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To escape from their own house the demoniac Gideon, Tyler, Kinsey, and Nina had to run through the woods, hoping to find someone that could help them.
Even if Tyler and Nina were leading the run; Nina was at the very front to protect her children from any danger that might pop up right in front of them.
Kinsey, though, was a little slower than them because of her sprained ankle. She didn't want to admit it, but it was hurting a lot. All she could feel was the throbbing pain in her ankle. All she could remember about how she hurt her ankle, was when she was fighting one of Gideon's soldiers, when she fell to the side, and landed on her leg, causing a very unpleasant, sharp, and painful twist in her ankle. She could remember a 'pop!' sound, right when she fell.
Running had made her ankle feel so sore, that it was going up to her leg. It was all she could think about. The shape of her brother was a blur, and she could barely see the woods.
While she was running as best as she could, which was limping very hard on her bad ankle as fast as she could, something went wrong. She didn't know what was happening, when suddenly, her bad ankle, which was practically being dragged on the ground because of the pain, clung to some kind of root.
Not having the time to react fast enough, the speed, at which she walked, made her pull her leg while being stuck in the root. The strength with which she pulled on her leg also pulled hard on her ankle, which was stuck. She felt a brief resistance in her ankle, but between the force with which she pulled on her leg, and the force of the root which held her ankle, she did not last long before her ankle gave way, and broke.
crack!
Kinsey fell on the ground, her foot still being trapped on the root, and screamed in pain.
Her scream made her brother run to her. Her mother was way too far ahead to hear her. Tyler got there quickly.
"Kinsey! What the hell happened!? Are you okay?" he exclaimed, kneeling beside her. He was about to get her up when she started screaming again ;
"No, no! No, please, don't! Don't make me get up, it hurts!" she cried through her tears of pain. "I- I was running as best as I could because my ankle was injured, and I couldn't see well, so my ankle got stuck in a root, and I-I think I broke it when I tried to pull my leg out!" she explained. She was trying to move her leg out of the root, but it was just too painful. She couldn't move her left ankle at all.
Tyler looked at her, panicked. "What do you mean you broke it!?" he shouted.
Kinsey looked at him, sobbing silently in pain, and Tyler's look on his face got softer. "I'm sorry. I-I'm sure you haven't broken it. It might just be sprained! Like at the house!" he tried to be confident to not make her panic.
But Kinsey was in so much pain, that her brother's insurance was useless. "Ty, listen to me. I'm sure that I've broken my ankle, alright? I-I heard a crack when I fell, and I kinda felt my ankle break. And it's painful as hell." she added, taking deep breaths.
"All right, I'm sorry. I believe you. But can we have a look at that ankle? We need to get you out, and determine how bad it is." Tyler asked.
Kinsey nodded positively and prepared herself for the blinding pain that was coming. Tyler moved to the root in which her foot was stuck and analyzed how the root was tied up to her foot.
He found how he was going to get her out, and warned her. He told her to count to three but removed her foot from the root at two.
Kinsey's cry of pain broke his heart. Tyler hoped he would never have to hear this song again.
"Why would you do that at two!? God, Tyler, it hurts so bad! Please, help me!" Kinsey cried. She was now sitting on the ground, leaning against a tree behind her. She held her ankle in her hands, and squeezed it tight, hoping to ease the pain, even a little. It didn't work.
Tyler was in front of her, looking at her with a sorry look. He wanted to apologize, but he had to check on her ankle first.
He took his phone and put the flashlight on since it was night.
"Kins, I'm sorry, but it's not over. We have to check on your ankle first." he reminded. "Could you remove your hands from your ankle, please?"
Kinsey slowly removed her hands from her ankle. She started to untie her bootlaces and removed her boot. It hurt her a lot more after she removed the compression her boot made on her ankle. Then, she pulled her jeans up, and slowly took off her long socks which prevented them from seeing her ankle. But once her injured ankle was revealed, they both gasped in shock.
Her ankle was swollen and was all bruised. Her skin was a mix of yellow, purple, orange, and blue. Her ankle was also really deformed. It was clearly out of its place.
Kinsey panicked when she saw the state of her ankle. "Oh, my God. Oh, my God, Tyler! Tyler, it's broken! A-And it's dislocated too! What are we going to do!? What am I going to do? Gah, and it hurts so much!"
Tyler was also panicked. He didn't want to show it to his sister. She was already going through a lot of pain.
"All right, all right. Don't panic, okay? You're going to be fine, all right!? You're going to be just fine. I know it hurts, but you have to stay calm, okay?" he asked her.
Kinsey took a deep breath after his speech and tried to calm down.
"That's it! All right, so here's what we're going to do: I'm gonna get you up, and you'll have to stay up for a few seconds before I carry you on my back. Then, we'll go find Mom, she'll know what to do, hopefully. Sounds good?" he made up a quick temporary plan to find their Mom.
Kinsey agreed with his plan, but there was one little problem. "It sounds good, Ty, but, there's a problem. I can't stay up and get on your back without putting both my feet on the ground. And I don't think I'll be able to put weight on my broken ankle." she underlined the problem.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. But we have no other choices than this if we want to find Mom. So, you're gonna have to, but don't worry, I'll help you." Tyler explained.
Kinsey looked at him with an uncertain look on her face but with trust in her eyes. She put her sock back up, so her foot wouldn't freeze out in the cold, and put her boot back on with extreme pain. She wanted to keep it loose, but Tyler told her that she should have something to compress her ankle, so she tightened it very strongly on Tyler's request, even though her ankle was too swollen for the boot to be well put.
She gave him her hands to get her up. Once she was up, she kept her broken ankle elevated from the ground, so she was just standing on one foot. The recent additional weight of her leg on her ankle made her pain worse, but she stayed strong.
Tyler was three steps away from her, back to her, so she could climb on his back. Three normal steps were six small steps while hopping on one leg for her. She took another deep breath and hopped on her right foot, with her left foot behind her. The jolts from the jumps were painfully shaking her ankle. She gritted her teeth through the pain and continued her little hopping to Tyler.
At her fourth jump, she lost her balance and started falling to the ground. She had two choices: falling again, and risking another injury, or she could avoid falling by putting her injured foot on the ground, and leaning on it, risking aggravating her already really bad ankle injury.
The decision was made instinctively.
'How can I possibly make my ankle worse than it already is?' she thought, before putting her left foot on the ground and leaning on it. Her whole weight was now on her left leg. She stopped falling, but the pain that came right after was awful. She cried out of a throbbing pain. She thought she heard another crack! sound before falling to the ground on her right knee. Tyler turned around at her to see what had caused her scream of pain. Once he saw her on the ground with her left foot on the ground, and her hands on it, he understood it right away.
"What have you done? And why are you leaning on your bad foot? Stop putting your weight on your left side!" Tyler shouted all at once.
Kinsey explained to him and put her weight on her right side, which made her fall to her buttocks. Silent tears were flooding her cheeks.
Tyler took a quick decision and picked up a piece of wood on the ground and tore his shirt apart. He kneeled beside her a second time. He softly took her left leg and straightened it so that her leg was straight and resting on his lap.
Kinsey didn't understand what he was doing. "Why are you doing that?" she asked weakly.
Tyler looked at her before going back to what he was doing. "To make you a splint to immobilize your leg so it won't shake when I carry you." He pressed the long piece of wood down her leg, from her hip to her ankle. He asked her to hold it and press it while he wrapped his shirt around her leg. Once he wrapped his shirt around her leg and the long piece of wood, he tightened it quickly and strongly to make it compress her leg really tightly.
His sister screamed in pain again.
Tyler didn't focus on it much longer to not feel guilty for hurting his sister, before putting his left arm under her legs, and his right arm under her back.
He was very careful with her left leg.
His sister's injured leg was stretched in the air thanks to the makeshift splint he had created. Her leg was pointing skyward and wasn't moving, but her ankle was slightly more sensitive and hanging down a bit.
With the constant thought of being careful, he started walking to the road.
Kinsey was so focused on the pain she was in, that she hadn't noticed that he was carrying her for five minutes or so.
"Ty, you're carrying me? Why?" she asked, confused.
"Because my sister is really really hurt, and she can't walk. She is also really brave and strong, so I had to carry her and help her because she can't do anything by herself right now." Tyler explained, softly.
"Your sister is a very lucky woman," Kinsey answered with gratefulness written all over her face.
"No, I'm the very lucky one. I just hope that she was less reckless and that she started to take care of herself. I hate to see her cry, so to see her in so much pain, and hurt so badly, it makes me feel awful. So, I hope that she'll get better quickly, so I won't feel awful anymore." Tyler confessed with tears in his eyes.
Kinsey was about to answer when they suddenly heard their mother's voice.
"Tyler! Kinsey! Where are you?! If you can hear me, I found a car! It's Ellie and Rufus!" Nina shouted from the road.
"Yeah, Mom, we can hear you! We're coming!" Tyler shouted back.
It took them two more minutes to finally see Nina's red hair from afar. As Tyler moved forward, he could see his mother's face crumble as she caught sight of Kinsey's form in his arms, one leg stretched upwards.
"Oh, my God, guys! W-What happened!? Oh, God, Kinsey, honey, your leg! Y-Your leg, what happened to her leg!?" Nina freaked out when they finally reunited.
"Mom, I will explain it to you, but not now. Right now, we need to get her to a hospital!" Tyler ordered.
"Uh, yeah, sure! Get in the car with your sister!" Nina answered.
When they got to the hospital, they told them to wait in the waiting room with everyone else. They haven't even given them a wheelchair for Kinsey's leg. They had to wait two more hours before it was finally Kinsey's turn to pass. Kinsey was in such pain that she couldn't even move her leg to get in the wheelchair. Tyler had to carry her again, and even this hurt her.
After that the doctor had removed his splint, he asked them what happened, and when it happened. When he removed her boot and her sock, the expression on his face wasn't a good sign. He started doing some physical tests on her ankle to see what she was able to do with it, which was nothing. She couldn't walk, she couldn't put weight on it, she couldn't lean on it, she couldn't turn it, and she could barely move it with a lot of pain.
The doctor then decided to X-ray her ankle. Putting her ankle straight was hell for Kinsey but she had no choice.
The doctor explained that the X-ray scans showed three fractures in Kinsey's ankle joint. The scans showed how dislocated her ankle joint was. The broken bones were the main ones, including her tibia, which was the bone that connected her lower leg to her upper leg. He said that Kinsey needed surgery, and had to have surgery as soon as possible.
Kinsey panicked when she heard that, but the logical part of her brain knew that her ankle wasn't going to get back to its place alone. The doctor then asked her a question.
"Have you recently sprained your ankle, miss?"
Kinsey explained to him that she had broken her ankle because she had just sprained her ankle and couldn't run. The doctor explained that he noticed that a ligament in her ankle had almost been torn and that it would have been a more important surgery if it had torn completely.
Before going to surgery, Tyler and Nina told her that they were going to be here when she woke up and that she'd be fine after that. They both hugged her before she was taken to the surgery room.
The surgery took an hour, but visitors were allowed one more hour after.
The doctor told Tyler and Nina that the surgery went well and that everything was back in its place, even if it was still broken.
He explained that Kinsey would stay two more days at the hospital to check if the surgery was a success. Kinsey's ankle wasn't in a cast for now, but she will have a plaster cast on her ankle the second day after surgery. He said that she will have it for two weeks, then she'll have a fiberglass cast, which is more sensitive than the plaster one, and she'll be in a medical boot for two weeks, or more, depending on how her ankle heals. She will be in a wheelchair for a week, and then she will be on crutches for 7 weeks or more. She is completely forbidden to put weight on her ankle for at least 6 weeks, and she must always keep her ankle elevated for at least 3 weeks.
The day Kinsey got out of the hospital, she had her plaster cast on almost all her leg and was in a wheelchair who kept her leg elevated on a platform. She had crutches in her hands for the next weeks and was on analgesics for today, but she won't be tomorrow. Tyler was the one pushing her wheelchair, and he was taking her back to Key House after they defeated Gideon and got Bode back while she was at the hospital.
At the house, Bode ran to her and hugged her for a long time, repeating how much he was sorry because it was his fault. Kinsey had to calm him down by insisting on how it wasn't his fault. I mean, she broke her ankle herself in those woods.
When bedtime had arrived, it was so hard to get Kinsey upstairs with her wheelchair that they decided to make a fort downstairs and to all sleep there with her. Sleeping was a hardship for Kinsey now that she was out of painkillers.
Getting on crutches the next week was even harder. She almost gave up. But she finally did it and managed to be used to it, even if walking on crutches and standing up for a long time was horrible for her.
At home, Bode rushed to Kinsey and enveloped her in a tight hug, repeating apologies that she gently hushed away. After all, she reasoned, her ankle injury was nobody's fault but her own.
Bedtime proved challenging as they struggled to navigate Kinsey's wheelchair upstairs, prompting the decision to camp out downstairs in a makeshift fort. Sleep evaded Kinsey without the aid of painkillers.
Transitioning to crutches the following week proved daunting, nearly causing Kinsey to abandon the attempt altogether. However, with perseverance, she adapted, though the discomfort of walking and standing persisted.
In week three, a mishap in the kitchen resulted in Kinsey tripping over her crutches and landing forcefully on her already injured ankle, sending shockwaves of pain through her. Helpless and alone, she lay on the floor, unable to reach her phone or alleviate her agony until Bode's return.
Week four brought another setback as Kinsey tumbled down the stairs, her fall resulting in a broken wrist. Tyler's arrival exacerbated her distress as he took in her injuries with concern.
Back at the hospital, Kinsey found herself with a new cast, this time extending from her hand to above her elbow, encompassing both her broken wrist and arm. Her recovery stretched further than anticipated, leaving her dependent on her wheelchair once more.
The fifth week passed relatively uneventfully, save for Tyler's mishap on the roof resulting in a broken kneecap.
Week six brought a flurry of misfortune as Tyler's knee injury flared up, Bode broke three fingers, and Nina suffered burns on her forearm while cooking. Meanwhile, Kinsey, though spared from further injury, found herself grappling with the daily challenges imposed by her wheelchair.
As their unlucky streak continued, the family navigated each obstacle with resilience, their bond growing stronger amidst the trials of their collective misfortune.
Week seven dawned with a sense of cautious optimism, though the specter of further mishaps loomed ominously over the household.
Kinsey, determined to reclaim some semblance of independence, embarked on a mission to adapt her daily routines to accommodate her wheelchair. With Tyler's help, she explored creative solutions to navigate the house more efficiently, determined not to let her circumstances define her.
Meanwhile, Bode's fingers slowly healed, though his newfound caution tempered his enthusiasm for rough play. Nina's burns demanded careful attention and frequent dressing changes, a stark reminder of the fragility of their collective well-being.
Despite the challenges, moments of laughter and camaraderie punctuated their days as they leaned on each other for support. Kinsey's resilience served as a beacon of hope, inspiring her family to face each day with courage and determination.
As they forged ahead, uncertain of what the future held, one thing remained steadfast: their unwavering bond and unwavering belief that together, they could weather any storm that came their way.