The doctor cut the fiberglass off with a saw that smelled like burning plastic. My wrist looked pale and thin, like someone else's.
I broke it on Christmas Eve. I was working a lockout for a family who'd locked their keys in the car on their way to dinner. I missed my own family's dinner.
The drive home was thirty miles of flat high plains in the dark. Not a house light for miles. Just the cold and the road.
Six weeks of not being useful. A locksmith's hands are his living. I couldn't turn a key, couldn't pick a lock, couldn't even tie my shoes.
My younger sister brought a cake on my birthday. She stuck a candle shaped like a 6 and another like a 7 into the frosting. I blew them out with the cast still on.
The day the cast came off, I went home and found that same cake waiting. She'd saved the candles, still in their plastic wrap.
I lit them myself. Held the lighter steady with my newly free hand. Thought about all the things I'd taken for granted—turning a key, holding a candle, showing up for dinner.
I realized: I'd spent six weeks becoming someone who had to ask for help. And that was the gift. I'll forget the scar long before I forget how it felt to need.