The Fragment

When I was 14, I spent long weeks conditioning for the upcoming softball season. From running until I puked to a seven-minute mile and some serious weights on my squats, I was in the best shape in my life. Tryouts were in a week and I was ready.

On one rare occasion, I had to ride the activity bus home after conditioning; both my parents were teachers, so there was always one of them still in town doing something, but on this highly unusual day, they had gone home and wanted to pick me up from the activity bus stop. Of course, this was the one day that I ended up running late in getting changed back to street clothes in the locker room, and when one of my friends hollered at me that the buses were ready to pull out, I tackled the gym stairs while still pulling on my jacket and hefting my book bag on my shoulder.

My distracted, klutzy self missed a step on the second to last step of the second landing and I took a long fall. The crack of my ankle when I landed was pretty sickening.

I ended up, of course, in the ER getting an X-ray and when the doc put it up on the light board in the room with us, his eyebrows furrowed as he looked at a strangely shaped object in the center of my foot.

My dad noticed his frown and decided to quiz him. "You know what that is, don't you?"

Our family doctor, who had treated every illness since I was two, shook his head.

"That's the bullet fragment," Daddy shared.

The doc's eyebrows lifted in comprehension. "Right," he said. "I didn't think it would still be there."

When I was six, I shot myself in the foot.

I had been raised around guns and shooting. My dad was an avid hunter and about half the meat on our table came from wild game. From the time I was old enough to aim and squeeze the trigger, I'd been target shooting with my father and some of my best memories from four and five years old are going squirrel hunting with him to help him listen for the squirrels cutting nuts in the trees.

On the day after Thanksgiving during my first grade year, my mom washed up dishes from dinner while my dad took me and my two-year-old brother out for some target shooting with his .22 revolver.

I was so excited for this session because my dad had finally decided I was big enough to cock the gun myself. Previously, I would aim it and pull the trigger while he held the stock, but he was letting me hold the stock, cock the gun, aim, and pull the trigger this time. It took years for me to realize that he was still supporting the weight of the gun with his finger underneath the barrel.

I felt like such a big girl as I positioned the gun. Daddy had talked me through cocking it, using that finger on the barrel for balance, and I had one eye closed, slowly moving the gun so that the little metal line at the front centered perfectly between the notch. My concentration was absolute and my finger tightened marginally as I prepared to squeeze the trigger, having been instructed by my father a million times not to jerk it.

I remember the sound of the shot as it rang out and I remember my confusion at hearing it because I hadn't pulled the trigger.

While I was aiming, my little brother had started around my kneeling father, coming around the arm on which the finger balancing the gun rested. When my dad saw him out of the corner of his eye, he automatically shot his arm out to knock him out of the line of fire. I simply dropped the gun.

Unfortunately, I caught it by the trigger.

Have you ever had your foot go to sleep and you didn't realize it? When you put it down, it was completely numb until the ants started crawling and then you started jumping up and down and smacking your foot until full feeling came back, right? Take that full-on ants crawling sensation and multiply it by 100. That's what it felt like when I shot my foot.

My father frantically searched the ground for the hole. I could feel his rising panic as those ants started marching up my foot.

"Daddy?!" I cried just as the blood started staining the awful brown penny-loafers that my mom loved and I hated.

His response was instantaneous; he scooped me up, pinching the top and the bottom of the hole that was starting to pump blood pretty fiercely as he started to bellow for my mom.

I've never been a huge believer in psychic ability, though I'll allow that there are too many unexplained phenomenon for me to deny that there's some things I'll never be able to explain. The fact that my mother had already grabbed the keys, locked up the house, and was on her way to the car as soon as she heard the report of the gun falls into that category for me. Before my dad and I had even realized what had happened, my mom had one of those magic mother moments--she just knew.

We jumped in the car and tore up the road. Back in the 80's, we didn't have 911 in our middle-of-nowhere home. To get to the main roads was an eight-minute drive, at one point crossing a one-lane bridge to get through Fairystone Park.

I don't remember too much about the ride, but I still have the occasional nightmare about driving through Fairystone. At the very end of the bridge, we got behind a dark green truck. The man driving the truck had ice blue eyes, a large black beard, longish black hair that was topped by a ball cap. For some reason, this man would not let my father pass. Daddy had his emergency blinkers on and honked his horn. He tried to pass on the left as soon as the road opened straight, but the man crossed the double-line to prevent him from passing. The other driver braked hard, actually slowing down and swerving to stay in front of him. Both my mother and father experienced road rage, my dad in particular swearing vociferously and promising legal action against the man while I bled slowly around my mom's pinching fingers.

Aside from being extremely grumpy that my mom was hurting me by squeezing so tightly, I don't remember having strong emotions like fear. Because I was the collected one and we were behind him for so long, I took a few seconds to memorize his license plate since my dad said that he wanted to call the police on him. We passed him as soon as we got on route 57.

We dropped my brother off at my great-aunt's house, roaring into her driveway like the Dukes of Hazzard, and Daddy sprinted up with my freaked out bro in his arms to pound until they opened the door. He was back in seconds and we ripped our way back onto the highway.

They were waiting when we pulled into the emergency room after the quickest trip into town I can recall because my great-aunt had called the hospital to tell them we were coming so they could prepare. The orderly who took me from my mother's arms was a giant black man, and I remember thinking that being enfolded in his arm's felt like sinking into pillows made of marshmallows. He was such a kind man, reassuring me as he hefted me onto the waiting gurney where they rushed me to be examined.

I don't remember much about any of the time in the hospital. I do remember talking to the police, answering their questions about how I was shot since they had been called as soon as the gunshot wound was reported. My dad felt so much guilt that I think he almost hoped there would be legal consequences, but it was just a tragic accident that could have been so much worse.

I do remember the look on my parents' faces as Daddy gave his statement about the man who wouldn't let us pass when I jumped in to give the deputy the make and model of the truck along with the license plate and detailed physical description. Their faces weren't quite as awesome as the deputy's face, though.

The doctors told me that if the bullet had been less than a millimeter to the left, it would have shattered the main bone of my foot instead of barely chipping it. I would have never walked without a limp, they predicted. As it is, I have an uncanny ability to predict when it will snow because the tiny fragment that's there wiggles just a little when the pressure changes.

The only real negative side effect is that I always have to warn the technicians not to rub over it when I get a pedicure. The silver lining there is that so far I've only kicked one technician in the face from reflex when they hit the fragment.