The Injury by Anna Enquist

"Damn. What a shitty mess. I'm never coming back here. Let him look at his own crooked legs sometime, the dope! Just look, I can do everything again with my leg!"
Yes, he can do everything. We are going to eat in the city to celebrate his recovery. Afterwards Willem will go to the café with his friends. For the first time he is again involved in tactical soccer deliberations.
"The goalkeeper is quitting. He's too afraid. I want to be goalkeeper, just like I used to be. After the vacation I'm going to train again!"
The telephone.
"Doctor Buikhuis's secretary here. Could you come tomorrow? The doctor wants to discuss something with you."
If only I weren't home. If only I didn't have a telephone. If only I could say no.
We don't have to wait and are immediately shown into the examining room where the history of the break is hanging against the light boxes. Doctor Buikhuis juggles with the angled ruler.
"We have conferred about it once more, at the end of the journey, and you see, there is a bend in the leg.
The break itself has healed beautifully. That's not the problem. And what happens next? The bone presses slightly obliquely on the ankle, and this joint isn't made for that."
He looks at Willem.
"You are going to have trouble with it. Like Marco van Basten. You have to use that ankle for another sixty years!"
"That bend, wasn't it there from the start?" says Erik, who has also come along. "Why did no one say anything about it?"
"You yourselves chose a conservative treatment. It was a borderline case; most of the time it turns out well. We have a proposal. We're going to operate. We'll leave the break as is, but we'll saw a wedge out of the bone in order to compensate for the angulation. We'll drive two steel pins through the leg, underneath and above the wedge. They'll be connected to each other on the outside with screws. They're marvellous, those external fixations. You can tighten them as much as you want. After four weeks the pins come out - in adults we do it without anaesthesia. By that time they're usually loose anyway. Then another four weeks or so, and you're done!"
Doctor Buikhuis has stood up and is walking through the room, talking enthusiastically. His eyes sparkle and he is flushed. He points out on Willem's leg where he wants to saw and where the pins will be driven in. He sits down again and opens his appointment book. I hear Erik and Willem breathe heavily, I cross my legs and lean against the desk, my head slightly tilted. "You have explained it very clearly and graphically."
"Yes," says the doctor, "it's so wonderful what can be done. In such a fracture we usually drive a long pin from the knee through the bone right away. Fantastic!"
"It's taken us a bit by surprise. Willem is in the middle of his finals. We have to get a little used to the idea."
"Well, we do have to schedule the operation. How about right after the examination?"
"In view of the seriousness of the surgery, I would like to think about it a little and perhaps have the opinion of another doctor."
"You are free to do so. That's possible. But I wouldn't hesitate too long, you shouldn't wait a year with this, that would be damaging."
"Could you say anything about the chances of damage? A percentage. Is there any literature?"
"Madam, it's not like that. You have heard our opi
nion, there is a proposal, the family is going to consider it. What do we arrange?"
"You'll hear from us," I say, dazed.
I receive the heavy file folder with the records that I am to leave at the reception. Before doing so, I pull out the recent X-rays and put them under my coat.
"It sounds very plausible," say our friends. "You should consider it seriously. It's a university hospital, they can really do a lot. And they see a lot."
"Maybe someone needs to do a research project," I counter. "Not too long ago I heard about a series of operations on a ten-year-old child, they sawed out the bone and put it back in upside down. They must be out of their minds."
Think about it, I do nothing else. Ad nauseam I see an opened leg in front of me, neatly shaven. The muscles are pulled apart with meat hooks so that the pale bone lies defencelessly visible. A big green man wearing welding goggles sets the saw into it. Discreet hissing. The operating nurse sucks away the splinters. In a corner of the room stands the cannon with the steel pins. Willem is unconscious, a bathing cap over his long hair, without glasses. The intubation tube shapes his mouth into a white o.
"I'll do it right now!" he says while running back and forth between the refrigerator and the table. "Then I'll be done with it by summer."
"But what about your final exam?" I hear my voice tremble.
"We have to be practical," says Erik. "That doctor thinks it's necessary. Is it rude to go to another one - is it even possible?"
I start calling. The son of a friend was treated by the Feyenoord orthopaedist. "He is very talented, he was able to lengthen each leg eight inches for Ed de Goey, and you can't see it at all! He'll be glad to look at the X-rays."
Call. Appointment with a snappish secretary, in three months. Right before the vacation, that surgeon will be tired of sawing and Willem will have a lucky escape, I think. What do I actually want? I don't want them to cut into healthy flesh. I don't want to feel guilty if he limps in ten years. I don't want to keep looking anxiously at his ankle. I don't want pins through my son's leg.
The weather changes, near the pond the medlar trees come into leaf. Grebes chase each other over and under the water. "Just ran around the pond three times!" says Willem as he comes in, sweating. "And I got a seven for maths! This summer we're going to the Pyrenees with the whole team; we decided that last night. Isn't that great?"
"You shouldn't force your own preoccupations on him," says my girlfriend. "Does he think those steel bolts are scary or do you? He's eighteen, he has to decide himself. But then he has to be able to talk about it, with you."
What kind of talking, I think. Wouldn't it be better to go to the hospital than to the mountains, do I have to say that to him? Or postpone that operation until the fall, when you've just started your studies. You're walking so well now, but you have a time bomb in your leg that keeps ticking with every step; do you have any pain in your ankle, do you feel anything, does it feel different from your good leg?
"The Pyrenees? That's nice, Willem," I say, cowardly.
"You can call Verbeuk," says an older, thoughtful colleague when we sit next to each other at a meeting.
"I have informed him, and he is willing to give you a second opinion, provided that Buikhuis knows about it."
A few weeks later we stand in a dark oak-panelled doctor's office. The doctor is wearing a dark grey three-piece suit under the starched, conspicuously white coat. We shake his well cared-for hand. He wears shoes with six pairs of eyelets. On his pointed nose sit thick glasses in a transparent, surprisingly pink frame.
"Please tell me what happened."
I tell the story. The man asks nothing, only listens and looks at the X-rays that I've brought with me. Then Willem has to take off his shoes in the examining room and Verbeuk gets up. He disappears through the door. I remain seated by his desk.
Suddenly the doctor sits across from me and looks at me through the pink-framed glasses.
"The human locomotor apparatus is extremely well designed. Orthopaedic surgeons are enthusiastic constructors. They are surgeons and they operate. That is their profession. And mine, too. A violinist has to play the violin. A horticulturist has to prune. We have to be orthopaedic surgeons in a world where not everyone is an orthopaedic surgeon."
Willem moves around in the small side room and comes in.
"Are we going, Mum?"
"Flexible. The skeleton is flexible and behaves unpredictably. Sometimes it's difficult to live with the knowledge that we can predict so little. I wish you both all the best. Do take these with you."
He pushes the X-rays into my hand, we stand on the sidewalk, in the sun, we're going to eat a pastry, I have a glass of wine in the middle of the day, we're going away, we go to Paris...