The Knee Chronicles: The Day the Earth Stood Still On One Leg, Pt. 2

I decided to go to my friend’s birthday celebration. It is a relatively low key night in the realm of true party girlness. The plan is to attend a campy play at a nightclub’s cabaret room which is located minutes from my house. One quick cab ride away. I hobble with my cane to the corner store and get cash from the ATM and then hobble to the corner to flag a taxi. That’s when all Hell breaks loose.

My neighborhood is teeming with taxis and so within minutes I hail one and open the door. I sit down with the intention of slowly maneuvering my injured knee in first but when it comes time to bend the wretched beast (my left knee), the rat bastard shakes me to the core with nerve tingling pain. I try a different approach. I slide my butt far onto the backseat but that doesn’t help either. There is no room to move as the front seat barrier is mere inches from the end of the back seat. I get out. I apologize to the sympathetic driver and hope for better luck with the next cab.

The second taxi was just the same and after the third taxi (with no barrier between front and back seat) offered no relief from the white hot slice of pain to my knee, I surrender. I have to go back home, text Babs my regrets and suffer alone in bed. I don’t want to elaborate on my predicament and put a damper on the evening so I simply text:

“I’m having a really hard time so I don’t think I will make it tonight. so sorry.”

She is sympathetic and kind. I feel awful and disappointed. But I accept my lot and proceed to walk the half block to my house.

I tentatively place weight on my knee to begin my trek home and I am met with a debilitating strike of pain that makes me cry out loud. I am beyond shocked. I have never felt this before in my life. I catch my breath and try again to walk.

ZING!!

The pain is unlike anything I have ever encountered before and I realize right then and there, on the corner of my street – not a hundred feet from my house – that I am stranded in pain, on one leg in the darkness, in the cold. I start to cry. I can’t walk, I can’t stand nor can I get into a taxi.

What the fuck!

I am panic stricken. What should I do? There isn’t even a bench to hop to. The closest thing to lean on – besides a parked car – is a bike rack. I lean upon that as I try to get myself together, tears and snot rolling down my face. Luckily in my neighborhood a lone figure crying out in the streets is not such an unusual sight, what with all of the SRO’s and transients roaming around. But still, I feel foolish and vulnerable.

To be continued…