Bound in Stillness
Copyright© 2025 by Heel
Chapter 2: The Stillness
When the door closed behind the doctor, the room seemed to grow twice as quiet. Only the rhythmic click of the wall clock remained, too loud in the sterile air. The nurse tidied the tray, dropped used gauze into a bin, and left her alone with the weight of plaster and the echo of the doctor’s instructions.
She shifted on the bed, trying to find a comfortable position, but the cast refused to move. It was astonishingly heavy. Every attempt to adjust made her hip twist awkwardly. The straightness he had insisted on left her leg hovering, inflexible. She could feel her heartbeat inside the confined limb, a pulse trapped in stone.
Her gaze drifted down the length of the cast: the even white surface, the subtle ridge over the shin where his fingers had shaped it. The foot extended in its careful line, the heel held low, the arch drawn long. It looked almost deliberate, as though he had been sculpting rather than healing her. For a fleeting moment she remembered the way his thumb had pressed against her skin, the certainty in his tone. The tendon needs length.
She told herself he had been right—he was the doctor, after all. But another part of her, quieter and harder to silence, felt uneasy. The cast seemed too perfect, too composed. A tool for recovery, yes, but also a mark of someone else’s will imprinted onto her body.
The nurse’s earlier words came back: You’ll get used to it.
Used to what? To the weight? The helplessness? The strange, false grace of that pointed foot?
She tried to imagine herself standing on crutches. The image faltered almost immediately. The leg was too long, too rigid; she pictured the awkward swing, the stumble, the inevitable fall. Her stomach tightened.
I’ll never manage it, she thought. I’ll never walk on those things.
The thought frightened her with its certainty. She pressed her palms flat against the mattress, as if bracing herself against the idea. The cast felt like a verdict. Six weeks—or eight, he’d said—but time already seemed impossible to measure.
Through the window she could see a slice of afternoon sky, washed pale after rain. Somewhere in the corridor a trolley rattled past. Life continued outside this stillness. Inside, everything had slowed to the pace of cooling plaster.
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