everywhere.

While sitting on the bed Aubrey disrobed as fast as a human could in that given predicament. Instead of searching the room for her pajamas she grabbed the first T-shirt she found, and the first pair baggy practice shorts she could find. Normally, she could never go to bed after a game without having taken a shower first, but tonight would be an exception.

She reconfigured the three miscellaneous she normally slept with into a stack of soft elevation for her leg. Aubrey slowly but painfully maneuvered cast from the floor to its perch atop the mountain of pillows. The second her eyes shut she was fast asleep. Whether she would go to class or not in the morning was the last thing she was going to worry herself with. She would bother herself with such questions in the morning. For tomorrow was a new day.