Community Corner

In Which I Tell a Story That We Do Laugh About Now That It's Over . . .

But it did take a few days longer than usual . . .

In the end, it was my fault, as usual. I would like to blame the pig, but it wasn’t Petunia’s fault that it was hot outside and she needed the fan plugged in to the base of the light bulb out in the mud room which meant I had to unscrew the bulb so it didn’t stay lit all day as they were both on the same switch. I could try to blame the cat for having peed on the towels in the corn house, but blaming cats is like trying to carry water in a Hula Hoop. I could blame my husband, but that’s too much like blaming a cat . . . it just won’t stick and in the end and I’m the one who looks bad, as usual.

So, how it shakes down is this – my husband and I had just finished the usual 45 minutes of evening chores that we do just before bed (feed corn house cats, garage cats, pass out meds, give bananas and blankies to pigs, throw hay to horses, steers, etc.) and were heading back inside. It was getting dark, but I had not yet screwed in the light bulb in the mudroom now that Petunia had come inside for the night and didn’t need the fan anymore – mistake number one. Moments earlier I had brought in a basket of towels from the corn house that the incontinent old cat, Thorn, had peed on, but the washing machine was full, and instead of smelling up the house, I put the basket just outside the door in the mudroom until I could move laundry. Mistake number two. So, when my husband entered the mudroom, reaching for the doorknob, he did not see the basket outside the door because of the light bulb being unscrewed, tripped over the basket and put his hand through the window just above and to the left of the doorknob.

My husband is a brilliant man in many ways, but when it comes to medical emergencies, the bulb is unscrewed and the switch is set in the “off” position. This is a man who loves to watch House on TV, but changes the channel when they start surgery or even if someone breaks out in a rash. So, here he was with several very large gashes in his hand (I didn’t see them until much later because he wouldn’t let me near him) blood pouring out all over the floor and walls, glass everywhere, four dogs going bananas, feral kitchen cats eying the opening he’d created in the house . . . I have to say, I wasn’t sure where to start, so I yelled at David to wrap his hand and sit down while I got the dogs locked in a room away from the blood and glass – we didn’t need to call a vet that night, as well.

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I managed to get the dogs shut into another room, all the while noticing that my husband was NOT sitting down, he was tearing around the house, pulling the towel off his hand and shouting, “Oh, wow, this is really, really bad.  I’m in trouble.”

By the time I had the dogs locked up, I knew exactly where he’d been by the trail of blood he’d left behind – it was through the kitchen, spattered all over the fridge, down the hallway, in the bathroom. All we needed was some yellow tape and we’d be ready to shoot the inaugural episode of CSI: Bethany.

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“Sit down and keep the pressure on!” I shouted, shooing cats away from the glass and blood and gaping hole in the window. The pig was already in a crate, thank goodness, so she was out of harm’s way.

“It’s really bad!” he shouted back, unwrapping it yet again.

“Don’t unwrap it!” I yelled back. “Keep the pressure on!”

I had to get the glass and blood up and cover the window before I drove him to the emergency room or I’d have bleeding animals and escaped cats and a far bigger mess by the time we got home.

I started to pick the leftover glass out of the window and drop it into a bag, but David was up and on the move again, this time to the front room.

“Sit down!” I shouted. “You make it bleed more!” A splash of blood hit the Hoosier cabinet when he returned. I gave up, grabbed the phone and dialed 911 – someone else needed to deal with him while I secured the house.

“No, I’ll drive myself to the hospital!” David stood and headed up the stairs.

“Sit down!” I screamed. “It’s your right hand and you drive a standard!!!”

I suppose you could get hold of the 911 tape and hear it for yourself. Yes, there was a lot of arguing while I tried to talk to the dispatcher. Yes, he did ask if we were arguing, and I suppose it sounded bad . . . he did ask if we’d been drinking (no.) He asked if there was a slit wrist, where the bleeding was coming from, etc. I replied I had no idea, my husband wouldn’t let me see the wound and besides, I had to clean up the glass.

“Just stay with your husband, ma’am. Don’t worry about the glass.”

“Why? He WON’T SIT DOWN!!! And I have animals! I have to clean up!” No use explaining about the pig just then . . .

“Make him sit down and tell him not to unwrap it.”

I thought, well, that’s what I called them to do, I was a total failure at keeping him still and someone had to keep the cats away from the broken window . . .

It was well over ten minutes before they arrived, and I couldn’t figure out why the emergency vehicles were parked in the driveway for several minutes before coming inside (I could see them while I mopped up the blood in front of the washing machine) but when I noticed that the first person walking up the sidewalk was a female state trooper I realized that they didn’t think they were coming out on a medical call, but rather, a domestic, hence the female trooper needing to be there first . . . and there I was, callously letting my husband keep pressure on his own hand (I think he had lost enough blood to tire him out, so he was now sitting at the kitchen table) while I got the house to the point where we could safely leave it.

It only took a few minutes to explain to the officer what had happened, and all evidence (basket, light, fan, pig, etc.) was in plain view and it was quite clear in the mudroom that the cat had peed on the towels. She was very polite and left shortly afterwards, and the emergency workers didn’t once comment about the kitchen cats, the barking dogs or the pig in the crate, but by the look on my husband’s face, it would be a while before he forgave me for calling 911, unscrewing the light bulb and putting the laundry basket outside the door. I opted to meet him at the hospital later, with a convenient and viable excuse of having to cover the broken window.

And yet, the humiliation factor was not remotely close to ending for that evening.

When all the stitching was done and we were heading out of St. Raphael’s, we walked past the patients in the waiting room, and for the first time, I noticed what we looked like. David was wearing a white shirt and light khaki pants, which offered excellent contrast to the hundreds of splotches of blood spattered all over his clothes. I was still in the barn clothes I had worn all day, and had mud caked on my jeans halfway up to my knees as well as a series of round mud spots on my lower thighs which, if you looked carefully, very much resembled the shape of a pig’s snout. The waiting room crowd, used to inner city violence, averted their eyes as we walked past. It was that bad.

Which is why, I am sure, the gods were not yet done punishing me. As the automatic doors slid open, we stood facing a gentleman in a well-tailored suit, immaculately groomed and carrying a meticulously wrapped gift. It was our neighbor from across the street, Tom.

“Hi, Tom. How are you?” I asked.

He looked us up and down.

“Better than you guys, I assume,” Tom replied and began to cautiously explain that his wife was in with an appendectomy . . . which is precisely when my husband’s hand, which was now stitched and wrapped but NOT ELEVATED because my husband had refused a sling, had finished filling the bandage with blood which now began to pour out all over the floor, quickly creating a puddle the size of a martini glass (yes, by now I was thinking about that drink I hadn’t had that night . . .)

“Uh, we gotta go back in,” I mumbled. “Come on, Baby . . . no, will you at least TRY to catch the blood before it hits the floor? Our best to your wife, Tom . . .” and we paraded back inside, blood running from one hand into the other, then onto the floor, while the waiting room crowd not only averted their eyes, several wretched and clutched at their stomachs.

The stitches come out of David's hand tomorrow, so I thought it might be a good time to thank our excellent Bethany emergency workers who valiantly wrapped my husband’s hand while fending off the cats that kept jumping onto the table, and never said a word about the 90 pound pig in the crate three feet away (I was so happy it was extremely warm that evening so I hadn’t bothered to put her nightgown on her  . . . one less thing . . . ) and the very nice state trooper who graciously tried to hide her smile once she got a grip on the situation, and to our very kind neighbor Tom, who was polite to the bloody end, and to the manufacturers of Tide laundry detergent, which, my husband pointed out the next day, got every single speck of blood out of his clothing. And I apologize to the dispatcher for shouting so much on the other end of the phone, but MY HUSBAND WOULD NOT SIT DOWN!

So it’s back to the usual All Glamour, All The Time here at Locket’s Meadow. I promise to keep our "glamour" to the “mud” variety for the foreseeable future, but I make no guarantees. However, from here on in, our back door will have Plexiglas windows, for which the cleanup crew at St. Raphael’s, and the ER waiting room crowd (whom may never recover from the trauma of that evening) will no doubt be forever grateful . . .


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