(align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[[[<p class="title">Swan Neck</p>|passage1]]
](link-reveal:"//Be careful//, you say. //The playground is slippery. You could fall.//")[(link-reveal:"
//I won’t//, he replies.")[
[[Moments later, you hear a snap and a scream. It goes straight through you, racing over your bones like arcs of lightning and echoing under your skin until your mind feels separate from your body, performing a slow-motion approach to where he lies writhing on the ground.|passage2]]]]
(link-reveal:"His arm is broken. The middle of the forearm is a perfect curve where his bones have snapped; the skin is unmarred, smooth as though nature’s intent. A flawless break. It is the first time you’ve witnessed the human form twisted, changed, in such a way.")[(link-reveal:"
An ambulance comes eventually. Flashing lights, neon colors, voices overlapping. The frenzy of a carnival.")[(link-reveal:"
//Sometimes they call it a swan neck fracture,// the paramedic says.")[(link-reveal:"
Your parent, ushering you to their side, whispers, //Isn’t that just awful?//")[
[[You disagree. It is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.|passage3]]]]]](link-reveal:"You return to your life but the scream tolls in your head like a bell. Like a church. Like a calling. They'd described it as a fracture, as though it were some small thing, some delicate thing, as though the image of it wasn’t seared behind your eyelids as bright as if you'd been staring into a serpentiform sun.")[(link-reveal:"
Someone asks you if you’ve broken a bone. //I haven’t,// you say, //but I saw someone do it once. I warned him to be more careful.//")[
[[They frown at you. //You’re the hero in all your stories,// they reply.|passage4]]]](link-reveal:"Years later, you’ve passed medical school. You’ve spent every moment underwater since you saw the arm - the entire world muffled, distorted. You are so close to setting it right again. To breaking the surface. To seeing the truth.")[(link-reveal:"
//Have you chosen a specialty yet?// Someone asks.")[
[[//I was thinking about emergency or orthopedics,// you reply.|passage5]]]](link-reveal:"At the start, the emergency room is unexciting. You see minor wounds, coughs, bloody noses. The occasional broken arm. You always take those when you can; they are never as perfect, never as pure as the one you saw so long ago. You need something more. You crave something worse.")[(link-reveal:"
Then, finally, your first major trauma. No one has time to catalogue every victim. It is chaos. No one can keep track of whose patients are whose. It is hell. No one notices when you steer a gurney into a private room. It is heaven.")[(link-reveal:"
Your patient looks up at you with big pale eyes and pleads with you to save them, holding closed the bloody hole in their abdomen with one functioning arm.")[
[[The other, limp at their side, has a single, smooth curve from wrist to elbow.|passage6]]]]]
(link-reveal:"You strap them to the table and place your hands on the unbroken forearm.")[(link-reveal:"
//You’ll fix me, right? You’ll fix me?//")[
[[//I will make you// better.|passage7]]]]This is what you’ve prepared for.
[[CRUNCH.|passage8]]You are the hero in all your stories.
[[SNAP.|passage9]]Swans are beautiful, aren’t they?
[[SCREAM.|passage10]](link-reveal:"You smile.")+(t8n:"fade")[
[[<img src="images/swanneckbreak.png">|Title]]]