Eigo de Essay
Broke Had I known the deposit for renting a crutch could be paid only by cash, I would have brought more money than I did when I broke my foot bone. The hospital clerk said they didn't accept a credit card. The deposit was 10,000 yen, and I still had to pay for the treatment and a taxi ride home. Thus, before getting a crutch, I limped to the cashier and asked how much I owed them. Luckily, it wasn't much. Hadn't the Japanese government covered everybody with good medical insurance, I would have been penniless (yenless?) at that point. With the money I had, I was able to pay for the taxi fare, too. Using a crutch wasn't an easy task. Had I had more muscles around my shoulders, it could have been a little easier to move around with the crutch under my arms, but I didn’t. At home, I just crawled on all fours for some weeks. It was awfully inconvenient. What I had done was skipping a step on a pedestrian bridge and falling flat on the landing. Had I been a little more careful, such a stupid thing would have never happened. Four weeks later, I returned the crutch and got my 10,000 yen back. The reason why they didn't accept the credit card was probably that the money was just kept at the hospital to be returned. Walking was still not so easy, but I realized that I could drive. Had it been my right foot that was fractured, driving would have been impossible. It took me a while to regain my muscle strength, but eventually, I got that back, too. The thing that was bad while I couldn't walk well was that we had the three-year anniversary of my father's passing. My family had planned to hold a memorial service and to have dinner afterward in my hometown, which is two and a half hours away by plane from where I live. I couldn't possibly go there in that state. I took a photo of my casted foot and sent it to all my relatives with words of apology. My sister, who was in charge of this event, took the photos of the memorial service, the dinner, the faces of our relatives who attended the ceremony, and even my late father's grave, and sent them to me later. Without her, we would have had to reschedule everything.
|