At the time, Hurricane Floyd had the largest diameter of any hurricane in history.  It was huge and moving toward my town and expected to hit that late August day.  That is, at least, how I remember it, though now I cannot verify that through research.  Research be damned.  My memory is clear on this point.  My wife was scheduled to fly out that morning, while the storm approached from the Atlantic, she heading west for a outdoor retailer's convention in Seattle.  Early that morning, just as the dawn was breaking a sickly yellow, we drove to the airport in a small rain.  We did not talk much and did not listen to the radio.  There was simply the hiss of the tires on the wet road and the metronomic thunk-a-thunk-a-thunk of the wipers against the rain.

I dropped her curbside at the airport with little conversation.  Odd, I thought, since there was a good chance I would well likely be riding out a hurricane later that day, but our thoughts were on her getting out safely before the winds picked up and flights began to cancel.

Back home, I began to batten things down for the approaching storm.  Anything that could blow away was moved inside.  The big glass top to the wrought iron table, though. . . .  It was almost an inch thick and five feet in diameter.  It was heavy, and I did not wish to move it.  Perhaps I could simply lay it on the ground, I thought, and did.  As I stood over it, I wondered, though, what a hundred and twenty mile an hour wind could do with it.  Could such a wind pick it up and. . . .  Stupidly, I decided to move it to the garage.

I was strong, but carrying the glass top in the rain was not easy, and twice I sat it down as I lugged it across the lawn to the garage at the other end of the property.  Finally I reached the garage and opened the door and carried it in wondering where I might lay it.  Against the wall?  It would slide.  And as I stood there looking around, wondering and thinking, the giant, wet piece of glass began to slip between my hands, and squeezing harder to hold it, I only accelerated the fall.  There was no crashing noise, no sound of shattering glass. . . only a dull, sickening thump.  It had landed on the big toe of my right foot.  Why? I wondered.  Had I tried to keep it from breaking?  Really?  There was no pain, only a swelling numbness, but the pain would come, I knew, and I should move before it did.  I put some pressure on the toe to test it as I began to step.  Perhaps I had been lucky, I thought.  Maybe it was only a very bad bruise.  But as I stepped, I felt a liquid squish inside as if there were no bones.  Oh no, oh, no I thought as I stepped on my heel to walk outside.

It was difficult to move as I made my way across the yard, then suddenly it was too difficult.  I felt the the sudden draining of blood from my head, my tongue becoming cold and numb, and I went down.  I lay my head back against the grass and threw my arm across my eyes and lay there for I have no idea how long.  It was like a dream, the cold, light rain falling from the darkening gray sky.  I was tired, I thought, and I would just rest awhile. But later, and I don't know how much later, I knew I would have to get up.  My dog was inside the house and would need an insulin shot soon.  There was that to do and no one else to do it.

Just then, the door of the apartment above the garage opened.  The woman who rented from me cried out, "Are you O.K."?

"Yea, yea, I'm O.K.  I dropped that big glass table top on my toe.  I think I need to go to the hospital, though."

I could tell by her face that my toe might look bad.  I hadn't courage enough to look at it yet.

"Do you want me to take you?" she asked.

"No, don't bother yourself.  I'm going to give the dog her shot, and then I'll drive myself."

I stood up with much difficulty as I said this, and then the sky began to swim again, and suddenly I was back on the ground.  I looked up to her where she stood on the balcony wide-eyed.

"Yea, you'd better take me.  I don't think I can drive."

I don't remember getting into her car or remember the drive to the hospital.  I just remember how cold it was lying on the gurney in the emergency room wet as I was.  I shivered, of course, from the cold and from shock, and after what seemed hours, I asked a nurse if I could have a blanket.  I never saw her as I had put the pillow across my eyes.  Protection, I guess.  I didn't want to see anything.  She brought me the thinnest of blankets that did little to assuage my shivering, and I lay for an endless time listening to doctors attend to an old woman who had been brought in from a nursing home.  She had no relatives in town.  She was in bad shape.  For the doctors and the nurses, she was a huge inconvenience.  They left her to lie and moan just as they were letting me.  The difference, I thought, was that she could well be dying.  I was only in danger of losing my big toe.

What would life be without that toe, I wondered.  I knew it was critical to balance.  When I was a kid, one of the neighbor boys had lost a big toe when his father ran across it with the lawn mower.  But he learned to compensate and was a great runner.  I didn't know if I would be able to learn that well, but if I did lose it, I thought, I would surely try.  It was funny how things could turn in a moment.  One day you are healthy and happy and have it made.

Finally things were beginning to happen.  I was wheeled off for X-rays and moved from one gurney to another.  The pain was becoming surreal, and when the X-ray technician began to manipulate my toe, I told him he'd need to be very, very careful.  It was a hollow threat in my condition, but it was a threat nonetheless.  And he was.  And then we changed gurneys once more and I was wheeled back to whence I came.  During all of it, I had never taken the pillow from my eyes.

And once again, I lay for a very long time.  Now, however, a nurse came and said she was going to give me something for pain.

"I hope it warms me up," I said, hoping for some great narcotic heat.

"Are you cold?" she asked.

"Are you kidding me?" I responded.  "I've been lying her wet for hours with this piece of tissue blanket over me.  Yes, I'm very, very cold.'

I hadn't seen her, but she sounded like an angel, and next thing I knew, she was piling blankets on top of me.

"Here, is that better?"

And then she gave me a shot.

In a little while the trembling and shaking began to subside and the pain in my toe became more bearable.

And I lay and thought again about what it might be like if I lost my toe.

Then there was a great commotion.  The doctor had come and a crowd was in attendance.  He spoke in the voice of a movie fighter pilot, cocky and sure and commanding.

"How you doing here?" he asked.

I was moved to peek out from under the pillow for the first time.  I wanted to see this guy.  He looked like what you would expect, middle-aged, a bit handsome, fit.

"Swell," I said.

"What seems to be the problem?"

What the fuck? I thought.  Really?  We're going to play this game?  Everyone had looked at me.  He had the charts.  He needed me to tell him what the fuck was wrong?

"Oh. . . I don't know.  I think I might have hurt my toe."

"How'd you do it?"

I went through the narrative with my head under the pillow again.

"Well. . . let's take a look at it."

What the fuck he was doing I'll never know, but I said some pretty awful things to him.  I could feel the jigsaw puzzle of bones move around, grinding and popping, as he manipulated it this way and that.  Why?  Why would he need to move it at all, I wondered?  I would get well regardless now, I told myself, and I will come back and beat him until he shits his pants.  Just then, I had never hated anyone as much in my life as I hated him.

When it was all done, of course, he told me he thought I might be lucky.  The X-rays showed compound fractures all over the place, but the joint was intact.  Not only would I probably keep my toe, but I should be able to bend it when I did.

Fuck it all, I thought.  I was suddenly happy.

"Are you O.K.?" a voice said.

It was the nurse from before.

"Yea, sure," I said.

"I'm sorry.  That doctor is an asshole.  He gets like that."

God, if I could only take a look at her, I thought, I know she would be beautiful.  But I couldn't.  Or didn't.  I kept my eyes shielded from the world.  I just wanted to go home and start to heal.  I just wanted to go home.