It is safe to say it did not get better in the morning. Walking into church, all the colors and the movement and the people and I could barely walk holding onto the cane and Richard both as every muscle kept trying to give way on me. I, um, scared a few people. They felt better after I promised to go to Urgent Care afterwards.

Home first for a moment to get ready because I knew it would be a long wait, where I looked out the window and went oh right and got the silly mango tree covered for the night. Somehow the green (can’t call all of it grass) and the stillness in the yard soothed my firing neurons and it wasn’t too hard. I wanted to be the one to do it.

We headed out.

The doctor at Urgent Care, prodding around: Does this hurt?

Yes, up a bit–here.

Then he said the last thing I ever expected to hear: Do *not* move your head. You might have broken your neck. He called for a c-spine and told us we had our choice of ambulance or having Richard drive me, but recommended the ambulance, but in no way was his facility equipped to deal with this–go straight to Stanford. He would call ahead and let them know.

As Richard put it afterwards, to justify me in my decision and help me feel better about it, If he was sure it was broken he wouldn’t have given us options. The c-spine was on and we skipped the $300 co-pay.

The ER took me immediately in, no waiting.

And then, as one always does there, one waits.

I was glad I’d brought reading material because I wasn’t sure how I was going to knit like that.

The young doctor was highly pleased and relieved to be able to come back and say that the CT results were negative: no broken bones, no bone fragments in the brain, the diagnosis was a pulled muscle in the neck and a concussion.

This was very good news at this point and we all knew it. He took that c-spine off me and at last my neck could relax after holding the one position for hours. I told him I’d been wondering how I was going to be able to wash my hair in the morning and he chuckled. I still don’t know how one does it when one doesn’t get to take it off so fast.

But it will be a good long while before I’ll be in any shape to drive anywhere. Given what could have been, I can live with that.

And the mango tree glows its quiet, warm blue in the night.