“Did she get penalized for that?”

“No. She and I were smart enough to do it when the ref wasn’t looking.”

Denise shook her head. This seemingly normal person was a serious aggressor.

“My senior year I had a fracture of the left tibia and fibula and a wrist fracture from a bad collision in soccer – the leg took surgery to set – that took ten weeks. Actually I got pinned between three players. I just scored my tenth goal against them and taken out their third goalie for that game and they decided I had to go. Two of them got hurt in the collision and we won so I came out ahead.”

“Awesome.” Denise could not think of anything else to say. At first she thought Diane was kidding but she now realized Diane was just plain aggressive.

“Oh, I forgot. I had two knee surgeries for torn cartilages, both from clips in soccer that got bad enough to need fixed. I’ve done maybe close to two years on crutches if you include my time since high school.”

“Have you ever fallen at work?”

“No. I mean I have skinned a knee or something like that a couple times. I am a very careful person. I don’t want to get hurt. I have never needed medical treatment for an on the job injury. I have had to be on crutches a couple times since the kids were born.”

“What happened?”

“Well. I’ve had five broken bones in my legs in eleven years. I consider it part of playing soccer.”

Denise thought about asking if she was right in thinking soccer was a non-contact sport but decided to wait. Carol asked the question. “How do you do your job? I mean. If you break a leg.”

“Well, while I am recuperating I take the tower jobs where I can get up with one leg or where I can use the cast to climb. I avoid ones where the tower is more than a hundred yards from the road. I can get that far if I have to and we get maps that tell us what the terrain is like. My husband takes the others.”

“Would you mind showing me how to do that?”

“Show you what?”

“How to climb a ladder with one leg.”

“No? Why would you want to know?”

“Well, for someone with two legs you seem to have a lot of experience getting along with one leg. Anything you know in that department is good for me to know. You apparently have experience. Do you mind telling me how high you have climbed with one leg?”

“Just over three.”

“Three hundred feet?” Carol almost choked. She had several times climbed a ladder, maybe as much as twenty feet. It was exhausting and she didn’t have a second leg and cast to drag along.

“Sure. Your good leg gets kind of tired after about two fifty. It and your arms have to lift you each step. I’m sure you know that. With two legs they share the steps.”

Karen: Chapter One – The Attack

Karen Chapter 30 – and Then Came Diane

Karen Chapter 32 – the Part Diane Dreaded