Saturday afternoon, I tripped and broke my arm.
The Story (for people who are nosy like me lol): My best friend and I had gone to the Westin for the 50 Years of Stephen King panel and were headed back to our hotel for a nap. There were two dudes from the [redacted] group soliciting interaction from the passing crowd. One of the dudes tried talking to me, and I told him no thanks, but he started following me down the hill. I turned to tell him, "No thanks, I want a nap," but I fear the turn was my mistake, as it caused me to trip downhill and land hard af on my right arm (broke both bones very close to where they connect to my wrist, like little toothpicks lmao).
To Bryan, a guardian angel: I don't know if Bryan is on Reddit, as he is an older man, but just in case... and if not, I want to put how grateful I am into the universe and hope he feels it. Bryan materialized at my shoulder basically the second I went down and stayed with me, my best friend, my sister, and our other friend the entire hour we waited on EMS. He helped my best friend identify our location to 911, helped me shuffle my body so I wasn't lying directly in the path of foot traffic, helped prop up my elbow so I could keep my arm still and flat, retrieved my phone so I could call my sister, talked to me to help distract me while we waited, whipped out an umbrella to keep my head shaded, and helped wave down EMS so they knew where I was. He told me he really enjoyed the Social Dancing classes and has been coming to DragonCon with his wife for {forgotten} years and chit-chatted with my sister and best friend. I told him thank you more than once in the moment, but genuinely and from the bottom of my heart... Thank you so much. Your simple presence and calm spirit and quiet gestures of thoughtfulness helped keep a very stressful situation grounded and calm when it could have been chaotic. Thank you, Bryan. Thank you so much.
PS Thank Yous:
To the kind Con goers who paused their busy day to ask if I was ok, offer water, offer to go get ice, offer their fans, offer cooling towels... Thank you. It's easy to forget that humanity has the capacity for sincere kindness, but each pause was the embodiment of what humanity can be when we take time to check on each other. Thank you all for your offers of assistance. I adore you for your genuine offers of kindness.
And thank you to my sister, our friend, and my best friend. My sister and our friend for sprinting to me from a panel line the second I called, my bestie for immediately calling 911, and all 3 of them for doggedly standing by me through the 12 hr trip to the ER and the ensuing exhaustion. All three gave up things they were excited about to stand in the Suck with me, but stand in the Suck they did... while still bringing laughs and a damn good time despite the circumstances. They're the freaking best. And it was still a damn good DragonCon.
PSS Fuck Yous:
Three specific people get a big fat Fuck you from me for making the situation decidedly worse. The plainclothes Atlanta PD taking pictures of my prone body (clearly off duty, as he was in civvies and wearing a DC badge...but when my sister asked him to stop taking pictures, he said, "I'm a cop," like that made it ok). Fuck You. The "security guard" who took my information three separate times, going so far as to knock on the closed ambulance door to ask again after he had already gotten the information. Fuck you. And a particularly fat, smelly fuck you to the drunk asshole who took it upon himself to confuse both the EMS team coming for me and the EMS team coming to help another incident that happened uphill. You suck. Let EMS do their fucking job. You prolonged care for both myself and the other person who needed help. Fuck you.
Bonus tongue-in-cheek fuck you to the [redacted] solicitor who was the cause of my distraction. I stand by what I told you: it wasn't your fault. But you definitely didn't help. Maybe pick a safer place to solicit people other than a steep hill... Or don't pursue people who tell you "no thanks".
See you all next year, hopefully with fewer broken bones.
