I remember the hospital bed. The cold metal against delicate forearms was enough for me to decide I didn't like hospitals.  The words of doctors and nurses to me were a storm, a tornado upon morphine drowned ears; muffled sounds of liquids rushing were a constant white noise of which didn't calm me down.

I remember the emergency room. I saw a woman dying in front of me until they pulled the curtain closed. Sometimes I still think about her heather grey face and powder blue sweatpants. Sometimes I think of the man with the piece of wood through his foot whose stretcher passed mine. Other times I think of the older man who was in front of me in the waiting room, mumbling angrily as they took me first, despite the fact that he had been there longer.

I remember the intern they assigned to me. He had on a wrinkled blue tunic-- it matched his pants. Auburn hair was misplaced around his forehead, a bit sweaty, too. He wrapped my entire arm in a beige gauze before realizing he had forgotten the splint, unwrapped, and wrapped again. Every touch felt like a gunshot spiraling up my arm, down my spine. I was delirious, to say the least. I resorted to playing with a spider that must have crawled on to me before my father picked me up off of the forest floor.

I remember being angry about the fact that they had to cut off my favorite shirt. It was black with wistful, rainbow roses on it, speckled with metal rhinestones.

I remember only starting to cry after they had said the word surgery. Needles were terrifying to me. After the words "possible amputation" were said, I was a sobbing, 10-year-old mess in a hospital bed.

I remember seeing a helicopter land on the landing pad outside my window before being rolled into surgery. Dr. Nemikis, he was the surgeon. He had come in at midnight for me. The nurses were pleasant, too. One smiled at me and pat my hair as she put the anesthetic mask over my face. That night, they had shoved five seperate pins into my arm to try to keep it together. My entire left arm was broken, my bones weren't even close to touching.

I remember my mom waking me up after the surgery, at two in the morning, the delight, and forcing me to eat something. I settled on a disgusting white yogurt. Every time the cold spoon hit my tongue, I thought bile would come up. To this day, I have no idea why she made me eat right after surgery.

I remember the nurses rolling in the large, boxy television with an old Nintendo console--  I can't remember for the life of me which one. They tried to keep me occupied with coloring books and video games to distract me from the fact that my arm was almost going to be a nub for the rest of my life, but miraculously wasn't. They gave me a Monopoly game as a going away present. My family has played it once. I won.

I remember getting home and being happy to see my dog. I wanted to play with him, but my hip compression kept me from walking for two weeks. And I didn't go to school for two weeks. A school built in the 1920s doesn't have ramps (nor air conditioning, proper heating, and under 10 safety violations). In that time, I received posters from friends at school, ice cream from a friend who went to Dairy Queen, and chocolate from my mother. I also didn't sleep for more than an hour a night because of my splint. My arm had been too swollen to put a cast on, so instead I had to have adhesive gauze one my arm. I was a blob of painkillers in pajamas.

I remember when I first stood up after that. I screamed out of joy and started jumping up and down, to which my mother warned, "Don't test it!"

I remember having to get off my gauze to get a real cast. I screamed. I wailed. I was almost always on the verge of blacking out. My arm was still very, very broken, and ripping of glued gauze wasn't ideal. My mother was close to tears, and my father was almost in worse shape than me, face pale as snow, eyes glassed over.

I remember going to school again. I had to ask the art teacher if I could skip an assignment because I was gone. She reluctantly agreed. My teacher made me sit in her chair and get wheeled around all day, just in case, which I found quite funny. Many children signed my pink and green striped cast (which, looking back, was a horrible choice). One kid, Tyson, even told me that he had had a dream that I had beat him over the head with it.

I remember measuring the tree I had fallen out of. 15 feet. I wondered how I didn't die that day.

I remember getting my cast off and pins out, which was a repeat of the last time I had been to that clinic. This time, I was given a molded splint of my arm.

I remember the months of physical therapy it took to get my arm to bend. It still makes weird noises when I move it. My elbow cracks in segments, and my wrist sounds like pummeling rain.

I remember trying to do a push up. I couldn't. I couldn't do a pull up either. I had to quit gymnastics, the only sport I've ever been good at. I tried it again a year later, but my body just couldn't do it.

I remember the day the tree was cut down. We had already taken off every wooden step hammered into it and burned it. When the town committee came by to cut it down. Emerald ash borers had gone through most of the trees in the town, including the small forest in my backyard. I watched the beast as it tumbled down.

I remember my fall every time I look out of my window into that forest. And I remember it every time it rains. I remember it when my hip hurts too much to walk or when we have a push up test. I remember it when I bend my elbow and my hand touches my shoulder. I was ten and I couldn't even touch my shoulder.

I'll never forget it, no matter how many nightmares I have, or how much pain I feel when it's humid. I have an arm, my body is mobile, I'm not dead. I've learned to be grateful for everything I have in this lifetime, because I never know when it will be taken away from me. I'm fifteen, and I can actually touch my shoulder. For that, even that, I'm thankful.