“It amazes me,” Freddy thought to himself as he stood on his front porch, the December sun trying hard to keep Southern California mild and prosperous. He had opened his mailbox, removed the two pieces of correspondence there and, upon seeing the identities of the senders, voraciously ripped both their respective ends off and pulled out the papers inside each.

“It amazes me, life,” he thought as he read the letters. “Because life is a maze. You wander down this corridor, reach an intersection, where do you go? Which way? Go left, go right, go straight, go back. Can you go back? Whichever way upon which you decide, does it matter? You end up back at that intersection again, in the same space, with but a few more corridors to your name and character.”

These were no ordinary letters. They were shock blasts. Pure silent laughter.

The whole sequence of events began in 1966 before Freddy was even born. Freddy’s father had quit his upward-bound career as an insurance salesman to join the team at the only type of company worse than an insurance company – a pharmaceutical company.

Freddy didn’t like any company. He’d once read in the Oxford dictionary the following three definitions of the word “company”: group of actors etc.; subdivision of infantry battalion; body of persons combined for common (especially commercial) object. Liars, murderers and thieves. Companies.

Years later, looking back on his life as he lay upon his deathbed, Freddy’s father expressed remorse over having left the insurance trade. His time with the medicine peddlers hadn’t been all it was cracked up to be and, as many men do when mortality approaches, he sought absolution. He’d once had the Grail, he feared, and lost it.

After his father’s passing, his insurance policy began its long and winding road of adjustment, what with all the variables involved in DEATH.

A month or so before Freddy received those two letters and stood flabbergasted on his porch, he’d needed a new pair of shoes. His old Vans were worn and tattered and nobody wore skate-boarder sneakers anymore. In store after store along Melrose Avenue, he searched for the right pair of rubber souls. Every shoe looked the same – Adidas, Nike, Brooks. Freddy didn’t care for any of them; they all looked too new and without personality (or wrinkles).

Around the same time, Freddy’s new roommate, James, was rooting through the boxes of clothing with which he’d recently moved in. He found an old pair of shoes he hadn’t worn in a few years and showed them to Freddy.

“Do you want these?” he asked Freddy, holding up a pair of dull blue Puma sneakers.

Freddy looked at them and they became the lonely puppy hiding at the back of the cage in your local dog pound. He slipped them on; they were tight, a little too tight. But they looked perfect, sleek, cool. Like Mercury’s heels.

It would later occur to Freddy that though a certain shoe might be appealing, there are more important functions than aesthetics. In other words, sometimes that lonely puppy hiding at the back of the cage in your local dog pound will shit all over your rug.

A short while later, as Freddy was leaving his digs, as he was slipping down the three low steps to the sidewalk, his right foot landed rather askew. Without the preventative qualities of proper footwear, it twisted inward and Freddy’s own weight and gravitational momentum pulled him down, his ankle ligaments tightening and his ears hearing a noise that no ear enjoys hearing… Crackle.

As Freddy crumpled to the ground, the sky grew larger. It was that moment in a car accident that lasts longer than it should – in film, a freeze frame; in literature, a religious text. It was a stretched second that he was down; then he was back up in pain and immediacy, hopping back into the house, yelping to himself, “Ouch, ouch, oh man, bad pain, ouch. What have I done?!”

Freddy hopped to a chair as James emerged from the kitchen with a tuna salad sandwich, asking, “What’s going on?”

“Aw man, I think I broke my ankle,” Freddy replied, quickly and carefully removing the disagreeable shoe from his injured limb. Upon inspection of the ankle, neither Freddy nor James could see any break in the skin. There was a great deal of swelling, however.

“At least it’s not a compound,” James comforted.

“Y’know, in thirty years, I’ve never broken a bone in my body. This sucks.”

Freddy iced his ankle and kept it elevated. James left for fast food and a tensor bandage. After a burger, fries and much phone consultation with friends who had no medical qualifications whatsoever, Freddy decided to keep off his foot and wait a few days to see how things turned out.

In the meantime, he took James to see the L.A. Kings sleep through the first two periods of a game against the Detroit Red Wings. Freddy had scored some wicked seventh row seats in the corner and wasn’t going to let a little thing like an inability to walk prevent him from seeing some ice-bound roughhousing. He borrowed a pair of crutches from James, whose entire family consisted of surgeons and patients. They had plenty of crutches to go around. The hockey game finished 2-2 at the end of overtime.

Three days later, Freddy’s foot was bloated to nearly twice its size and was throbbing out of its tensor. It was tighter than the damn sneaker that facilitated the injury in the first place. And he was in pain.

“Jimmy, would you mind taking me to the hospital?”

“Yeah, sure, let’s go,” James replied like he was going to the beach.

It was a ten minute drive to the hospital, despite the horribly planned San Vicente Boulevard, one of the world’s most confusing streets.

Freddy checked in and filled out the necessary forms while James parked the car. The nurse behind the ER desk asked Freddy a few pertinent questions and shook her head when he told her that the accident had occurred three days previous.

“Are you shaking your head at me?”

She nodded.

“Because I took so long to come in?”

She nodded again and a volunteer in a smock with a British accent escorted Freddy through a set of automatic doors and down a hallway into another waiting room where he sat for fifteen minutes with an overweight middle-aged Mexican woman in spandex leggings whose eyes never darted away from a re-run of “Cheers” playing on the television braced to a corner of the ceiling.

Freddy sat there and addressed the fact that he’d given his real name and address in the forms he’d filled out. James had advised him to give a false name and address because, wouldn’t you know it, Freddy did not have insurance. Liars, murderers and thieves, he reminded himself. Freddy had given his real name and address because he thought it was the responsible thing to do.

A doctor came in on the late shift on a Sunday night. He examined Freddy’s foot and found it’s most sensitive point on the outside beneath his ankle. He sent for some X-ray’s and Freddy was escorted to a room where his genitals had to be protected with a large heavy mat filled with lead.

Freddy laid there wondering two things: “Who was the first guy to discover he needed to cover his balls when he did this?” and “Does this actually prevent premature prostate cancer?”

Back in the waiting room, he sat for another forty-five minutes and watched people in multicolor pastel smocks mill about, go get this, go do that, runners and production assistants all. Freddy watched a male nurse wrap a tensor around the Mexican lady’s ankle and she left tenuously skipping along on a set of crutches she did not know how to properly use.

Freddy shifted to another chair across from the TV and watched ten minutes of a “Wayans Bros” episode before the doctor returned to inform him that he had a chipped tibia, a little speck of white on one of the X-ray’s. Freddy was relieved to know that it was something – even nothing would have been something, would have answered the question,
“What’s wrong with my increasingly swollen foot?”

“You’ll need a walking cast for three of four weeks. I’ll give you the number of an orthopedist,” the doctor said, writing out his referral. “You should stay off your foot until you see him,” the doctor told him. “It was nice to meet you,” he added and departed to return a page.

The male nurse was back a moment later with another tensor which he wrapped around Freddy’s foot as he had the Mexican lady’s foot. Freddy left the ER with a chipped tibia, his X-ray’s and a referral to a specialist. He would be billed later.

Freddy crutched himself back out to James, in the waiting room, and followed him to where he’d parked the car.

The next day, Freddy called the orthopedist to which he’d been referred. This was the guy that was going to put his foot in a cast; this was the guy who was going to do him in, clear out his bank account. Though there was a bone chip floating around in the ether of his ankle, Freddy was hesitant.

He dialed the number he’d been given – Dr. Feldman.

“Hi, I was referred to Dr. Feldman. I have a chipped tibia and I’d like to come in and get a walking cast put on –”

“Okay, sir,” the receptionist cut him off, “who is your insurance provider?”

“I’ll be paying cash or credit card.”

“Okay, sir, I should tell you that there’s a three week waiting list for Dr. Feldman.”

“Three weeks?”

“Uh-huh, the soonest I could schedule you is –”

“No that’s alright. I think I need this done sooner than that.” Freddy quickly hung up and perused his limited options.

There was a free clinic in Hollywood about which James had spoken; but when Freddy called, all he got was an answering machine message outlining when the clinic was open and what injuries they repaired at which times. The message must’ve been five minutes long!

“Patients with psychiatric problems are to come to the clinic every second Tuesday between three and five.” Freddy wondered how many psychiatrically-disabled people had a sufficient grasp of the concept of time to figure out when every second Tuesday was. That road seemed problematic at best.

Freddy needed a guy. A doctor guy. A foot doctor guy. Someone who could wrap a pillow of love around his ankle that would hold together for the next month. He really needed to walk again. Immobility was not on his to-do list.

James proved to be helpful yet again. He referred Freddy to his family doctor – perhaps he would know the best course of action. Freddy hadn’t had a family doctor since he’d had a family. He called Dr. Kaplan immediately.

“Well I’m not really talented enough to give you the proper treatment,” Kaplan jokingly admitted. “But let me see who… Ah yes, Phil Emery. Give him a call; he’s an orthopedist.” He gave Dr. Emery’s phone number to Freddy.

“Dr. Emery’s office,” the receptionist answered. Freddy explained the whole sordid story to her and made an appointment for two days later.

At 3:30pm on a Friday, Freddy and James found themselves in Beverly Hills at the orthopedic clinic. The building was a large six-floor glass structure that looked like every other building off of Wilshire Boulevard. Freddy walked on the crutches; James carried his X-ray’s.

In the lobby, the floor was black marble; there was no security guard, merely an office directory on the mirrored wall, two elevator doors and another door that led to the stairway. Emery’s office was on the fourth floor. Freddy thought it odd to have an orthopedist’s office on any floor other than the first. James pressed the button for the lift.

One of the elevator doors opened and off got a bleach-blonde woman with really high heels which gave her an Amazonian stature, a really short skirt which was hardly there and really fake breasts which were a gift from her plastic surgeon boyfriend on the sixth floor. She was exactly the type of girl so many people believe Los Angeles is teaming with – Marilyn Monrobots.

Freddy and James raised their eyebrows simultaneously then got on the elevator she had vacated. Up they went to the fourth floor.

Freddy checked in with the receptionist and waited but a few minutes before his name was called and he was escorted into a small examination room that overlooked a park and parking lot. As instructed, he removed both shoes and socks.

Dr. Phil Emery entered a moment later. He was a fossil of a man, in his sixties or maybe even his seventies, with hair as thin as thread and a face of meandering wrinkles that reminded Freddy of the Badlands of South Dakota. He was friendly and handled Freddy’s ankle like Ferdinand Magellan toying with a compass. He inspected the X-ray’s for a moment then gave Freddy the most wonderful news.

“Ah, it’s just a sprain.”

Dumbfounded, Freddy said, “What?”

“Well it’ll hurt but you’ve just gotta walk it off.”

“So I shouldn’t stay off it?”

“No, that’s the worst thing you can do. The more you use it, the sooner it’ll heal. Should take a few months.”

“So I don’t have a chipped tibia?”

“No. You’ve got a bad sprain. I’d say just take it easy; don’t go playing soccer.”

“I don’t play soccer.”

“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“What about the X-ray? What about that little speck under my ankle?”

“Ahh it’s nothing. Just a little speck on the X-ray.”

Freddy tried walking. A jolt of stiff pain shot through the tender foot which had been left unused for a week.

“I know it feels like you shouldn’t walk on it,” Dr. Emery said. “But that’s just your nerves telling your brain that they’re shot. Don’t believe your nerves and you’ll be fine.”

Freddy took a few steps, despite the odd sensations below his knee. He had it back. He had the old movement. He could walk, slowly for now.

“When I walk out of here,” he said to Emery, “I’m gonna be yelling, “I’m healed! I’m healed!””

“Emery,” Emery said, “Don’t forget to say Dr. Emery.”

Freddy limped out of the examination room and back into the waiting room. James was surprised to see him so mobile. Freddy paid Dr. Emery with a check – a measly $140, highly reasonable for sweet peace of mind.

Over the following weeks, the full capacity of Freddy’s foot returned. His right ankle would never again be symmetrical with his left ankle, but his balance had been restored. Or so he thought.

In truth, his balance would not be restored until he stood on his front porch holding two pieces of correspondence.

His father’s insurance benefits finally came through, after so many years bouncing around databases and filing cabinets. Freddy’s brother mailed him a check for his share of the final amount – $2610.17.

Freddy received that check the same day that he received his bill from the hospital. The hospital bill was an incredulous $2468.05. Almost twenty-five hundred dollars for a misdiagnosis, an improper treatment and a bad referral.

He held both letters in his hand. A check for $2610.17 and a bill for $2468.05. He did the math in his head, adding Dr. Emery’s $140, and realized that the difference was $2.12.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, the lord giveth and the lord taketh away, blah blah blah,” he told himself.

Freddy was sick to death of ironic perception and butterflies.

“Gracias, padre,” he said to the clouds and went back in his house, wondering on what he would spend $2.12.