How We Ended Up in the Emergency Room

Well, how else would expect a day to end, if it started with an exploding hair dryer?

After work, Percy, Ana, and I reunited. We had dinner with some quality folk, and then Percy suggested we go hang out with one of his friends from church. We meandered to his house. The kid knew how to get girls to like him -- he fed us chocolate. Then he got a call from another friend, Guy, who wanted him to come hang out. Upon finding out that this kid had people over, Guy invited us all.

So we pile into this kid's car and head over to Guy's house. [No, you did not see an incorrect verb-tense-shift. It is a rhetorical device used in epics.] As we get there, a bunch of people are leaving, so it looks like Guy is trading one party for another. And he is super-psyched about it too -- jumping up and down and gesturing dramatically for us to be quiet. I suppose he doesn't want to wake his parents, but it looks a little sketchy. Guy darts ahead of us down the stairs. Somehow I end up at the front of the parade, directly behind Guy. So I hear the tumble and see only Guy's feet, at the bottom of the stairs. The rest of his body is around the corner. I run down to see what's going on, calling, "Are you okay?" He doesn't answer, but by the time I reach the bottom of the stairs, he is on his feet, on his way up, hand and head covered in blood. It drips down the hallway as he returns to the front of the house. Percy and friend take one look at him and declare: "We need to get you to the emergency room!"

Percy goes off in search of a towel to staunch the blood pouring from Guy's head, while his friend helps him to the car. It's all he can do not to pass out. We wanted to get him into the front seat -- it seems easiest, and then Percy, Ana, and I can sit in the back. Instead, we have to lay him across the backseat. Percy returns, and he rides in the back with Guy. Ana and I sit up front, on top of each other, talking to Guy all the way to the hospital to make sure he doesn't pass out.

Fun fact : The speed limit on the hospital grounds is 23 1/2.

Percy and his friend help Guy into the emergency room, and Ana parks the car. Eventually, the nurse shoos Percy, his friend, and me away from Guy. They take him into a back room to clean him up. By the time he makes it out, Ana is back. Guy comes out in a wheel chair, bandages wrapped around his head and under his chin, like something out of a movie. He sits and chats with us (apparently, feeling better, i.e. not fainting) until the hospital has a bed ready. Percy's friend goes back with him when a nurse finally comes for him; he is allowed only one guest.

The three of us left sit and chat and watch natural disasters on the Weather Channel -- a poor choice for the emergency room. Eventually, the kid comes back out and tells us that Guy is getting examined and stapled and that he wants to see each of us. Ana and I both have the same thought : That situation would awkward beyond words. But we'll go see him together. So Percy attempts to brave the second visitor shift. We're told that Guy can't have visitors right now.

By now, it's all we can do to stay awake. Also, it's hard to ignore the other people who come into the emergency room. So I occupy myself with praying for the people who come in the door. Percy's friend takes a nap. Luckily, before it gets too bad, a nurse comes out with good news: Guy is all stapled up. He tells us that he is asking for Percy and "one of the girls." Ana elects me, and Percy and I follow the nurse to Guy's room (which is really three walls and a curtain).

Guy is laying on the bed. He has seven shiny staples on the side of his head, and a halo of blood in various stages of soaking in and drying on the pillow around his head. Percy and I admire the staples, since Guy seems to want that reaction. I also describe his halo of blood, which he enjoys. We chat as nurses run a few last tests. Then, in the crowning moment of the night, a nurse comes in to tell Guy how to care for his wound. She talks to Percy and me as if we were going to be looking after Guy and his injured head. I'm sure Guy takes it all in too, but we don't mention that we just met him not thirty seconds before he bust his head open.

At last -- at last! -- Guy is released. We pile back into the car, this time with Guy properly situated in the front seat. It's after one, and we have all been struggling for the past hour at least to stay awake. So no one jumps up when Guy suggests, "What are we going to do now? We have the whole night before us!"

Percy's friend explains to him that it's bedtime. We left them there and Percy brought Ana and me back to my house, where I discovered that I was way too wound up from the adventure to approach sleep. Ana and I put on a movie, thinking we would fall asleep during it.

We stayed up through all of When in Rome, as incapable of taking our eyes away from that train-wreck as I was from the shiny stitches in Guy's head.