Accidents Will Happen
My other half left early this morning to begin dressing a truck to carry children from the school she works at in the town carnival. While she did that I wandered down to the post office to pick up some parcels. After delivering one of the parcels to her, I wandered home and put the kettle on – expecting to have perhaps an hour before wandering back towards town to watch the carnival parade.
And that's when the phone rang. One of our friends.
“Hi – W's cut her hand. She's ok, but she's going to have to go to hospital. One of her co-workers is taking her right now. Do you want to speak to her?”
“Hi?”
An immediately tearful voice answered.
“Is it bad?”
“Yes.”
I looked at the ceiling, and tried to figure out what to say or do next. Twenty minutes later I too was on my way to the hospital in a taxi to find her. I had visions of spending three or four hours sitting in accident and emergency, waiting to be seen.
Almost unbelievably, she was being seen when I walked in – I knocked on the door of her treatment room, waited for the doctor to answer, and peaked my head in to smiles from both the doctor, and the patient.
“I feel a bit silly”.
She was propped up in bed, with a sizeable bandage being wrapped around her hand. It transpired she had been changing the rigging on the carnival display while under time pressure, slipped, and stuck a swiss army knife blade straight into the fleshy part of her thumb.
After being patched up, we wandered out to find the wonderful co-worker and her husband that had rushed her to hospital, and made our way home with them – almost unbelievably just in time to walk into town alongside the carnival procession.
I questioned if we really should be taking any risks with the freshly re-assembled hand, but my other half seemed happy enough. I think that had more to do with elephant dosages of painkillers than anything though.
The parade itself was wonderful – seeing the infant school children wave to the thousands that turned out. In a strange sort of way, I think the universe realised what it had done earlier in the morning, and thought it had better redress the balance – we had blue skies and sunshine all day.
We survived a couple of hours at the carnival – listening to live bands, and watching displays – before the painkillers began to wear off and I suggested we really should call it a day.
By mid-afternoon we were home. I went home via the supermarket to buy food, and two boxes of ibuprofen. W is presently sitting in the lounge with colouring books – she's not allowed to use her left hand for a few days, so can't knit.
I'm just glad she's ok.