My Great-grandmother Mo (GreatgrandMo) was a Christian Scientist. She was also, from all reports, a pretty hard-headed woman who suffered no BS and was adept at getting her way. All the Mo women are kinda like that, actually, even the Mos by marriage.

My Great-grandfather Bro (GreatgrandBro) was a gifted and arrogant surgeon who’s illustrious career ended in disgrace when his addiction to, and abuse of pain killers became a problem for the community. I’ve heard he was actually dealing, for all intents and purposes–having gone so far as to trade morphine to a poor black woman for a piece of pottery from the Chicago World’s Fair that my GrandMo still has today.

Once upon a time, probably in the early 1950s, GreatgrandMo broke her leg. Though the timeline confuses me a bit, I’m given the impression that this took place while my Grandparents were living with or in close proximity to my GreatgrandMo. Because though my self-made Grandfather turned a career as a traveling salesman into a very healthy chunk of money during his lifetime, he started out as poor as most people do.

So they took GreatgrandMo to the emergency room. And for whatever reason, the staff at the hospital insisted that she be admitted for treatment. Being a Christian Scientist, GreatgrandMo wasn’t having any of that, and so her frustrated family struggled to get her and broken leg back into the car and sought the counsel of my GreatgrandBro.

He looked her leg over and determined that while it seemed like a perfectly reasonable break that could be easily set, he would have to have an x-ray to make sure. Someone’s brother-in-law was a chiropractor. So they loaded GreatgrandMo BACK into the car and drove afterhours to this gentleman’s office where they acquired the needed photos of the fracture.

And then, they loaded her into the car again, leg akimbo, and headed back.

GreatgrandBro examined the x-rays and declared that he could indeed set the leg, and proceeded to outline a list of supplies he would need to accomplish this. I imagine this list included plaster, splints and some pain killers. My grandmother, in telling this story, made some effort to imagine away the reasons why he was unable to acquire these supplies himself but Granddad came right out and said, “he was barred from the hospitals and they weren’t allowed to dispense anything to him.”

My Granddad went to the hospital and told one of the sisters, “You know me and you know my mother. You also know my father-in-law and you know his situation. I need these supplies so that he can set my mother’s leg.” The Sister looked upon my Granddad and felt compassion. She provided him with all of the items on the list at a cost of $15.20.

And so, my GreatgrandBro, the skilled, arrogant and disgraced surgeon, set my GreatgrandMo, the stubborn Christian Scientist’s broken leg in the early 1950s for the sum of $15.20. The story is worth so much more than that.