One day in the summer the weather was humid that day trapping us to the confines of our own comforting red brick house. The clock on our stainless steel microwave glowed three twenty-six as we rushed past the kitchen and into the long undecorated hallway, leaving the echoes of our laughter bouncing off the walls. We ended our game of chasing each other as we slowed down to enter the office. As the doors open a pungent aroma hit my nose, and I’m reminded of the odor that only resides from this room. It’s scent reminding me as if I had just stepped into an antique shop. The office always had a warm welcoming feeling about it, maybe it was the olive green walls, or the old carpet decorated with flowers. The room always laid abandoned, but always gave a welcoming feeling.
As I lounge on the chocolate brown couch we keep in there, I see my brother, Brian, slowly moving the footrest away from its previous location next to the couch. I wonder what is he doing? My question was soon answered when I see him hop onto the footrest and then leap across the newly made gap. I felt like doing this would make me seem adventurous or more daring. I’m reminded that my interest in being adventurous could be traced back to when I was five years old. I had just begun gymnastics at a small family-owned gym in Ortonville. It started when I walked on the four-inch beam that was almost the same height as me, and when I got the weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. While that feeling scares some people it had the opposite effect on me.
Snapping back into the present I shot up to a standing position and looked down at the maybe two-foot gap. Brian stares at me waiting for me to try to jump across. My mind begins racing thinking that I might not make it across the gap and Brian would make fun of me. I knew I was being a little dramatic over such a small gap to jump, but I always get nervous trying something foreign. As I jump over the small gap it felt as if I had been flying, but that feeling ends too soon when my two feet land on the soft cushion of the footrest. As I turn around, I see Brian landing back onto the footrest with me. Soon we begin to spring back and forth as fast as we can as if we were in a race, continuously laughing. Somewhere in the blur of jumping across the gap imagining it was the Grand Canyon, or as if we were jumping from rooftop to rooftop like ninjas, Brian and I would slowly inch the furniture out farther by a few inches.
Minutes later, I collapse on the couch in exhaustion and a small layer of sweat. While I lay there I gaze out into our front lawn. The flowers flourished from the vibrant hues of color my mom had planted. I had not noticed that Brian had hopped off the couch and went to the old dark brown armoire retrieving the computer chair that had been lying there in the sun. He wheels the black computer chair between the two pieces of furniture and now took the spot of the gap we had been leaping over. “Hope, you have to jump from this couch and then onto the computer chair and then land on the one over there,” my brother says while pointing to the footrest that now sat almost four feet away. I look at the chair skeptically and I respond unsure, “ Why can’t you go first? You’re older than me.” “Hope, you need to stop worrying; you will be fine, it’s gonna be fun, you’re gonna spin in a circle and then hop on the other thing,” he reassures me trying to encourage me. I shifted my gaze between the computer chair and Brian and thought oh I will be fine, Brian said I will be fine.
As I stood up, I look at the new challenge I have just been faced with and I take a deep breath. That is when I took a big step on the couch and hopped as quickly as I could landing on the computer chair. For a split second I was relieved. Wow that was eas- but I am ripped from that thought when the chair spins me around too sharply, sending my body towards the floor. I make the horrible mistake of putting my hands down to try and slow the fall down, but all I accomplished from that was something way worse. As my body hit the carpet, I hear a loud crack echoing in my ears, and that’s when I begin to feel blistering pain throughout my right wrist that was still trapped underneath the weight of my body. My wrist screamed at me to get off of it and get some ice.
This was the worst pain I had ever experienced and hope no one has to deal with such unbearable pain especially at a younger age. I had thought getting a paper cut was bad, but almost nothing could compare to the pain I was enduring now. I let out a piercing scream that alerted my mom that something bad had happened while she was not looking. As I rolled over clutching my throbbing wrist, I could hear Brian continuously ask if I was okay, but I couldn’t answer him because I couldn’t stop the tears from running down my face. As I lay there waiting for help, I swear a year had passed before I began to hear my mom. My mom’s footsteps got louder the closer she got to the office, and when she got there, she lifted me off the ground and carried me through the house with Brian trailing close behind. She set me down in a chair in the kitchen and sat across me in another chair. My mom urgently told Brian to get me some ice from the fridge, and he sped off across the room, while my mom tried to calm me down. As she meticulously looked at my wrist Brian returned with a big Ziploc bag of ice and a paper towel wrapped around it.
The ice slightly numbed some of the pain I was feeling, but not nearly enough. My mom continued to check my wrists by holding them as if they were glass searching for any signs of something wrong. She asked me what happened very calmly but with a hint of worry in her hazel filled eyes, and I explained it quickly through hiccups from the tears. I kept asking my mom if I had broken my wrist terrified of what her answer might be. I hadn’t even noticed that my brother was gone until I heard a loud thud coming from the office. Soon following the thud came Brian running to where we were positioned in the cream-colored chairs claiming he had also just hurt his wrist even though he wasn’t crying or looked in pain. I could tell he had felt bad and “hurt” himself so he no longer had the feeling of guilt on his chest.
“Hope, I think you might have broken your wrist, but you’re going to be okay. We’re gonna have dad take you to the doctors after dinner to see if the swelling goes down,” my mom calmly says to me. I immediately wondered how am I supposed to go to school and write if I get a cast? My mom tells me to stay there while she finishes dinner, and I sit there frozen as if I was a statue that might crumble to pieces if I moved at all. Around fifteen minutes of me sitting there in that old cream colored chair replaying what had happened in the office and my mother constantly repeat that I was gonna be okay, dinner was. She made spaghetti with marinara sauce and garlic bread. As the smell of the freshly baked garlic bread entered my nose when my mom opened the oven I realized just how hungry I was.
As my mom assisted me to the counter and get me more ice, my brother began to dig into dinner. Since I am right-handed and that’s the one I hurt, my mom had to feed me. At the moment I was feeling very helpless because I couldn’t even eat myself. Moments later I heard the sound of the garage door slowly open with a creaky noise signaling that my dad had just gotten home from work. When he walked into the kitchen, he saw I was hurt from the ice pack around my arm and my still slightly puffy eyes from crying. He worriedly asked my mom what had happened, and she explained what I had told her when she asked me. My dad was soon filled in on my misfortune that day he came and sat by me and inspected my wrist just like my mom did and said that he would need to take me to the ER after dinner. He took my moms spot and helped me finish dinner, while my mom ate her own dinner and began to clean up. My parents then helped me put on my worn down Skechers, and get me carefully to the red car discolored from the sludge splattered on the sides, so we could go get an x-ray of my wrist.
As I sit in the car waiting for my dad to return I mentally and sarcastically shout at myself wow Hope you really thought that was a good idea? My wrist still stung, but now I was more frustrated than sad or in pain that I had just potentially broke my wrist because I listened to Brian. When my dad returned he started the car and began to drive off to McClaren, where I would find out that indeed I had broken my wrist and would need a cast. Even though I was only six when this happened I should not have just trusted my brother and done what he said. I blindly trusted him since he had claimed I would be fine, which he couldn’t have been more wrong.
I used to think because he was older he was smarter and whatever he said was true so I could trust him completely, but now after that event in my life I now think that no matter how close someone could be you shouldn’t blindly trust them. I used to think that me and Brian never really hung out a lot anymore was just because we were growing up, but after thinking about more I realize our brother-sister relationship kind of faltered a lot because I didn’t think I could trust him anymore after the accident mixed with the growing up part. This event alone did not completely make me have trust issues with people, but I definitely think that this was a big cause for it. My trust would be winning the lottery, finding the needle in the haystack, finishing a marathon difficult to earn back.
Trust is delicate like a flower. You have to tend to it so it grows and continue to care for it so it stays alive just like trust. But you also have to be about it because if you forget to water the flower or take care of it the flower will wither and you can’t bring it back to life. If you’re not careful with the trust you have you could just as easily lose it. It takes a lot of time to build trust but is very easy to lose it. Trust is built through getting to know someone truly and honestly. Sometimes it takes talking on the phone to someone in the middle of the night or dropping everything to go see them to talk to gain trust. Gaining trust back is twice as difficult than getting it in the first place. You always have to be careful who you blindly trust and why, because if you trust the wrong person at the wrong time you could end up hurt, physically or mentally, even if that person is a best friend or family member.
