Something Is Not Right

First, a little family context: a household line in my own home, which I carried from the home of my childhood is “Something is not right.” This comes from the Madeline books with the plucky Parisian orphan. Miss Clavel had a talent for sensing trouble and would declare, “Something is not right!” which we adopted, employing a French accent as best we could (“somezeeng eez not right!”).

The TV in my childhood home, the only TV for many years, was in the basement, so, naturally, my sisters and I logged many hours down there. On my way down, I liked to jump many stairs in a single bound. I’d jump down the last few, then walk past the last jumping point by a few stairs, jump again, then add another and jump again, and so on. This one time, I landed at the bottom and recoiled in pain from what felt like a bee sting.

I called out in pain, and my dad came to check on me. Can you bend your ankle? Okay, wiggle your toes. Now, stand up and put some weight on your foot. I could put weight on most of my foot, but something felt off. We could make out a tiny red dot on my heel, but no bee or any other bug was in sight. My mother and I looked at each other: “Somezeeng eez not right.”

After much hemming and hawing, my dad decided to take me to the hospital. I recounted my stair adventure to the good doctor, and he gently pushed on my heel. He decided to take an X-ray, and do you know what? There was a sewing needle IN MY FOOT. My foot just happened to land in such a way that the needle hiding in the carpet entered my foot eye-first, missed the nerves, and disappeared from view.

I was to go home, drink and eat nothing, and report back for minor surgery in the morning. I couldn’t wait to tell my mom and sisters that I had a needle IN MY FOOT. How cool was that?

I can still taste the sickly sweet ether they used to put me under. What seemed like a minute or two after the doctor’s and nurse’s voices became muffled and disappeared, I woke up without a needle in my foot, but desperately thirsty. The friendly nurse offered me soda on ice, and I chugged the whole thing and promptly threw up on her.

I wished I had gotten to save the X-ray of the needle cozily tucked into my heel as a testament to my hunch that turned out to be correct: somezeeng was not right.