After a hiatus to write a novel, I am back and with stories more devastating than ever.
You know the old saying: no poorly executed good deed goes unpunished. A couple weeks ago, Lauren drove Lindsay to western NY to connect with the family of Lindsay’s boyfriend. When I finished work and dinner, I had a couple hours and as I finished using the restroom, I looked around and decided it was high time to deal with some of the bathroom mold and mildew that had grown high on the walls approaching the vaulted ceiling of our master bathroom.
You are naturally saying, “Ah, so of course you got your ladder.”
I absolutely did not because I don’t have a ladder. Did I let a lame obstacle like that derail me? No!
I prepared a detergent solution in a bucket and got out the mop. Our jacuzzi tub has a fine two-foot platform. If only there were something else that might augment said platform.
Know what else works almost as well as a ladder? A chair! And with the additional jacuzzi tub platform, I was sure to reach the areas I needed to.
So I put the bucket in the tub, placed the chair as you can see here, and climbed up said platform and onto the chair, and began merrily scrubbing the wall.
I have mentioned that our house is haunted. The ghost loves messing with our bathroom—starting the space heater in the middle of the night, opening the door when I’m in the shower. The only explanation for what happened next is the ghost broke the chair, as you can see in this picture.
I tumbled backward, knocked a towel rack off its moorings, hit butt first on the tile and smashed the back of my head against the corner of the open door.
My first thought was I hope Graham didn’t hear that loud crash. I stood up and my shirt was coated in blood. My second thought was Crap! I have to make sure Lauren never finds out about this. And my third was which I can probably accomplish if I can get the requisite stitches or staples in my head BEFORE she gets home.
“Graham!” He was downstairs watching videos on his phone and had his headphones on.
“What?”
“I just split my head open. I need you to come up and look at it to see if you can see my skull.”
Without a word, he came up. I knelt on the tile in front of him, he turned on his iPhone flashlight, and then said, “I don’t see your skull.” Awesome! There was still hope.
Meanwhile, Lauren texted: On my way home.
I didn’t respond because it was 7:34 pm and I had found the urgent care center in the next town over was open till eight. Woohoo! I could be stitched or stapled before Lauren got home if they could just get me in!
I called the urgent care. “Hi, my name is Gordon Laws. I just had a fall in the restroom and split my head open. I probably need a couple stitches. I was hoping I could get in before you close. I’m ten minutes away.”
“Uh, well, number one, we don’t do stitches in heads, we do staples. And number two, we’re booked through the rest of the evening. That sounds serious, so you should probably go to the ER.”
“I’m definitely not going to the ER. They will leave me in the lobby for eight hours that I could be sleeping when I could just come see you first thing in the morning. Thanks, anyway.”
Ugh!
Lauren had texted me twice more: ETA is 10:15.
Me: Okay
Lauren: Everything okay?
Me, yelling: Graham, could you come take a picture of my head now? I want to send it to a friend’s husband to see if I really need to go to the ER.
Graham: Okay
Lauren: Hello?
Me: Yeah, everything is fine.
Graham came back up. He took the picture.
I forwarded it to my friend who sent it to her husband who declared, “I see nothing here that requires a trip to the ER tonight. But he should probably be seen in the morning.”
Now my phone rang. Lauren: “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You’re not really answering my texts.”
Sigh. There was no way to get through this night without telling, so I finally confessed. That touched off an onslaught of handwringing, and soon, Lindsay, who is studying to be a PA, was texting me that I had to wrap the wound or else infection would destroy the macrophages in my blood, the infection would spread to my brain, and my brain would leak out through my ear by morning. I’m pretty sure that is a true medical possibility.
So I called Graham back up and explained that he had to help me wrap my head in gauze. I knelt again and looked up at him. His face was contorted and he looked paralyzed.
“What’s the matter?”
“No offense, Dad, but this is kinda freaking me out.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “If you could see my skull, I’d be more worried. Now just hold the pad in place while I wrap.”
I wrapped my head, and when Lauren got home, I went to sleep looking like this.
Tomorrow, I’ll send along part two, which, incredibly, gets even better.
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