"Did you start yet?" I mumbled through a numbed mouth filled with medical tools.
The doctor chuckled and replied, "I am actually almost done." My mouth felt swollen and bubbly and I could not see his work at all. He removed the tools from my mouth and set them on the counter. I glanced over from the chair and he ambled back over. He was a slightly robust Indian man wearing a white lab coat. When he arrived at my chair, he explained, "I had to put four stitches in your mouth. They will dissolve when the wound is fully healed so you will not have to come back in to get them removed."
My mother sighed, a clear sign of relief she didn't need to add a return trip to her to do list. The doctor continued to describe that I would not be able to open or close my mouth for about a week. The worst part, all my food would have to be liquid or thick liquid for the next week, at least.
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School was to start in two weeks and I was starting to get nervous about being the new kid as a junior. Luckily, I had some friends in Palatine church and Bendita was nice enough to show me around the school before school started. We started out following my schedule for the upcoming year, starting with gym. We wandered down a long hallway at a leisurely pace. When we arrived at the gym, I reflectively paced toward a spot on the gym floor that I recognized very well. Bendita questioned, "Where are you going?" but I just walked on, finally stopping as I reached my destination. This exact location was where I had experienced the worst physical pain I had up to that point, so going back to this exact location flooded me with feelings of ineptitude from the week after my injury. I thought back to one of the most significant moments of my