The waiting period at the hospital was grueling. A few other holiday mishaps had the reception area populated with people sporting bruises, busted lips, and, in some cases, burns. Fortunately, since I might have had a concussion and Caleb spoke a dialect of the medical jargon the short-staffed nurses could understand, we only had to sit there for about half an hour before I was seen. They confirmed that my arm was broken, although the ulna had taken most of the damage and the radius had only a small crack. My head, however, was all in one piece. There was a bit of swelling on the site of impact, and they wanted to keep me under observation for an hour or two just in case. Mostly that meant sitting in a hospital bed with my new full-arm cast while someone popped in every fifteen minutes to
