Our daughter Jordan broke her hand. To be clear, she didn’t break her hand. Jordan was no more responsible for her fractures than other family members who have suffered broken somethings.
Consider our son Trey when he was three. He didn’t break his leg; a merry-go-round did. When Trey tried to jump off, the merry-go-round grabbed his leg and wouldn’t let go. A few years ago, a tennis court refused to catch my fall and broke my wrist.
Jordan had traveled to Morocco and Spain on vacation. The dune buggy she drove across the desert didn’t take an out-of-control spin that caused the fractures. The camel she rode didn’t throw her off or bite her—can’t blame the camel. And she was close, but not close enough to a cobra’s dance for the snake to squeeze her hand until, well, crack.
The guilty culprit? A heavy, hardshell suitcase.
After Jordan’s plane landed back in the states, she boarded a train from Washington, DC to Richmond, VA. She located her seat and hoisted her suitcase up to the overhead luggage rack.
Not wanting the adventures to end, the runaway suitcase slid from the rack toward an innocent woman’s head. In one awkward lunge, our daughter saved the woman, but the suitcase crushed Jordan’s hand.
OK. Those weren’t my daughter’s exact words, but I know that’s what happened. Moms always know.
When the train whistled its arrival to Richmond, our daughter took a Lyft to the nearest ER. Kind fellow passengers helped her with the unruly suitcase and additional bags.
Jordan called us from the ER’s waiting room.
“Ugh…I broke three bones,” she said. “I knew immediately it was broken.”
“Everything will be fine,” said Gary.
“I’m so angry at myself,” Jordan said. “I’ve put cases on overhead racks a hundred times. I should have made sure it was secure.”
“It’s not your fault,” I sympathized. “No one can prepare for an attack by a merry-go-round or a tennis court, much less a rogue suitcase.”
OK. Maybe I didn’t put it quite like that, but it’s a true statement.
Maybe I said: “Accidents are ‘accidents’ because they are unexpected. It’s not like you planned for your suitcase to fall or that you expected to go home tonight with a broken hand.”
Or that the fractures would require surgery.
“I’m an adult. You don’t need to come,” Jordan insisted.
To which any parent’s reply is, “Ha. Ha. Ha, ha, ha.”
Gary insisted on going for two reasons. For one, he, the veterinarian in the family, would not have been happy with my substandard answers to his medical questions. My husband preferred to hear details firsthand (pun intended). For two, Gary loves the coffee at the café in our daughter’s building.
I admit there’s an outside chance he may have wanted to wrap his girl in a Dad-sized hug and let her know all would be well.
And it will—thanks to the surgeon who placed one long screw in Jordan’s 4th metacarpal, another in the 5th metacarpal, and performed a proximal phalanx screw fixation on the middle finger.
Don’t be impressed by my use of medical terminology. I sent the X-Ray to my friend Doyle, who also happens to be an orthopedic expert. Those words are his, not mine.
I make up for my lack of medical expertise with my ability for finding positives in negatives. I told my daughter, “Be glad the injury didn’t happen before or during your trip. Thank God it’s your left hand. Best of all, the innocent woman left the train—head intact.”
Jordan and the bandaged hand she didn’t break have returned to work and the gym. The rogue suitcase? Hiding in a closet, no doubt.
