“Did you just put me in a Figure Four?” my dad wheezed, his head locked between the “4” shape of my thighs.

“Yes sir,” I replied, tightening my legs and pressing all my weight down on his shoulder.

“One, one thousand . . . two, one thousand . . . three—”

With a burst of strength, my dad flipped me over.

Now on top of me, he smiled and said, “Did you really think I was gonna let you beat me?”

“My foot,” I gasped.

He rolled off me.

When my dad flipped me over, all his weight had landed on my right foot locked behind my left knee. And it snapped.

We made it to the emergency room ten minutes later. The doctor set my foot, which quelled the pain from a ten down to about a six, then began wrapping it in a cast.

4:00 a.m. came halfway through the cast, and I woke up the next day in bed.

I remember looking down at my lime green cast and smiling. I’d been worried the previous day that I wouldn’t have anyone to sign it, but my dad had wheeled me around the hospital having people sign my cast, and it was covered in well wishes.

Opik wouldn’t have a cast for anyone to sign.

He must have smashed his foot against a rock and his left ankle is rotated outward twenty degrees farther than God intended. As bad as his ankle looks, it isn’t the most pressing of his injuries. There is a gash in Opik’s side that is gushing blood.

I rip off part of my T-shirt and push it against the rock’s nasty signature.

Opik screams.

It is 3:11 a.m.

Forty-nine minutes.

I hold pressure on his side for five long minutes, then I pull away the T-shirt. It is colored red with Opik’s blood. It is still relatively dark, yet I don’t need the light of day to know the gash on his side is bad. The skin is splayed apart and if I stick my finger in the wound, I won’t have to dig far, and possibly not at all, to touch bone.

Opik wails. From the pain in his side or from his broken foot, I’m not sure.

I shake my head.

I don’t know what to do.

He needs to go to the emergency room. He needs fifteen stitches. He needs to have his leg set. Most importantly, he needs pain meds.

I take two deep breaths, then create a triage list in my head.

I put Opik’s hand over the T-shirt and push down his hand. “You have to keep pressure on this!”

I crawl down the sand until I hover over his leg.

“This is going to hurt,” I say.

I grab his shoe with both hands and twist it to a neutral position.

Opik’s scream makes his previous one seem meek by comparison.