One minute you...

Fate is sealed in the blink of an eye. One minute you're sliding fast and free, wind blowing your hair, the next you're covered in ice shavings, dazed and confused. There was a crack. It must've been the phone that was in my back pocket! Quickly, I take it out and turn it on all its sides. It's perfectly fine. Relief washes over me as I throw it onto the hard ice in front of me. "But… what was that crack?" My eyes drift to my hand as I lift it slowly. It's crooked. There is a sizeable bump at the wrist. "That… wasn't there before". I tried to move it. Lightning sharp pain and realization, not yet panic. A guy slid towards me. "Are you ok? Can you get up? Put some ice on it. Come on, up, up! Let's sit you down" unintelligible chattering with the security.

The world was slow and heavy, a big weight on my entire being and I was feeling so weak. Trying to stay present, but my gaze was stuck on the unnatural hand. There was only the hand and its crookedness. But it wasn't really mine. I didn't know to whom it belonged, but I was the one who showed it to the doctors. They touched and pressed on it with gloved fingers. The pain was somewhere in the space between the skin and blue latex, in those few angstroms of oxygen and nitrogen. It wasn't really mine. And then, we drove to the hospital, disco lights and 80's dance music still playing. X-rays and casts and weird contraptions to put the pieces back together. Surgery, uncertainty, limbo.

One minute you're lying on the operation table, talking about your plans to go hiking in the summer, but of course, not in the Netherlands, the next, you're in a sterile, big open room with many other beds eating a racket ijs popsicle. You reach the yellow part and give up. The clock shows 13:23 and you start thinking about states and observables, what measurement really is and how to tie everything together nicely with bounded operators and Hilbert spaces, almost forgetting that an hour ago you started feeling dizzy and a bit warm and sick, as if you had one too many beers. And then - you were gone. And the team of doctors started cutting off the blood supply to your left hand, disinfecting and sterilizing everything with a pink liquid, finally taking the scalpel and digging in, through skin, adipose tissue, muscle all the way to the bone. So white and pure and broken, like an innocent teenage girl about to listen to Evanescence for the first time. Holding the skin and muscle aside the doctor positions the small metallic plate. He then takes out the screws, long sharp and sturdy and drills them in, one by one, as if he were a carpenter fixing a shelf. The buzzing fills the room. Once he's done, it's time to close up. Transformed into a tailor, he picks up the thread and needle and puts the muscle, fat and skin back together with a hidden stitch. A job well done. They all clap, go out one by one, the last turning off the lights. And I was just eating my flavoured ice on a stick!

It's a weird feeling, to have a part of your body not function the way it should, the way it has always. The first time I saw it after two weeks of casts and bandages and being careful with the way I hold it, the way I place it, the way I touch it, it was simply unnatural. It didn't sit right. It was swollen and still pink from the disinfectant, a bit bruised, weak and crooked. It didn't sit right. I tried to move it a bit. Slowly, left right, up down, rotate… It almost didn't work, but it was enough to prove that it was still mine. It is still mine, crooked and weak, but it's still mine. With a long red line running down towards the elbow. At least my other scar won't be alone anymore.

I swear I tried to write about something else. About time and how I always feel like I don't have enough. About how I always get the "battery low" warning right when I'm about to write the best piece of my life or when I just get into that flow state, or the movie is getting good. About how lizards should think more because it's unfair that humans keep this skill hidden from other species. About geese and how one told me humanity is doomed to fail. There is no winning we've already lost. I tried, I really tried, but all I could write was this. This piece about my broken wrist, mundane and personal and perhaps a little gruesome. I really tried, but this time there is no catch.

…

Go outside, it will kill you. But I promise it's worth it. Staying inside would've killed you too.

Cover

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Abendlandschaft mit Ziegenherde, 1847