The Pauper and the Nail

The shoes were French, his mother who is French would say every time he wore them "I love those shoes". Martin had brought her a pair once, curiously she had never worn them. They were made by a company that had been crafting them for nearly a century before slowly ceasing production. His size and style were no longer available. Martin had owned this pair for five years but had been buying them for twenty - classic canvas tennis shoes that felt like an extension of his feet. They'd needed repair three times now since they couldn't be replaced, casualties of the apartment building's treacherous stairs with their illegal lip that caught his toes with every ascent.

His balance had been off for quite some time. His feet had started betraying him months earlier - reaching for steps that didn't seem quite where he expected, the ground seeming to shift beneath him. His feet unexpectedly jolting like kicking a ball that wasn't there.

That's what brought him to Dr. Whitmore's clinic in the first place, though getting there meant climbing an equally difficult set of steps - at least these had a handrail - to the second-floor rooms where he'd been reporting something not being quite right. Also, persistent fatigue, joint pain that came and went, things once clear, now clouded.

She shrugged it off - as others did. Without articulating it he could see she was thinking "He's making a mountain out of mole hill, he's likely just got his wobbly boot on".

"Stress", Dr. Whitmore said.

"But I feel like I'm kicking something that isn't there," Martin insisted, trying to articulate the precise, physical failure in his feet. He watched her expression tighten slightly, the professional mask slipping for a fraction of a second before she launched into the details of the prescription for "Abilify" she was already typing.

"More like Vilify" Martin thought.

An irritation in his heel had started roughly around the same time. Like a tactile earworm - a slight prick that would pester him occasionally, then he would forget. He checked the shoe on occasion, ran his fingers along the insole, examined the sole. Nothing. The shoes were expensive, well-made, buoyant even. It couldn't be the shoes.

Weeks became months. The prick remained, inconsistent enough to seem imaginary, persistent enough to feel like he was always worn out. He wore other shoes, but these were his good ones, the ones that had lasted, that he trusted. When he returned to them, the sensation returned - a small, sharp reminder of something wrong. The connection was still not made.

The symptoms worsened. Whitmore ordered blood tests that showed inflammation but no clear cause. "Perhaps chronic stress," she suggested again. "I will look into finding you a therapist. In the meantime, I'll increase your dose of Abilify".

"Great!"

The first repair attempt came when the toe had caught a few too many times on the apartment stairs, tearing the sole's tip. Martin had bought contact cement months earlier from the hardware store. This held for about a week before lifting away. The second attempt used a different adhesive, supposedly stronger. It lasted two weeks. He had also caught the heel from going down the stairs, that was lifting too. "Such a shame I just can't get a new pair".

Every time he put on those shoes that he loved so much, in his mind it was like they were new. Never thinking of the random prick that would remind him to remind himself not to wear them anymore. Today was no different.

The third repair came on a Sunday afternoon. The sole had separated again at the heel - Martin laid newspaper on the kitchen table, mixing two-part epoxy this time, determined to do it properly. As he pressed the sole back into place, something small and dark shifted in the tread pattern.

A nail. Barely visible against the black rubber, wedged perfectly between the geometric grip pattern. He pulled it out with pliers - handmade, a flattened head, a bit over a centimeter long, like a spike from the Victorian era, even slightly shiny.

Martin sat very still, staring at it.

He removed his sock. The small puncture wound was there, The most miniscule red dot was in the same position. He'd never looked. Why would he? The problem was the shoe, not his foot. Except it had been in piercing his foot all along, a less than clinical injection administering who knows what causing an infection while doctors tested his blood and blindly diagnosed anxiety.

He thought about Dr. Whitmore's office. He thought about all the appointments where he'd described his symptoms while his shoes stayed on, the problem literally under his feet, invisible to everyone including himself.

Martin placed the nail carefully on the table next to his box of pills. He had given those the flick a week or so earlier, they were simply making him feel worse. Weird even. He wasn't going to endure it any longer for them to reach their full 'efficacy'.

He thought he better do the right thing and tell Dr Whitmore plus he could tell her about the nail so another appointment was made.

**** Part two soon ****