Billy Jackson (standard:non fiction, 1044 words)
Author: Slambang	Added: Oct 19 2007	Views/Reads: 2839/0	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A story about a day in the life of an old widower,living alone for the first time in over 50 years.

Billy Jackson Oct 15.2007 

Well Now I'll tell you a story about Billy Jackson which maybe you will
believe and maybe you will not. That is up to  you, but before I begin 
I want to assure you that this story is true.(At least most of it) 

Now Billy was an old guy as some people would judge, his age I am
guessing that he was at least 77 years old, but young at heart. His 
wife had died a few months before and Billy was living alone except for 
his dog and faithful companion, Sadie, on 10 acres in California in a 
big old house that he had built 15 years before. I can assure you that 
Billy was lonely, but he went through a daily routine keeping busy 
doing maintenance work and repairs work that a big old house needs 
after 15 years of blissful living, just to alleviate the sadness in his 
heart. 

One day, he was working under the house in the crawl space replacing so
air conditioning duct that had deteriorated because of the oxidation in 
the air, so he was quite tired and dirty when he climbed out from under 
the house. He looked at his watch and decided that it was time to quit 
for the day. He went into the house and got together his meal for 
supper a small potato and a sirloin tip steak and put it in the oven to 
cook along with some left over peas which he put in the microwave to 
heat up later, while he had a shower. After the shower he went to the 
kitchen and made a salad for himself, set his lonely table and waited 
for his supper to finish  cooking. 

Later he made himself a scotch and soda and went to the den to watch the
evening programs on the Television. 

Shortly after dark someone knocked on the den door. It was his next door
neighbor. When he answered the door, his neighbor his neighbor said 
“Bill your dog is out and he is bothering my Llamas could you come and 
get him please” “Oh sure,” Bill replied. “I don't know how she got out 
of the yard, but I'll come and get her right now and thanks for coming 
and telling me, ”Well, the neighbor said I wouldn't have bothered you, 
but a couple of the females have just had calves and I was afraid that 
she would scare them”. 

Bill got his flashlight and went out into the dark. He called Sadie and
she responded with a soft bark. Bill then checked to see if he could 
find the place in the fence where Sadie might have gone through it. 
While doing this he went down a small bank which turned out to be 
slippery and his foot slipped and he fell on his back with his left leg 
trapped behind him. The pain was terrific ,but he knew he had to get up 
because now one would find him if he didn't. He worked the trapped leg 
out from behind him which relieved the pain somewhat. After laying 
there a while, he decided to try to get up. He made it up and found 
that although his leg still hurt he could walk on it. He found the 
place in the fence and got Sadie back through ti and put her in the 
back yard. He then went back to the den, but decided that his leg hurt 
to much to watch TV so he took a couple of aspirins and went to bed. 

At three in the morning his leg was throbbing so badly that he could no
longer sleep, so he got up and the pain was so bad that he now could 
not walk without some support. He managed to get a cane from the closet 
and then he knew he would have to go to the hospital emergency room. He 
managed to get down the stairs to the garage and into the car, thanking 
the Lord that the car had an automatic transmission. He drove the 35 
miles to the hospital and parked the car, but it was a long way to the 
emergency room entrance. By now he could no longer walk and had to 
crawl across the parking lot to the entrance. There he found a wheel 
chair and climbed into it. When he went inside to the reception center 
and given the lady all the pertinent information, she told him to wait 
and a doctor would see him. After about a half hour, his name was 
called and he was taken to an examining room. There, the doctor told 
him his leg was probably broken, but it was swollen to much for them to 
do anything with it that night and for him to go back home and return 
in the morning. I won't go into the details of the trip back through 
the parking lot and driving back home and then returning the next day, 
but I can tell you it was a challenging experience. 

The next day back at the ER, they took x-rays and finally told him that
They could put steel pins in his leg or just set the bones and hope 
that it healed properly  without the pins. Bill made the decision to 
just try getting a cast on the leg rather than having steel pins 
inserted. On the way home he went by a medical rental place and got a 
wheel chair and took it home with him. The next three weeks were 
dreadful, even taking a shower was a difficult task, but finally it 
passed and back at the hospital, the cast was removed and a boot was 
placed on his leg. Now he could walk again. Three weeks later his boot 
was removed and he was told that his leg had healed properly and he did 
not have to come back. 

This ended a six week experience that happened because of a small hole
in the fence and an inquisitive dog. Bill can laugh about it now, but 
at that time, he didn't know how he was going to survive without help. 
As they say “God helps them who help themselves” and it appears that is 
true 


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