Emergency…

I had a nearly perfect day yesterday. It was relaxing, I sold some eggs for a neighbor at the farm (another story), met more beekeepers (actually knew them but didn’t know they were beekeepers), met a garden expert who taught me a thing or two, baked a loaf of sage bread of my own invention and was in the middle of baking a cake when I got a phone call from my son.

“Mom, I think you should come and pick up J. She fell off the bike and can’t walk home.” He was cool and suave about it. I asked where they were. Another boy took the phone, a good friend, adopted son # 5. He gave me directions, too precise in my opinion. I started thinking that if he thought that  I didn’t know where he lived when in fact he knows that I do, the fall could be pretty bad. I asked to talk to J and they got confused. I asked “Is she conscious?!!!!” She was, but bleeding a lot according to them.  “From where?!!” Her head, but she is okay they insisted! No need for an ambulance. Luckily I was less than five minutes away.

When I got to the boys house, I found my daughter on a bed complete with a towel to keep the bedspread clean, bandaged up like a mummy and the smell of rubbing alcohol permeating the air, two boy doctors (adopted son #2 and #5) at her side, one boy (#1) was in tears because she was riding on his pegs when they hit a crack in the sidewalk, my son trying to calm him down and my daughter laughing like a frigging idiot. Covered in blood? Hardly but she had hit her head. Scrapes are pretty bloody but the one on her head was what was freaking everybody out. The boy doctors insisted that until the lump the size of a golf ball formed, there was a deep hole in her head. They had put their fingers in it!

I made them go scald their hands and placed all the bloody cotton in a sandwich bag. Hugged #1 and assured him that it wasn’t his fault, that I wasn’t mad and helped my woozy J to the car. I got her home, removed the mummy wrap and washed everything and determined that the head wound was not so bad but the knee needed stitches for sure. Then I  called adopted son #3 to talk to his mother, a nurse, who told me to get back in the car right now and take the girl to the emergency room for a neurological exam, even if she was alert. So I did.

The Adopted sons  got on their bikes, went to Walgreens and out of their feelings of extreme guilt, they bought her a gift bag of goodies then came along to the emergency room to wait with my boy. Sweet. Three stitches later and a list of warning signs for me to watch (for at least 48 hours folks), in case of a slow brain bleed,  I drove everybody safely home, bikes in trunk,well after midnight, then spent the rest of the evening setting my alarm as instructed in order to wake poor J up to see if she was alert.

I had one name in mind the entire time: Natasha Richardson. But all is well so far.