The paramedic looked at me and said, “Are you Daughter?”
I thought of what it must look like from her perspective as I held the ice pack to Coryn’s bloody head with her purse over my arm.
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
Two hours earlier, I had walked in the front door of my house, changed out of my work clothes—a black skirt, silk shirt, and silk headscarf—into my jean skirt, long-sleeved T-shirt, and cotton head covering, and set about emptying the dishwasher I had started that morning.
Coryn marched by on her way to the laundry room, walking with her knees lifted high. “I’m doing my Zoom exercise. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m walking funny.”
She high-stepped it over to the stairs leading up the second floor and practiced stepping up and down the first step, but something went wrong. She fell straight backwards. Even that might not have been so bad, but she hit her head on a trash bin. It fell and sounded like a gong calling everyone in the house over to her. Jonah raced right behind me. Mike was behind the closed doors of his office, giving a big PowerPoint presentation.
I felt so bad about those trash bins being there, left over from when the baby changing table was at the bottom of the stairs. Instead of taking out the trash each day, we kept adding more and more trash bins in some kind of strange Mexican stand-off. When Coryn moved in, I thought that I should put them back around the house, but they were tucked against the wall and weren’t a tripping hazard. No one could have known that they were in the exact wrong place for a person falling at the bottom of the stairs.
Coryn never lost consciousness. She was down when we got to her but was soon able to sit up. Jonah carried over a dining room chair to help her get up and have somewhere to sit. She felt blood in her hair and sent me to the kitchen for a washcloth to put to her head. I brought it to her and ran back for a paper towel and 409 to wipe the drops of blood from the tiled floor. Then we left in a hurry. She told me to take her to urgent care. We forgot her glasses which I had set aside when she was lying down but remembered her purse with her Parkinsons medication. I didn’t pack a bag for myself but asked her if she needed a book. Then we jumped in the car and raced off to the closest urgent care.
I brought her in, scanned the QR code to check her in, and left to park the car. They had her in a back room before I returned. It was worse than we thought. The fall had nicked a vein and blood spurted out with every heartbeat. Even with packs of gauze, they couldn’t stop the bleeding. They were unequipped to deal with her and called an ambulance.
I sent out a group message to all her boys including Mike who was probably still in his meeting, “Mom fell and hit her head on a trash can. It hit in just the right way to cut open a vein so she’s bleeding a lot. She’s in urgent care right now but will be taken to the ER where they are better equipped to handle it. She’s a little lightheaded but otherwise okay. I’m with her.”
The boys one by one checked in glad to know what was going on. Coryn smiled as I read each message.
Once the urgent care decided to send her to the ER, they put a horribly uncomfortable neck brace on her. That was probably the worst part of the affair and entirely unnecessary. The first thing the ER doctor did was take it off. The urgent care nurses gave me an icepack to hold over her bump which was covered by gauze held on by a pirate-like hospital tape bandana that kept falling over her eyes.
That’s what the paramedic walked in on. That’s why she asked me if I was Daughter. They asked a lot of questions. After it all, I think I have Coryn’s birthday memorized, but I want a sheet of paper listing all medications and doctor contact information in case I need to answer the questions for her next time.
I went home before driving to the ER to meet her there. I ate a banana and packed a couple of bottles of water, used the bathroom, grabbed her glasses and a clean shirt for her, and set Jonah working on a new assignment.
They were pulling the gurney into her room as I walked back. I followed them and got in the way, but soon we were all settled in. It still took forever for the doctor to see her and take the brace off and another forever for him to come back with a needle and thread.
While a nurse came in to clean up some of the blood that had dyed Coryn’s white hair and run down her neck, I said, “Now I know what you look like as a redhead.”
She told the nurse, “I’m giving my other daughter-in-law some competition.” My sister-in-law has been known as Magenta Michele for her signature hair color.
The doctor was great at explaining everything he did one step at a time. He assured Coryn that his stitches would pull everything so tight it would stop the bleeding.
She asked, “Can you pull them tight enough to get the wrinkles out of my face.”
We laughed. He smiled and said, “I don’t think they will be that tight.”
He had to leave after the fourth suture to get more supplies, “You’re using up all the thread,” he said.
Coryn quipped, “Like a turkey truss.”
The doctor came back and put in the fifth suture, and the bleeding finally stopped. He measured the gash for us. It was four centimeters long. He told her to go ahead and shower when she got home and come back in seven to ten days to have the sutures removed. He kept the ends long so they could be found in her hair.
I gave her the clean shirt to take with her to the bathroom. She was able to stand and walk without help though I walked next to her down the hall. When we came back someone was there ready to take her to radiology for a CT scan. I stayed behind to update her boys and call Jonah to encourage him to keep working. Hurricane Milton was on his way to Florida, so I also urged Basil to drive north to Atlanta where Mike has a cousin. I kept watching his progress on our Find Friends App. I was also stalking Sophia who was going through the first anniversary of her roommate’s death. She and her friend Ryanna, who flew in to be with her, seemed to be spending the day at the mall.
After checking on everyone, I opened the book app on my phone and read a fun YA series about a seventeen-year-old girl who takes over the world set in our world in 2017. I was very surprised when she started taking over Africa but was cheering for her by the end of the book. By the end of the series, she had brought peace and prosperity to the whole world. I loved the Angel of Death Trilogy, and after Coryn came back, I updated her on my kids and the countries that had fallen under the heroine’s rule.
When the CT scan came back normal, we headed home. Coryn went to bed without eating much. Ryanna and Sophia had been palling around all day together and didn’t come home until the wee hours of the next morning. I heated up the leftovers from Sunday’s pork chop dinner for the rest of us. I watched Basil’s progress driving up I-95 until I fell asleep at eight. Sophia and Ryanna were still not home, and their location was on Central which was a bad part of town.
I woke up at four yet again, but this time I stumbled out of bed, ignoring a shooting pain in my hip, and followed the ringing sound I heard to Justin’s bedroom. I figured out what had been waking me up at four all last week. Justin had set alarms every half an hour starting at four so that when he woke up at six for school he wasn’t in a deep sleep. Since I was the only one waking up from his early morning alarms, I made him delete them all.
Then I checked my phone. Sophia was home, and Basil was in Atlanta, Georgia. What a relief to have everyone in the right place. I was still nervous about Basil since he was planning on driving to Texas to spend his hurricane days with his friends but felt good knowing that he was out of the way of Milton.
Around six thirty Ι heard the whooshing of hot air balloons and ran outside to see hundreds of balloons flying overhead. Xenia and Justin and Ι were up to go to school and Ι had them take pictures of me looking up into the sky.
The hip pain I woke up with persisted all day, so I called and made an appointment with my doctor. It was the same time as Jonah’s driving lesson and the kids’ school pick-up time. Good thing my friend Kelly was coming over to go see Loverboy and Foreigner with me that night. She picked up the kids. Mike took Jonah to the driving class, and Kelly picked him up. I went to Pilates and then to the doctor where I was diagnosed with hip bursitis caused by my fall in the Atlantic last August. She gave me a referral to a physical therapist. Then I went home and made dinner before the concert. Everyone was home, even Sophia who was sporting a new tattoo of a phoenix which she got at a tattoo parlor on Central. She and Ryanna had had a good day. Ryanna was sporting a Balloon Fiesta t-shirt to commemorate her trip to Albuquerque. She was to leave the next day, but we had been able to go to Vespers together on Saturday. She and Sophia went to watch the balloons fly up on Sunday. It had been a good trip.
Coryn and I cleaned up the kitchen together both limping from pain in our right legs like twins. We worked well together like the sisters in Christ and friends that we are. It had been a busy couple of days. Even though I felt horrible that she fell, I was thankful to have been able to be with her throughout everything. I love spending time with Coryn, talking to her, laughing with her. Every day I am a sister, friend, and daughter. I’m so thankful she’s here.
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