Podiatry

 

 

 

 

 

 

My life as a spy came to a halt after the fall. One moment, I was a high-flying mission commander, and the next, I was an embarrassed and shamed husk of a man – and to make matters worse, I lost my commander title too. It was my fault that the mission had failed, so there was nobody else to blame when the news appeared in the spy system. Nobody in my team had done anything wrong; they were simply following orders. No, the blame rested squarely on my shoulders. And so did the injury that I succumbed to during the fall. I’d gone to the best podiatrist clinics Cheltenham had to offer, but still, it seemed that nothing could be done to fix my foot. I had landed on it during the fall, and since it was from such a great height, my foot completely shattered underneath me. At one point it seemed like I would have to get a prosthetic, and I would have to deal with not only the loss of my career but also the loss of my foot. But despite my fall from grace, I was still part of the spy network and still had access to the best medical talent the world had to offer. Bit by bit, I was able to walk again. I started off in physical therapy to get my foot moving again. They would push and pull it so the muscle in my leg could reconnect and move properly alongside my foot. Once I could move it of my own accord, I started using crutches to walk through the hallways of the hospital. It took so long to get better that at one point I wondered what the side effects of wearing circulation socks were since I had been wearing them for so long. Surely there was some sort of side effect I was missing, and maybe in a decade, I’d grow a third arm. But the doctors and podiatrists insisted they were necessary, and slowly but surely I was beginning to walk again. However, my life as a spy was still up in the air.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It seemed like every day, my only role was to practise walking. I had strolled through the hallways of the underground spy hospital so many times that I had memorised every thin crack or mark along the cement walls. It wasn’t a good place to be. The hospital was sparsely populated, as spy injuries were so rare in modern times. The only other people I saw were doctors and podiatrists. I wasn’t allowed above ground – even though it had been months since I failed my mission and let down my entire team, I was still being sequestered away from the other spies in case I compromised information. I don’t often get hurt or offended, but I was indignant when my boss sat me down to tell me that little tidbit. I’d been a spy for three decades, and part of my current organisation for two of those. Surely they trusted me now. Up until this point, every mission I had been part of or commanded had been a raging success. The information I had gleaned as a spy was priceless. It had saved lives, changed the course of international politics, and made the world better for millions of people. Why was I being treated like a common civilian? Part of me wondered if it was simply my injury, the fact that I had to wear gel toe and shoe pads over the outside of my shoes. Maybe I was being treated differently because I could no longer work in the same way as other spies. But then I remembered: how many failed spies had I seen working at my organisation? None. There were none, in the two decades I had been working here. When a spy failed, they simply disappeared. As I hobbled through the halls, pondering my fate, my footsteps echoed loudly. An anxious gnawing began in my stomach, the first anxiety I had felt since I fell over that cliff, the first since the best foot specialist in Cheltenham told me I may never walk again. But I pushed both of those thoughts aside. I had always overcome every odd that I had faced. Before the fall, I was one of the world’s best spies. I had to get back there.