I have never felt older than when I sprained my ankle playing fucking pickleball with Mike last weekend. In hindsight, it was a completely avoidable injury, mainly due to me wearing the wrong shoes but largely due to us being total assholes when playing against one another. I watch other groups play pickleball, and they’re drinking it back and forth with one another. Not us. Play to win

“You can’t get those left ones,” Mike goads me over the net. He’s right, I usually can’t. Whether we’re playing tennis or pickleball, he tends to return shots right along the line. I usually let them go but not today.

The next time he fires one over the net to the left, I’m already on my way, charging the net and making it to the ball in time to hit it back over. My shoe stops as soon as I connect with the ball, but my ankle keeps going, bending its way down to kiss the court.

I hear the pop and feel the pop at the same time.

These are the stages of spraining your ankle while playing competitive pickleball with your boyfriend.

Denial

“Nooooo,” I gasp as pain fills my left ankle.

“No, no, nope. Nope” I thought immediately. “I’m fine, this hurts, but I can walk it off.” But I can’t. I turn and take one step. My face scrunched in pain; I had to lean over and use my pickleball paddle as a crutch for a second before going to the ground. Do you even know how useless it is to lean on a pickleball paddle? They’re maybe a foot and a half long. I was basically already on the ground, but in my mind, “This is fine. We can totally walk like this.” It’d be like someone trying to use a dustpan as a cane and saying, “All good!”

Mike has come over at this point. “Are you okay?”

“My ankle,” I said. “I twisted it. It popped. Oh, God, my ankle touched the pavement.”

“Oh, wow,” he said. “Is it bad?”

“I don’t know. The pain is going away a little bit.”

“Just sit here for a little bit, don’t rush it.”

“Ok.”

“Here’s some water.”

“Thank you.” I drank the water wishing I could dump it over my torn ligaments like a fire.

“If it makes you feel better, it was an amazing shot.”

“It was?”

“Yeah.”

“Did I get it in? ” I asked, turning to look at the court behind me, like someone was going to show a replay.

“I think so. I did fire it back before I noticed you were on the ground.”

“Goddammit,” I said, wincing.

Bargaining

We sit there for another minute while I’m thinking about my tennis coach that said to us over and over again to always wear tennis shoes because of how many times he’s seen people break their ankles playing.

“Why’d I wear my running shoes, that was so stupid.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“But aren’t you wearing running shoes?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Goddammit,” I said again. I start to get up because I want to see how bad it is if I broke the stupid thing. I put weight on it and I’m relieved.

“Thank God, I think I just twisted it. Let’s play.”

“We don’t have to play. We can just go for a walk or go home if it’s bad.”

“No, I can put weight on it. See,” I take a step and instantly feel needles of fire in my ankle. “Well, maybe not so much on my toes, but if I only walk on my heel, it’s fine.”

“Uh. You’re not going to know how bad this is until tomorrow. I’ve done this before.”

“Let’s just try. C’mon.”

I convinced Mike I’m fine and he goes back to his side of the net.

“We’re just going to lobb it back and forth,” he yelled over the net. He dinked the ball carefully straight to me and I hit it back. He returned again slowly. “Nice and easy.”

I took a small step to hit back and my ankle is on fire again. It’s not okay.

“Oh, so you can just play to play and not play to win,” I thought, furious. “This is all his fault!”

Anger

“Stop. Stop,” I yelled to him. “This isn’t working.”

“Okay,” he called out and packs everything up while I stand in the middle of the court, miserable.

“Do you need help getting to the car?”

“No,” I said, limping and frowning.

We drive back to his parent’s house. Mike tries to talk to me even though all I can do is frown deeper and stare out the windshield moody as fuck.

“This sucks you hurt yourself. I thought we’d play pickleball today and tomorrow,” he said as he speds along the country roads.

“I know, I wanted to do that, too.” I snap back. This had been the plan when we got up that morning and decided to drive to his parents’ place in central Illinois. To take advantage of one of the last nice weekends before it got too cold. Spend time outside on their lake and play pickleball all weekend instead of the concrete jungle we live in in Chicago.

I still say nothing letting my anger at stupid body fill the car. Mike rolls down a window, probably trying to dissapate the murder energy wafting off of me. Doesn’t work.

He tries to hold me hand but then lets go. “Sweaty,” he said. I side eyed him. We turn onto another more country road. This is early October so squirrels are popping up everywhere alongside the side, panicking and looking for food. This road is country as fuck, meaning there’s rarely anyone on it and you can drive 45-50 mph in the center of it. There are no lanes or lines. If someone comes in the opposite direction, you move over, but you don’t really slow down, just give the other driver a nod and keep flying.

We’re driving and a car came from the opposite direction. As Mike moved over to the right, I saw a squirrel dart out from the same side, running alongside us and I only had time to point and yell, “No! Squirrel!” before he disapeared beneath the car and I felt a bump under the passenger side wheel.

My arms dropped to my lap in resignation of the now dead animal and my entire life, and I looked over at Mike. His eyes looked at me and then in the rearview mirror. “Um, did I get him?”

Finally, something to direct my anger towards.”Yes, you fucking got him! I said squirrel and pointed!”

“Maybe I missed him. You don’t know. He could have squirted out the other side.”

“He squirted out dead! Goddammit! This has been the worst 30 minutes of my entire life! Fuck!”

Back to Denial

Two hours later, we’re sitting down to dinner at a restaurant. After icing my ankle for 20 minutes after the squirrel murder, it had felt a lot better. Fucked up, but still better. I didn’t want to sit around the house, so even though Mike had offereed to get food and bring it back, I said I’d be fine. We finish eating dinner and I ask if he wants to go upstairs to the lounge. He looks up the flight of stairs and shakes his head.

“Not with your foot like that,” he said.

“What? I can make it up and down the stairs. I have arms,” I said, rolling my eyes. Like, didn’t everyone drag themselves up and down a flight of stairs? He’s so dramatic. Then, I got up to use the bathroom by taking teeny tiny steps and returned a half hour later from my 15 feet journey.

I eventually convince him I’m okay to go the bar across the street and after half way there, he just stops and said, “Are you sure you want to go? You look awful.”

“What? I’m fine, we just need to walk slow,” I said, dragging my left foot forward, taking a careful step with my right, dragging my left forward, etc. From sitting and not elevating my ankle while at dinner, everything was starting to fuse and swell. “C’mon, we’re almost there.” Drag, step, drag, step.

Acceptance

I pogo-ed myself around his parents’ house on my good foot when we get back home, telling them I “twisted the hell” out of it. His dad gives me a compression sleeve and I thank him, “Oh, it feels like someone’s hugging my foot! I’m sure I’ll be fine tomorrow!” Then I throw myself down the stairs to go to bed because my arms are starting to ache from Ninja Warrioring myself down them.

I wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and as soon as I stand up, I know it’s sprained. “Shit,” I whisper in the dark.

I hobble back to bed and step on a cat. “I’m sorry, I can’t walk,” I tell her. I climb back into bed and Google “sprained ankle symptoms” and stop reading when I see “popping sound.”

“That’ll do it,” I sigh to myself. “Fuck.”

The cat curls herself around my head, something she never does with me.

“Dolly,” I whisper. “I sprained my ankle.”