Owww

Saturday 20 September 2008

This place is not really finished, especially the lawn and yard which still need manicurement and cleaning-up. Whilst we were in England the workmen were working mainly under Daddy's directions over the phone and e-mail, and a lot of stuff was left lying round for them to move later, or in some cases they were just sloppy and never picked it up. Mother (our stepmother) decided that today would be clean-up-the-yard day and so we were all pressed into service from about 9.00 onwards.

A lot of it was raking, trimming, or moving potential firewood (Daddy will burn nearly anything in a fireplace). Jessy and I moved logs and scrap lumber for probably two hours straight. Mother served us iced tea and then we all went right back to it. Then Daddy asked me to help him with something. There is a rack that the workmen used for painting the storm shutters with epoxy paint. It is about ten feet long and two feet wide and made out of two-by-fours and some skinny metal pipe. We picked it up and manoeuvred it onto the yard trailer which Daddy towed over to the other side of the garage. Back there is some other junk leftover from the construction including a not-so-tidy stack of scaffold planks, some with ugly rusty nails in them. This is not a place Lisa or little J.J. ever go, so it is not especially a safety hazard. But in lifting the painting rack off the trailer and manoeuvring it in beside the back of the garage we had to pass pretty closely to some pretty nasty-looking spiky stuff.

I had one end of this rack and had to press it up to like shoulder-height to get through the gate and past some other stuff. Daddy was carrying the other end walking backwards. 'Don't push at me,' he said several times, and though I was losing the strength for this I was trying very hard not to let him trip over his heels. At one point we were very close to the scaffold-plank pile. I felt like I would lose my hold on this rack at any second. 'Just another moment, almost there,' he said.

'Okay,' I struggled. I wobbled a little and the thing was so unwieldy and heavy that it tended to sway on its own. I bumped sideways right into the side of the scaffold-plank pile, felt something jab me and heard my t-shirt rip, but soldiered on in some pain till we could put the thing down.

The second my arms went below my shoulders I felt the pain and couldn't hold it. Fortunately Daddy was able to guide the rack over to one side as it went down with a clatter. 'Owww,' I said then.

Jessy had been behind me and came over. 'Your shirt is ripped,' she observed.

'That's not all,' I said, and peeled it up under my right arm. There across the skin of the side of my breast, near the bottom, was a very nasty gash about two inches long, stinging from the dirty nail and wood that scraped me. Blood oozed down my ribs from it.

'What happened?' Daddy asked, coming towards me from the other end of the rack. 'Did it bite you?'

I only looked up, still holding the t-shirt up under my arm, and he leaned over and looked at it. A bra might have taken some of the direct hit but I hadn't worn one for this sweaty work and the cut was much deeper for my oversight.

Daddy actually laid his fingers to the flesh nearby to pull up my breast and examine it. It stung and bled more. 'Owww,' I said quietly.

He winced. 'Right. Get in the car.'

'Are you taking her to the hospital?' Jessy asked innocently as he stomped past her to the garage. That didn't need an answer.

'I just want to wash it first,' I said quietly, and turned, carefully laying the t-shirt down over it. 'Can you come with me?'

She nodded. 'I haven't had a shower.'

I made a face. 'I don't think I can have one right now,' I said.

At the clinic in Accomac we sat for another hour waiting for a variety of other scruffy-looking people. Jessy had dressed my wound with antiseptic ointment and a thick gauze bandage with tape, all of which the nurse told me to take off, which hurt a lot. By now the bleeding was mostly stopped although it still stung awfully. The nurse looked at it for a few moments and then the doctor came in. It was a male doctor. I immediately blushed. But they didn't have a female doctor on this shift.

Daddy was ready to back out of the examining cubicle-- he doesn't like stitches, and also he won't ever compromise the dignity of a lady, even one of his own daughters. I knew that looking at it behind the garage was as much as he would do. But Jessy would not leave my side even after the doctor told her she was in the way. She sat on my left and held my hand securely while I lay on the table with my other arm over my head and the t-shirt pulled up, almost TOO far, and got treated.

He asked how it had happened, on what I had gouged myself, and I told him it was a nail, and he gave me a shot for that. He said it would not need stitches but he did use some really strong tape to draw it closed and told me not to take off the tape for several days. I winced. 'How will I have a shower?' I wondered, since I was already a foul mess from working all morning.

'Take baths,' he said, and smiled a little. 'After about Tuesday you can take it off.' And he gave me a prescription for stuff to put on it after that, as well as the one for antibiotic, and told me to take Tylenol Extra Strength for the 'discomfort'', which really meant 'PAIN'.

Jessy had brought me a clean t-shirt and stood guard while I changed it after the doctor left the cubicle. I didn't know what I would do with the other one and carried it out. Daddy met us in the corridor, got the report from the doctor, and then leaned in and gave me a hug. 'I'm sorry, sweetheart,' he said.

I hugged him back, hard. 'It wasn't your fault.'

He made a face, not convinced of that. 'You're a good trouper,' he told me, which is what he always says to us at times like this.

'She didn't even cry,' Jessy said.

'I cried,' I said.

'Not out loud,' she said. 'I would have bawled my eyes out.'

I gave her a hug too.

As soon as we got back home I went up stairs for a bath. Jessy came in and helped me, mainly by washing my hair while I held a plastic bag taped under my arm to keep the bandage out of the water. I did not put on a bra yet and wonder how one will fit around, not over, the bandage. I will have to go to school in the morning without a morning shower.

The only good part of this is that the doctor provided me with a note to keep from participating in PE this week. So I can actually wear makeup and something reasonable.

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