It was the night before mediation with my dad—a mediation over our mother’s estate. The middle of COVID had already dragged everything out for months, and now the weight of it was finally crashing down on me. My anxiety was suffocating, a constant buzz in the back of my mind that I couldn’t quiet. So, I did the only thing that made sense at the time—I started shampooing my carpets.

Corner to corner, room to room, I worked through the little condo, barefoot and desperate for some control over anything. It was June, warm enough that the cool touch of the floor was grounding—until it wasn’t.

I stepped into the kitchen to empty the dirty water from the carpet shampooer. My foot slipped, sending most of my body one way while my other foot caught on the doorframe. There was a sharp, ripping pain. I then was on the ground frozen, looking down to see blood pooling around me. My baby toe was barely hanging on, ripped 75% of the way off. I could see the bone.

The pain hit like a freight train, but panic hit harder. Dirty water was everywhere, my phone was nowhere close, and my toe looked like something out of a horror movie. I yelled for Alexa to call my brother. His wife answered instead, her voice calm, though mine was shaking. “Can I call 911?” I asked, as if I needed permission.

“Of course,” she said.

When the dispatcher told me to get up, I bit back the pain and hopped around, putting the dogs in a room, unlocking the door, and collapsing on the couch with towels pressed to my foot. The firefighters that arrived—many of the same ones who’d been on the front lines of the first COVID outbreak in the country. My first words to them? “I’m so sorry. I could not drive myself.”

One of them knelt down, gently removing the towel to assess the damage. He looked up at me, steady and reassuring. “This is exactly why you call us,” he said.

They loaded me into the ambulance, and the ride to the hospital felt surreal. By the time I was in the ER, word had spread, and every nurse and doctor seemed to want a look at my mangled toe. The ER doctor numbed my foot and waited for guidance from an orthopedic surgeon, apologizing for the delays. He even asked to take before and after photos he was proud of his work. I waved his apologies off, though my mind was elsewhere. “I just haveto be home by 8 a.m.,” I kept saying.

Around 3 or 4 a.m., my cousin picked me up. A friend had offered to come but hospitals still did not allow visitors. My toe had been sewn back on, and I shuffled out of the hospital, exhausted and running on sheer adrenaline.

The truth was, I almost lost a toe that night. But what terrified me more was the mediation ahead. I would have to face the man who had abused me, spread vile lies about our mother, and desecrated her memory not just by moving a prostitute into her house just weeks after her death. All we wanted was peace—space to grieve without the constant threat of his calls or the specter of Adult Protective Services looming over us.

And yet, even as I limped out of that hospital, mediation felt like the bigger battle.