It was a Saturday evening on May 22nd, 2021, and I had just made it home after a long shift at work at about 8:30 p.m. I was sitting at my dining table enjoying dinner and Netflix alone- since my roommate was out of town for the summer. 

Suddenly, the power to my apartment cuts out leaving me in the pitch black, and the fire alarm for the floor and building start alarming. My phone (of course) was dying and I quickly plugged it into my laptop and called my parents as I tried to figure out what was happening.

As I looked out my window, residents from the building were all pouring out into the street below. I stayed put since fire alarms often went off in my building, and I wanted to be sure I had a reason to go outside on a Saturday night alone since I was around a lot of bars. 

The fire chief came on the loudspeaker and announced that everyone needed to vacate the building because of a fire. 

At this point, my laptop was almost dead and so was my phone. I hung up the call with my parents and made my way downstairs to the jam-packed lobby. Families, college students, people with red solo cups and dresses all packed into the lobby. 

Staff of the building alerted us to all go out into the street, so I went outside to where the 5 fire trucks were surrounding the building. To try and figure out what was going on, I spoke to a couple of the residents around me to see if I could catch a story. After many more hours stuck outside waiting, I started seeing people leaving the building with suitcases. I went back inside and found a staff member and asked what was going on.

They said the trash chute in the basement had started a fire (perhaps someone threw something out that caused it). Because it caught fire, the basement sprinklers had been going off for a while. They flooded the basement and reached the generator for the building and caused the power outage. They needed everyone to find a place to stay because they couldn’t get maintenance there until Monday. 

I explained to the staff that I needed to go back upstairs to get my medications etc. to be able to spend the next 3 days elsewhere. I quickly grabbed my stuff and then headed out to the eerily quiet streets. 

With the 10% left on my phone, and it being about 1:30 a.m. in the morning, I contacted my parents explaining that I didn’t know where to go. They booked me a hotel about 10 blocks away and I quickly raced my way over. 

The frustrating part about this whole scenario was that they days kept having to be extended in the hotel. The building emailed us daily and kept saying “extend your stay another day,” and another and another. We were allowed into our apartments followed by security with a 10-minute timer, so you could grab clothes for work. 

I struggled with my meals this week since I didn’t have access to my kitchen and eating out was a large risk for flares, so I tried to stock up on microwavable mac & cheese.

I had to take photos of receipts to (later) file an insurance claim and throw out food that spoiled in my fridge during one of my “10-minute” visits. 

I still had appointments going on at this time alongside work. I had visited an allergist to see if I was allergic to chocolate since I had been having weird reactions to it just in the past year. Everything came back clear.

It was May 26th, and I received an email at about noon explaining that we could finally move back into our apartments. I was ecstatic and quickly packed up all my bags in my hotel room. I didn’t want to take multiple trips, so I carried all of the heavy bags with me in one go.

I think we can all guess where this was going… the “one trip” idea really wasn’t a good one…

I was walking quickly as I was worried, I was going to have an abdominal muscle cramp because of the weight of the bags. As I walked the crosswalk to my building-

Step- OUCH.

Oh no.

I knew what I had done.

Well not really- I actually thought my bone had ulcerated through, so it wasn’t exactly that (LUCKILY), but I had injured my already injured toe.

I limped my way into my building and was biting my lip under my mask in the elevator to not cry out in pain. 

I opened my door to my apartment, dropped my bags, quickly examined my foot, and headed to the emergency department. 

What a welcome home right?

As I limped my way 3 blocks to the emergency department, I was in a lot of pain.

When I had looked at my toe prior to leaving- my once thinned out atrophied area was filling with blood under the skin and turning a dark purple.

I remained in the waiting room for about half an hour with a once again almost dead phone (I really wasn’t prepared for these kinds of things).

All I had on me was my backpack with my wallet.

I sent an email to my primary care physician that I was in the hospital and wanted to know if they were able to come see me in the ED since I wanted to know more on the state of the injury.

I was moved to a different waiting room where I remained for another hour.

I was examined by an ER doctor in the hallway on the condition of my toe. I was trying to explain the whole history and explained how thin the skin was underneath. The issue was it didn’t look thin because of how swollen it had just become. It had looked normal in terms of size.

I was very stressed and annoyed with my whole 5-day journey and became agitated with the doctor. 

They then told me that there were “sick children there” and that this wasn’t a big deal. This statement really didn’t help the whole situation.

I finally got a room and x-rays were done. Nothing was broken, and I had an appointment with a new orthopedic surgeon the next day, so they figured I could get more answers with them. 

My primary care doctor did come to visit and examined me as well. 

Getting discharged took another hour or so and I was given crutches since I still couldn’t walk, and I was told to be careful not to accidentally step and damage things more. 

I had never walked in crutches before, so I quickly learned and was sent off. 

I struggled as I left and realized that I didn’t think I could make it home. It was now about 5:30 p.m. and I was sweating in the heat and again, had a dead phone. 

I started knocking on taxi windows asking for a ride, but they all had told me they were either on break or waiting for someone. I kept making my way down the block taking breaks and began to realize that I was going to have to make it home hell or highwater. 

I crutched my way home 3 blocks on the uneven pavement and when I finally made it, I closed my apartment door, and collapsed to the floor, just bawling my eyes out. 

Find out what happens next in the story titled, “Black & Blue, In Crutches Too”.