Friday, March 02, 2012

A Stitch In Time

I got the call around 3:15. I answered to hear Alex screaming his head off. Grabbed my keys and the second I cranked the car the sky fell out. It was the hardest rain I'd driven through in quite some time and I was going about 65 in a 35. I ran the first red light, stopped for half a second at the next in front of the police station, didn't hesitate at the stop sign, and fish tailed into the driveway two seconds later. It was too late, Mandy had already left. She was a good five minutes ahead of me by normal standards, but I managed to pass her on the way to the E.R.

They were hanging pictures and Alex tried to help. Although it only fell a foot...maybe a foot and a half, it caught him in the left eyebrow. It was deep and it was bleeding badly. We ran into the waiting room, took one look around and saw the despair in every one's eyes that could only mean we were in for a huge wait.

Four hours later we walked out with 4 stitches and zero patience. The whole thing was a nightmare. First he was quiet and that made us nervous. Then he got hyper and that got us nervous. Then we got surrounded by inbred hillbillies and that got us nervous. We asked for juice four times, it never came. At one point they shoved a huge machine into our teeny tiny room and said they were ready to X-Ray his finger. "Why his finger?" I asked. "Because this piece of paper says that's what we should do." "That paper is wrong, he's got a cut on his head." Now with attitude the nurse came back "I see he has a cut, the paper says to X-Ray his finger." " Ma,am it's time for you and that piece of paper to leave this room." Mandy chimed in "The guy next door has the cut finger."

Finally we made it home, but it will be months before the events will cease haunting me. The fears that flooded my soul as I drove into some unknown future will take weeks to silence themselves. Thank God he is okay.

1 comment:

The Father of Five said...

I didn't blog about it (I burned that story on FB instead of the blog) - but (while I was at work - dealing with other people's trauma) we had a little trauma of our own.

My daughter sliced her finger open on the lid of a can while throwing some trash away. Sliced from the tip of her fnger down the first kunckle, then curved around and went back up (in the shape of the letter J).

LOTS of blood.

9 stiches, over four hundred dollars, and a few weeks later - I have a daughter with a fully itact finger back again...