THE DISLOCATION is reduced at the hospital in Taos, but there are so many broken bones that I'll need surgery. I fly home to Laramie to have orthopedic surgeon Michael Wasser nail me back together. He's done it before. The carpentry takes three hours—anchoring down ripped ligaments, tweezing out bone fragments, running in a long screw. My wife, Sue, calmly reads in the waiting room, as she has many times before—worried, but you'd never know it. Her faith in my indestructibility is a fathomless ocean that buoys me upward.

General anesthesia and I have long-standing animosities, and I take time to come to. The post-op nurses will say I was kicking so hard I rammed my legs through the hospital-bed rails. When I at last return from this expedition of the mind, Sue gets me home and in bed. She patiently spoon-feeds me a bowl of soup while my daughter Teal reads me her report about African elephants: "Did you know that elephants poop 80 pounds a day?" With narcotics paralyzing my insides, I'm just hoping to go at all.

I awake at night in agony. My wrist feels as if it's being smashed in a vise. At 4 a.m. I finally admit that this can't be right, and Sue bundles me off to the emergency room. Dr. Wasser is there in minutes. I have the beginnings of compartment syndrome—pressure from the stitches is restricting circulation and could permanently damage the muscles and nerves in my hand. He gives me two options: go back into surgery immediately or snip the deep sutures without anesthetic so I can relate whether the pressure has been relieved. He suggests that Sue leave the room. I almost puke when he starts cutting, but it works.

"You're getting your M.D. the hard way," he says after finishing up. "One limb at a time."

I am readmitted to the hospital and intravenously plugged into a bag of Dilaudid—hospital heroin. I depress the self-administering plunger over and over. Soon I'm surfing my hospital bed like an out-of-control ten-year-old. Nurse Jeff is grand. I believe the other nurses rotating through the night to be the most beautiful women on earth.

I'm quite certain it would be best to spend another month or two here; alas, after two days I'm released upon the shoulders of my wife. My surefootedness is gone, and Sue must support me. She already has our bedroom set up for my recovery, a bouquet of sunflowers, cattails, and red berries blossoming from atop the dresser. Both daughters start to cry when they see me. They have made get-well cards. Addi's is poster-size and double-sided, a poem of word-pictures: "whenever you want a huge scoop of ice cream let me know . . . you are somewhat free, so lean back and have fun . . . this accident is just another one of your memories. . . ."

Janine sends me a bouquet of sunshine: brilliant yellow daisies, lilies, and roses. Katie mails me a new world of music in CDs and poetry. Megan leaves a mountain of date cookies in the house. Sarah makes us a spinach quiche, and Craig cooks us spaghetti and meatballs. Ken drops off a gyroscopic wrist rehabilitator/torture device. Pat pulls me out of the house and we drive up to the mountains to photograph the snow-rimed walls we intend to climb together.

I need protein to heal, so Sue is making the most magnificent sandwiches for lunch: grilled pastrami, turkey breast, and provolone on black rye. Yogurt full of fresh fruit. My mother comes over with a book about fathers and daughters. Alyson drops off two volumes of short stories and a novel.

I've done nothing to deserve all this kindness. Getting hurt is like dying without having to go that far. Those you care about unself-consciously show how much they care about you.

Tomorrow, next month—sometime— someone close to me will be hurt. Then it will be my turn. Will I give back all that I have been given? But why wait for an accident? Why can't I develop the humility to show compassion without pretext?