The next morning, we woke up at 6am. I was sure they were going to send me to the hospital that day, so Lauren started packing our bags. I couldn’t do anything to help, so I just laid there and watched.

After two hours of furious packing, we were mostly ready. I turned to Lauren, who was panting and covered in sweat, and said, “I don’t think I have the energy to go to the hospital today.”

We decided if they said it was okay to rest another day in Koh Tao that we would stay.

We made it to the clinic and they seemed confused as to why we were there. I reminded them about the hospital. They called the doctor on their cell and I talked to him. His broken English, which was hard to understand in person, was even harder to understand on the phone. I asked about going the next day and he said it was fine.

We went back to our bungalow and rested.

The next morning, we got up, Lauren packed our bags again and we took a taxi back to the clinic. Again, they looked confused to see us. I reminded them about the hospital again and again they called the doctor. He said he would call ahead for an ambulance to meet us at the pier.

The taxi took us down to the pier and we waited for the boat.

When it was finally time to board the boat, we waited in a long line. Everyone was struggling to get on the boat — it required a large jump down. It made me nauseous just thinking about getting in.

I managed to sit on the edge of the pier and lower myself down with some help from the crew. We took a seat inside (no charge for the good seats this time), and waited for the boat to leave. “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” was playing on the TVs, subtitled in Thai. The volume was too low to make out parts of it. I realized that I had watched more movies in Thailand in the last few days than I had in my last few months in the U.S.

We finally arrived in Koh Samui, the island with the hospital. I started making my way to the front of the boat. As I got outside, someone greeted me with a sign with the Bangkok Samui Hospital logo on it. “Arizabert” it said.

“Are you Arizabert?” they asked.

Yes.

I started my hops up the stairs to get off the boat. I reached the top and looked toward the ambulance. There were a dozen more steps, then about 25 feet of sand. There was no way I was going to make it. Two of the men from the ambulance picked me up and somehow, without managing to hurt my knee, carried me to the ambulance.

It was a time of firsts for me. My first ambulance ride. My first emergency room visit. My first ride on a moped…

When we got to the emergency room, the first thing I noticed was that it was immaculately clean. It could not have looked cleaner. The second thing we noticed was that everyone who was there was there because of a motorbike accident.

They put Lauren and me in separate areas. I laid there and waited.

Lauren was treated first, because the orthopedic doctor was working on another motorbike incident. They cleaned her wounds much more thoroughly this time. They were concerned that her wounds were infected. Stronger antibiotics, her doctor said, and come back every day so I can clean them.

The doctor finally came for me. I could not wait for the brace to be removed from my knee — the swelling was so intense that the brace itself was causing pain. Before I could ask him to just cut it off, he rolled it down my leg. I moaned.

“So much swelling,” he said. “Probably fracture.”

He sent me down to get x-rays. The man who took me down pointed to his shoulder and had me touch it. His collarbone was obviously broken and never set back well.

“Motorbike,” he said. It was not the first time a Thai person had pointed out their motorbike injury to me, and it wouldn’t be the last.

At the x-ray lab, they asked me to do the impossible.

“Straighten leg, Elizabeth,” the nurse said.

“I cannot.”

“Straighten.”

“I cannot.”

She was stronger than I was, though, and kept pulling it slowly straighter and straighter. I was shaking from the pain.

“Good. Hold still.”

I held my breath and hoped that I wouldn’t shake to much and ruin the slide.

She came back in and, as if a cruel joke, told me now to roll over on my side, with my hurt leg on bottom and my right leg awkwardly crossed over it.

Slowly, we contorted my body to do what she asked. They took the x-ray and sent me back up stairs.

After 15 minutes, the doctor came back.

“Good news and bad news,” he said.

He then bowed his head solemnly and cut his hands across the air.

“Bad news: broken,” he said.

That was not the news I was hoping for. I knew my trip would be over, at least for now.

He showed me the x-rays. Although he never said it, my guess is that the good news it that the break isn’t all that bad. It’s a hairline fracture in my lower leg going up towards the knee joint. Nothing was displaced or would need to be set. But it was still a very clear break in a very serious place.

My first broken leg.

Two options, he told us.

The first is to wear a cast for a month, then a brace for a month and then I could start walking. The second option is surgery. A small metal pin would be placed in my leg. I could start walking again in a matter of days but “big scar,” he said, and indicated a four inch line down my shin.

He also said he could not tell if I had hurt any ligaments. My pain was too great for him to test and they didn’t have an MRI.

We asked him about going to the U.S.

“Yes,” he said. “In U.S., better. MRI.”

He then started getting my leg ready to be put in a cast.

“Straighten,” he said.

Not this again.

To help the process, he gave me a shot of some kind of pain killer. Pain killers in Thailand, I have concluded, are weak. Even the codeine they gave me afterwards has no real kick to it.

We got my leg as straight as we could — still not totally straight, and he put on the cast. Bright green. It nearly takes up my entire leg, so when I sit down my foot points straight out. I can’t stop “flipping off” everyone who walks by.

The hospital staff were incredibly friendly. The man who wheeled me around, with the broken collarbone, found us a place to stay in our price range and dropped us off there. Now we have to figure out how to get home. And Moo Moo still has our passports.