The Girl Next Door - Chapter Two

   As we were to learn sooner or later, the college "zero tolerance "policy on wild parties ,was as we suspected a crock of  b.s. .the third and fourth houses in our little cull de sac had one a week after christmas break,and it  got crazy ,and security never showed . The next morning offered quite a shock  to both Jana and myself when I finally rolled out of the sack and went down stairs to the commons area of my house I found seven or eight people sleeping on the floor ,the couch ,in chairs ,all over the place and they all had several things in common a) they were recovering from a long ,hard night of g&t's and b) they were all going to feel very poorly when they did wake up and C) they all had some limb encased in pure creamy white plaster,and only three of them were casts that I did ,and, I had no clue as to who did the rest of them ,a quandary that would have to wait for coherency ,which seemed like an eternity away ,so I went back to bed .

     Long about 3:45 p.m. I heard this clatter downstairs ,and went down to see what was up ,well the boys  and girls had come to and were all curious as to how they ended up being casted and how and who and all the rest of it as well.Not having any answers except for the three that I did I decided that this would be a grand time to start dinner ,so I retired to the kitchen and decided to let them soak up their new toys for a while No more than twenty minutes after I entered the kitchen, Jana showed up and inquired as to state and general condition of self ,to which I just stood there and looked stupid ,and she acknowledged with an in kind expression ,until I sent her into the coms and she came back to the kitchen nearly in stitches and asked how in the hell did I do so well on all of those casts ,and I explained that I only did three of them .she stopped laughing ,and a look of near terror crossed her face .she attempted to speak but no words issued forth and after a significant pause came ,mostly gibberish but the wheels were turning once agaqin"if you...but ... then... but who?... how in the ...?

so where... but ...oh nooooo,after about all of that I could stand,  I attempted to stop her and explain that I in fact had no answers either, well when the rest of the casualties came back to life we held a group discussion in order that we learn the identity of the phantom caster, turns out , we had a bigger following than we knew, in that there was another group of enthusiasts on the other side of campus and as we did not have knowledge of them they had none of our group either.They called their group The Gypsum Board  and they never knew that the Blount Society did what it does ,and so , never made the connection ,well anyway once they saw our setup and one of them had been casted they asked if they could use some of our supplies for the night and that they would replace them the next day.Evidently we agreed and that solved that..  Now that we know of the other groupwe were going to have a great time .We set up cast parties and other functions as well and our group discovered that some of those people enjoyed braces too ,so the two groups eventually became one ,and they liked our name better than theirs so, we just added "new" to the name ,making it the New Blount Society.

      After second semester mid-terms came spring break and Jana and I were planning on being casted together for the first time and had planned further to only stay that way for two days .....so much for plans. As she was biking back from work ,some moron smacked her with his caddy .This changed more than our spring break plans .I had just gotten home from work and was settling down with a cold one , and the phone rings , so,  I answered it only to find some doctor on the other end, and as soon as I had identified myself , he said that I should get over to memorial hospital immediately , then he dropped the bomb , saying that Jana had been hit by a drunk driver and was in bad shape , hearing that I hang-up on him and tore over to the hospital .  Upon entering the receptionist (a fellow blount soc.member ) directed me to the E.R. where the doc that had called me ,was tending to Jana,well when I introduced my self ,he started to explain the situation,Jana had had her third cervical and thoracic 2-6 cracked ,as well as her right femur and tibia and the left fibula and the right acetabulum and the right and left ulnas and left talus ,so all in all she had thirteen fractures ,so far and the x-rays all hadn't come back yet  .I asked what  course of treatment was planned for the upper spinal ,and the doc  told me that he was going to use a new composite halo as it is radiolucent and won't pose any problems in the M. R. I.or conventional x-ray machines and as for the other fractures he had planned on using fiber and I explained that she would prefer plaster ,well it was at about this point that I had realized that I quite possibly had goofed ,in relating that little tidbit of trivia and of course  he looked at me in a rather strange fashion and asked me if I would care to repeat that , so figuring that the cat was out of the bag as it were , I explained the whole thing and he said that he had heard of us and was very supportive , and as a matter of fact his scrub nurse had just informed him that his casting tech was unreachable and now that he was armed with a new cast tech

we could proceed into the cast room .I looked at him and said "what new cast tech " he turned and just smiled at me and pointed his finger at me ,pistol style and just said "bang".

Well this was going to be interesting , I thought , doing a real cast for a real reason instead of the usual thing .S o we went into the casting lab at the hospital and he had his nurse get me all set up and show me where all the stuff was , and the nurse , not knowing anything about what was discussed assumed that I would be using the slow set  plaster so that I would have enough time to get it right , but I stopped her and requested that she show me where the fast set  was , reluctantly she showed me and I got set up .About twenty minutes passed and the wheeled Jana in and she was out cold ,mostly as a result of the hypo they had given her.The doc was to follow shortly and guide me as to how he wanted everything set and so forth , another doc had already placed the halo , and it was a beauty .So after stockinet and padding cotton and some felt I started to wrap her right arm .From the position  of the fracture we decided that a lac would best serve the purpose ,and on the other arm a short cast was o.k. Her legs were a different matter entirley,in that the fractures were high in the bone ,I suggested a long torso type body cast to extend down to both feet and also that it be fitted with a bar proximal to the knee and a second bar distal from the knee and a third bar on the posterior aspect just proximal to the ankles ,as one was broken anyway this would give very good support the doctor agreed and commended  me on my casting prowess.

I finally finished the marathon casting session of nearly two and three quarters hours and I was beat . the doc (Doctor Ian Michael  MacFergus) thanked me for filling in and again commended my work and asked when our meetings were and if he could attend one .I gave him the schedule and agreed to have him come as a guest lecturer after we came back from break ,he acknowledged and then went in to check "our" patient and smiled and said he would be in touch