It happened in an instant, yet it took a long time as instants go. I felt it all in slow motion. One moment I stood in heels at the top of the steps; the next, I tumbled down headfirst.

To keep from slamming my noggin into the wall at the end of the landing, I ducked.

And I broke my collar bone. Banged up my shoulder. Maybe fractured a couple of ribs, too, though they couldn’t tell for sure.

It’s not that I failed to hold on. I had my hand on the rail. But my heel caught in the carpet, and my computer bag, slung over my left shoulder, lunged forward when I tripped. I might have recovered my balance had it not been for that heavy load swinging, cooperating with gravity to pull me forward and slam me down.

Our daughter, Alexandra, was playing in the back yard. Usually at 5:10 p.m., the time it happened, she and I have the place to ourselves. Any other day I would have been inside alone, but my mother-in-law, who had come to help with homework, was sitting at the kitchen table reading when she heard a scream and ran to my rescue.

I couldn’t get up on my own.

My husband usually arrives home around six, but he had left the office a little early to get here in time to cover childcare so I could drive into Dallas and deliver a 90-minute lecture on bioethics.

You can bet that didn’t happen.

When I called him, he estimated his time of arrival at about ten minutes.

While I writhed and waited for him, I scrambled to contact the prof whose class I was supposed to teach. When I dialed the school’s main number, I got a recording. Another number I tried brought that squalling signal you get from a fax machine ready to receive. Finally I reached him.

When Gary arrived home, I took one look at his face and fell in love all over again.

“Where do you want me to take you?” he asked, as if plotting a dinner date.

“Baylor. Downtown.”

“It takes longer to get there. Why not Mesquite Memorial?”

The place that misdiagnosed our daughter’s broken elbow? No way.

He drove me to the Baylor ER while Grammy cared for Alexandra.

I could feel the break; my bone sticking up gave us a pretty good indication that I had more than a sprain. But what evoked my real fear was the pain when I exhaled. It hurt to breathe out. I hoped I didn’t have a rib poking into my lung.

The thirty-minute drive, filled with tears, moans on every exhale, and pleadings for Jesus to “have mercy on me,” felt like it took a month. Then we walked into the ER and found a crowd of about thirty people ahead of us. Desperation set in. I imagined myself sitting there for three hours.

Please, no!

The triage nurse asked what happened.

I told her I’d fallen down the steps.

To my amazement she looked me in the eye and said, “I’m so sorry” before going on to ask my name and insurance coverage. I was a person, not a case, not a shoulder injury, not a potential punctured lung.

Nothing makes me want to bawl like a little empathy.

Keep it together, Keep it together. I mentally repeated Eddie Murphy’s lines from Bowfinger.

The nurses took one look at me all wabbly, breathing fast, moaning, with a right shoulder a full inch higher than my left (they even said so aloud!), and they ushered me right into a room. Then I didn’t know if I should rejoice that I got to the head of the line or despair that whatever was wrong looked serious.

But I needn’t have confused getting a room with getting attention. Silly me. Still, it beat waiting out in the lobby.

Over the course of the next six hours they shot mobile x-rays of my collar bone. Broken. Royally.

Then they took x-rays of my chest and drew blood for some tests to make sure I was up for a CT scan. I was.

I drank the syrupy grape-flavored metal stuff designed to light up my innards for the machine. Gag me with a pitchfork.

The nurse led me in for the scan. The tech shot some pictures, then put iodine in my IV. It felt like a hot flash. No, I’m not old enough to know what that feels like. But I’ve been on enough fertility drugs to have experience with them anyway.

Once the medical team gave me the all-clear in the absence of internal bleeding, they pumped me full of painkillers (finally!) and gave me something to make me loopy. (As if I needed help.) Trust me, it worked.

They saw no cracked ribs, though they said I might still have a few. They recommended rest. Lots of rest and meds for the pain.

I have an appointment tomorrow morning with the orthopedic surgeon. I have no idea what the days ahead will look like. I can feel the bone sticking up, so I predict anesthesia in my future.

But amazingly I rested well in the night and have had manageable pain today, thanks to the marvels of modern pharmacology.

That’s the medical side.

It gets better.

The men’s Bible study, meeting at the church when my husband called from the ER to tell somebody, headed on down to hang out with us.

The prayer chain sent out email messages. People really prayed.

When we called home from the ER at 9 last night to say we’d be a while, Grammy said, “Alexandra is in bed already, and I’m lying next to her on her floor.” I didn’t have time to stop and ponder such grandparently love because she added. “She says to tell Mommy she loves her and that the kitties send their love, too.”

Wow, the cats love me. Who knew?

Today my sis called to say I could match the purple girl on Willy Wonka. (She always provides the warped sort of comfort that would leave other people aghast, but which I am twisted enough to appreciate.)

By 2 PM a meal arrived—apparently the first of a bunch that will arrive through Sunday.

People sent emails. Some added silly photo attachments to cheer me. Others phoned. My niece baked me a cake.

The seminary chaplain called and his prayer made me laugh and cry…laugh because he prayed that such things are supposed to happen only to old women; cry because through his words I felt the presence and tender love of Jesus.

The church is His body—His arms hugging and feeding and loving. Our brothers and sisters in Christ have loved us well, showing up as “Jesus with skin on.” We are not alone.

Yes, I have taken a nasty fall...right into the arms of love.