Stitches

Well, that’s interesting. I could have sworn I was just on the four-wheeler… Why am I on the ground looking at the sky?

I was so confused. What had happened, and why did everyone around me look so panicked? My genius seven-year-old mind jumped right on it: It probably has something to do with my bloody forehead!

No kidding.

Yeah, but what’s the big deal? I asked myself. I really don’t feel much pain, just a slight headache. So why am I crying?

Someone was carrying me towards our cabin as fast as they could, but it seemed like they were trying to run through mud. The cabin seemed like an eternity away. I saw my mom hurrying toward me with a panicked look on her face and a wet washcloth for my forehead. I began crying harder.

I must have been crying quite loudly, because once we were in the cabin people kept shushing me and trying to get me to calm down. I wanted to tell them I wasn’t really sure why I was sobbing my heart and soul out, but no one seemed to understand me. That made me cry even harder. I could hear my dad explaining to someone how I had flown off the back of the four-wheeler and cracked my head on a rock. My cousin, who my dad was teaching how to drive, had gunned the engine before checking to see if everyone was holding on. Sadly, I wasn’t.

The nearest hospital to our ranch in Wyoming is an hour away, and I must have blacked out during the car ride there. I don’t remember a thing until waking up in the E.R. with what felt like hundreds of masked doctors surrounding me. That’s when I started panicking.

I’m dying. I though. That’s the only explanation.

One of the nurses held up a brown teddy bear. Somehow, over my renewed wailing, the nurse managed to convey that she would give me said teddy bear if I would just shut up and cooperate.

What good will that ugly stuffed thing do me in the afterlife?! I wanted to demand, but before they would even give me a chance to stop bawling, two doctors leaned forward. One was holding a numbing needle and the other held a very sharp, very long stitching needle.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I woke up a while later in a chair with my new teddy bear in my lap. I decided it was actually pretty cute. Stitches the Bear now lives on my bookshelf.

As awful as that experience was, I’m kind of grateful for it. I learned that in painful situations I am capable of putting my pain aside and thinking, even if it’s not very clearly! Another important lesson I learned: check to make sure the driver knows that you are not holding on, especially when that driver is learning to drive the four-wheeler for the first time! True, this experience has caused me to be slightly paranoid on four-wheelers, but I have become quite a safe driver because of it. Plus, who wouldn’t want a good scar story? :)