Filling in the Cracks
-A Memoir-

       The clackity-clack of my spikes against the cement of
the dugout was music to my ears.  My brand new cleats,
the first pair of metal ones that I had ever owned,
seamed to glisten on that hot morning.  As I ran
through the grass, I felt like my shoes had wings.  I
joined the rest of my team to stretch and heard the
hum of the light Sunday morning traffic on the nearby
freeway.  It was a warm day for November.  Just nights
before, the Bay Area had been in the middle of a
rainstorm.  Now the sun beat down upon us.  Lucky. I
guess this game was meant to happen.  It was, after
all, our last tournament of the year.
       The game was a pitching duel for the first four
innings.  From my position at first base I had
observed the disgusted batters of the other team shake
their heads on their long walks back to the bench.
From my dugout I watched our batters encounter a
similar fate.  When I had stepped up to the white
pentagon called the “plate” in the first inning, I got
out.  “I have this guy next at bat,” I told myself
with an air of confidence.
       Now it was the fourth inning.  I was again surrounded
by the white chalk of the batters box, digging in to
make a stand against the man who had been mowing down
my team like he wielded a machine gun.  My cleats
struggled to loosen the rock hard dirt.  The rain
soaked ground had been baked crisp by the sun, much to
my dismay.  I felt like a farmer trying to plow his
field, but instead of finding rich soil, I encountered
granite.  Eventually the metal of my cleats triumphed,
and I was ready.  The pitcher glared in to get his
sign, and as he nodded he began his steady delivery.
       When the pitch came, I was ready.  The loud -PING- of
my bat was accompanied by the cheers of my teammate’s
parents-  my dad was on his way with my sister.
Again, I was flying on the wings of my metal cleats,
taking a banana turn around first base and heading
into second.  My heart thumped in my chest and a
slight smile was evident on my face.  I turned to see
my coach clapping.
       “Great Job, Grant!”
       “Way to get it started, G!”
       Nothing feels better than hitting a baseball on the
sweet spot, at least at the age of thirteen.  I
couldn’t dwell on my hit for too long, however,
because I had not yet crossed the plate to give my
team the lead.  With one out already, the batter after
me didn’t help the cause.  A pop-up to the shortstop
left me standing at second base hoping my team could
come through.  I looked over at my third base coach
and was surprised when I picked up the steal sign.
That can’t be right I thought to myself, not in this
situation.  The pitch came and went, and I remained at
second base.  I assumed wrong, though, because on the
next pitch, my coach made sure that I understood he
wanted me to steal third.  Ok, here goes nothin’.
       When the pitcher lifted his leg toward the plate, I
took off.  “RUNNER!”  I raced towards third and as I
neared the base, I decided to slide headfirst.  Then,
I changed my mind.  Don’t ask me why, I have no
answer.  I awkwardly began my feet first slide into
third, but a small part of my body still wanted to do
the opposite.  When it ended, I had not yet reached
the base.  I was called out, but I knew that something
else was wrong.  I didn’t feel any pain, but I
couldn’t move my left leg.  I lay on the ground with a
grimace on my face.  Straight ahead I saw my dad and
sister arriving on the scene.  The man who had told me
to steal raced to my assistance.
       “Are you okay, Grant?”  He inquired with a worried
look.
       “I don’t know...”  I said truthfully.  Isn’t it
supposed to hurt when something is wrong?
       “Is it your right leg?”
       “No, my left,”  As I said these words, I lifted my
leg and set it into a different position.  When I saw
it flop from side to side, like a dog’s wagging tail,
I was sure it wasn’t normal.  “I think it’s broken,” I
stammered quietly.  I’d never broken a bone before.
       Another coach chimed in, “I’m sure it’s not that bad.
 Maybe you sprained your ankle.  Let’s get you over in
the shade.”
       I told them I couldn’t walk after they had helped my
from the ground, so I used the coaches as crutches and
joined my dad off the field.  I was given a few
aspirins, but still the pain was nonexistent.
Eventually, I was loaded into the trunk of my dad’s
red Suburu.   My brand new metal cleats sat next to
me, destined for a lonely future.
       We arrived at my mom’s office to drop off my nine
year old sister.  My mom was worried about me, but by
then I had become convinced that nothing was seriously
the matter.  My attitude seemed to rub off on my
family, so my dad and I departed to the hospital
almost as a formality.

       It was while I was sitting on the gurney at the
emergency room that the feeling began to return to my
left leg.  The pain made its presence felt.  At first
it was just someone clearing their throat, but
eventually it was a yell that spread through my body.
By the time the doctors came to show me some
attention, I was ready to give anything for some
morphine.  I remember the long needle slowly sliding
underneath my top layer of skin and injecting the drug
for what seemed like an eternity.  It stung at first,
but when I thought of the pain it would erase, I
relaxed.  An investment- more pain now means less
later.
       Even with the pain, I still thought that the worst
that could have happened to me was a small ankle
break.  “Look, I can move my toe.”  I kept letting
positive and unrelated thoughts enter my head.  The
thing that bothered me most at the hospital was not my
injury, but the fact that the empty room next door had
a TV, and mine didn’t.  After reading the “hazardous
waste” signs in my cell several times, I was
thoroughly bored.
       The doctors finally wheeled me in my comfortable bed
to the x-ray room, then to the CAT scan.  It was my
first time getting this special treatment, and I was
impressed by all of the fancy equipment.  I should
mention that by now the pain in my leg had completely
disappeared.  After the excursion, I was again placed
in the room so the doctors could decide what fate had
handed me.

       “Broken,” he said.  His name was doctor Sidleman or
something.  Unlike his name, the word stuck with me.
Okay, broken.  Well, I guess I was prepared for that.
I thought.
       “It’s broken pretty badly.”  These words were
somewhat of a surprise.  The doctor turned on a
backlight and attached the X-rays for display.  He
pointed to an area on the white of the bone.  “As you
can see, the fibula is broken, as is the tibia.”  It
all looked normal to me, but who was I to argue.  “The
break on the fibula continues down to the ankle and
into the growth plate, which is a cause for concern.
If it doesn’t heal properly, you could be left with
one leg shorter than the other.”

       The ride home was tough.  My bright red cast covered
my entire leg, up to the top of my thigh.  The
morphine had worn off and the pain was back worse than
before.  When we pulled up to my house, it was long
past dark, hours after my sunny baseball game had
begun.  My dad helped me out of the car, but all the
strength seemed to be gone from my limbs.  I struggled
with every step, a crutch under each arm and one leg
operational.  My muscles trembled, working harder than
ever to do something once routine.  By the time I
reached the steps to my door, I was spent.  I could
not summon a single ounce of energy from my broken
body.  It was at this instant that my situation set
in.  The tears that came pouring down my cheeks, still
dusty from the baseball game, were not because of pain
or sadness, but because of hopelessness.  If this
short walk was so difficult, how would I be able to
cope with school?  Would I ever be able to get back on
a baseball field?  How much would the slide into third
change the course of my life?

When I reached my bed, I was relieved, but the relief
was very short lived.  Trying to fall asleep with a
full leg cast on is like trying to eat with your mouth
closed.  Eventually you find a method, putting the
food in through your nose, but on the first try it is
impossible.
       I sat in my bed for hours upon hours.  It seemed like
I had waited for days, longer than any night could
possibly last.  Thoughts raced through my head like
Nascar drivers at the Daytona 500.  Around and around
the track they sped, the same thoughts over and over.
There was never a calm moment, but it was never
exciting, because thoughts can’t crash.
       I couldn’t shift the way I lay, so my body became
stiff and cramped.  The Vicodin I had taken eventually
wore off, and the pain came back slowly and surely,
like the little engine that could.  “I think I can, I
think I can, I think I can.”  I felt the pain coming,
the train coming, and I thought I hope you can’t.  But
I knew it was inevitable.
       I couldn’t get up on my own to get water for more
drugs, so my parents had left me a shiny silver
whistle to blow if I needed help.  They were the drug
dealers, and I was the junky, sitting in my bed,
sweating, needing the drugs just to get through the
night.  I would blow and blow and blow on the whistle
until they heard me from their bedroom upstairs.  I
didn’t know they were coming until I heard the loud
creeks of the staircase.  Finally I could relax my
lungs.  It is interesting that I never woke my sister
up.  Her room is right next to mine.
       The first night was unbearable, but the day after was
much better than I expected.  Spending a school day
lying in bed watching movies and playing Grand Theft
Auto III is a dream come true for your average middle
school boy.  I thought a little about what the kids at
school thought, but I assumed that the members of my
baseball team would spread the word.  Besides, for
those of you who don’t know, GTA is super addicting
and I couldn’t take my mind off it.
       That night, I repeated the first.  I might have
gotten a little more sleep.  Nights were terrible.
       The next day my parents and I began to wonder how I
would keep up with school.  I had a pretty hard
schedule, topped off by my math class at Berkeley
High.  A representative from the School District came
to my house to give us the possibilities.  Luckily for
me, Berkeley has a program where tutors will come to
your house and meet with your teachers for you.
       His name was Seth Collitz, and he was a life saver.
I called him Seth, not Mr. Collitz.  He was a great
guy, super friendly, long hair, preferred mode of
transportation was a bicycle.  He wanted to become a
teacher, and was getting his credential from SF State.
 In the mean time he was a district tutor.  To me he
was a life saver.  I think that all his other students
were kids who had been expelled by their respective
school and needed to be taught until they found
another school that would accept them.  I think I was
a bit of a relief for Seth, and he sure put a lot of
effort into me.
       The only connection that I myself had with a teacher
while I was out of school was when my English/History
teacher paid me a visit.  It was a little strange, but
very much appreciated.  It lifted my spirits.  She
brought with her a chess set, a Simpson’s chess set.
I have no recollection of who won, probably her,
considering all the pain killers that I was on, but I
guarantee that I had a smile on my face at the end.
It was the only time I’ve had a current teacher over
at my house.
       The original assumption was that I would return to
school in a matter of weeks, two or three.  My visits
to the Orthopedics wing at Kaiser in Oakland were
reassuring, yet every time I went, the prediction for
the cast removal date was pushed back.  “Its because
we want to be careful with the growth plate.  We
wouldn’t want you to have uneven legs,” the doctors
would say.
       “When will I be able to play baseball again?”  I
would either say this, or think it in my head.  I was
always promised that I wouldn’t even miss a game.
       Two weeks turned into a month, and a month turned
plural.  By the end of january, my situation hadn’t
changed.  My cast had become a little shorter, but I
was still stuck at home in front of the TV, by now
getting totally sick of daytime television and Jerry
Maguire.  Every once in a while some friends would
stop by, telling me about life at school amongst my
peers.  They told me stories of the “RIP Grant”
proclamations they had written on their arms and about
all the people who believed them.  They talked about
how fun it was to be an eighth grader, the seniors of
King Middle School.  They were the cool kids on
campus.  I’m the cool kid of my living room, I
thought.  Even the remotes look up to me.
       January became February, and the reports from the
doctors were still the same.  “You’re almost there.
It’ll come off soon.  You’ll be on the field again,
you’ll be at school in no time.”  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I’ll believe it when I see it.  Every time I visited
the hospital, they cut off my cast to take X-rays.
Each time the leg would look thinner and thinner,
droopier and sadder.  It didn’t feel like mine
anymore.  I could wiggle the toes, but I was too
afraid to move anything else with the cast off, lest I
break it again.  I wouldn’t have been able to handle
that.
       It came time to sign up for little league.  I had
been a star the year before, setting a home run record
for the league and leading my team to a championship.
I expected them to welcome me back wholeheartedly,
“the boy who overcame horrible injury to return to
baseball.”
       “Sorry.  We can’t have a player with a cast on in the
dugout,”  They told my dad.
       “His cast will be off by then, or soon after,”  my
dad replied.  His argument didn’t fly.  I was, for the
first time in seven years, without a spring baseball
team.
       Jump ahead in time to April, to the beauty of
springtime, to the blossom covered trees.  A new
animal is born.  Its name is “Grant’s Leg.”  The cast
had come off, and it was off to stay.  The doctors’
promises of removing the cast had finally come true,
three months after they had originally promised.  I
remember putting on the leg brace in the hospital.  It
felt comfortable, and I was glad to have it for
protection.  “Take a run down the hall,”  the doctor
said.
       I can not have heard that.  The thought was earily
similar to the time I second guessed my base coach,
ages ago.  I paused.  “Go on,” he urged, it’ll be
fine.
       This guy must be crazy.  Eventually I was convinced
to do it.  Slowly I began a walk, then a brisk walk,
then I began to gingerly jog.  I was just waiting for
the leg to snap under my weight, for the process to
start over again.  I could picture the doctor’s evil
grin as he got a chance to torture me again.
       It didn’t break.

       I returned to school that week.  I didn’t know what
to expect.  How would I be treated after such a long
disappearance?  I couldn’t know.
       When I got there, I was greeted with smiles.  People
were glad to see me.  You could have called me Jesus,
back from the dead in the month of April.
       But after these happy hugs and greetings, there
wasn’t anything else.  The holes I had left were
filled.  My old friends had found others.  They didn’t
stop liking me, and they never avoided me, but when I
was with them, I felt like I didn’t belong there.
People had changed. They’d grown older, grown up.
While their friendship with me had flickered, their
friendships with others grew concrete.  I was no
longer one of the guys they called to come hang out on
the weekend.  I was left out, looking for a way back
in.
       I turned my attention to baseball.  I had to get back
on the field.  I began to practice with the middle
school team, no running at first, but slowly picking
up my pace and confidence.  I finally grew healthy
enough and “snatched” my spot back.  I was the
rightful owner.  Some things change, some things stay
the same, but I knew if I just stayed myself, things
would work themselves out.
       Eventually came graduation, summer came and went, and
high school began.  A new life.