Off To The Emergency Hospital

I made a lot of trips to the emergency hospital, up until I was about 12 years old or so. It was kind of neat because it was the same hospital where I was born. One time I was riding my bike in the shopping center, which was on the other side of an arching street that flew up and over the Ventura Freeway. I think it was summer but for whatever reason I was not wearing any shoes. I was pretty bored, just riding around aimlessly in the parking lot. I decided it would look pretty cool if I rested one of my feet up on the side of the bike, near the front wheel. It worked for a few moments, then one of the spokes flew around and sliced right through the ball of my right foot. It did not take it quite off though, it was just hanging there off of my foot at a funny angle. I could see little red threads in the gap in the wound, tendons or something.

Well I had to get up and over the bridge, which was kind of difficult since I could only use one foot, and there was no way I was leaving my bike so I had to haul that as well. I waited at the light. It really didn't hurt that much, and as I got
up and over that bridge I left a nice trail of blood. I came back much later to try to find it and was crushed that it was gone. When I got home my mother put my foot in the sink and put some water on it. For some reason I cried, I guess the water must have hurt it. Plus there were not any men around. I felt really idiotic crying, my father never cried, what was wrong with me? Well, it was off to the emergency hospital. We knew the way there, and the doctor decided he was
going to sew the ball of my foot back on, but first he had to numb everything up. So he put a needle in the very center of the bottom of my foot, it stayed in there a long time, it seemed like about a minute. The doctor was tall and very serious, he reminded me of my father just a bit. There was no way I was going to cry in front of him, but it really hurt, a lot, so I held my breath really tight while he stabbed me. It finally ended and I guess he heard me panting and asked if I was OK. Then he took a needle and thread and sewed the ball back on. He did not talk much, which was nice. And that was it, I got all taped up and we went home. I was on crutches for about a week, which made me very angry. I wanted to see the bloody trail over the bridge.

After the stitches came out and I was back home in my room, I picked at the ball of my foot just a bit and I could see that the skin was dead, it was just a circle of dead skin. That seemed silly. It only took a few minutes and it came right off, and there was very very pink, brand new skin under there, I thought it looked neat. But it turned out I wasn't supposed to do that so I was back on the crutches again for a week and bandaged up. I got teased at school of course. Hey gimp! Did you step on a pile of shit!? The usual stuff. By the time it was all over I couldn't see my bloody trail, the rain must have washed it away. So I guess it wasn't summer after all. It never rains in the Summer in Los Angeles.

Another day, I was walking around, barefoot again, in my backyard. It was the suburbs, so there wasn't much to do but I could always go into my backyard and dig for fossils or gold, or torture insects. I never did find any fossils, or gold. So while I was on my way to find something to do I stepped on a fenceboard, the problem was I stepped right on a nail standing tall through the board and it went up through my foot. The right foot again, it always seemed to be that way. I couldn't pull it out, it was really stuck up there. It wasn't far to the house so I started kind of dragging the board and myself in that direction, but that hurt a bit too much so I lifted my foot up with the board and took a bunch of awkward lopes, making a planking sound on the concrete. It probably was a funny thing to watch, it is too bad there weren't video cameras around then. I made it to the kitchen and there was my mother. She had me sit down and she pulled really hard on the board for about a minute and the fenceboard came off. Off to the emergency hospital.

I had to get a tetanus shot. I was always getting tetanus shots, every year, partly because I stepped on a lot of rusty nails, but I think mostly because my mother told me I would get lockjaw if I didn't have lots of tetanus shots, and my mouth would just shut and I would starve to death slowly. That sounded pretty bad so I went along with the tetanus plan.

I was in the cub scouts, I think when I was in 3rd or 4th grade. All those years in grade school seem about the same to me, just a blur of pale sunny boredom and not wanting to go to school and reading Huck Finn and wanting to live in a barrel. One night I was at a cub scout function at my grade school and a few of us were there early. Nothing was going on so we went out to the side of the auditorium and started walking on these benches. They had been arranged for seating, so they were laid out parallel to each other, and they were each about a foot wide and a foot apart. It was something to do.

I did OK for a while but I got dizzy from the spacing and pacing and missed a step. I never got a chance to put out a hand or anything and my face slammed right down onto one of the benches. I stood up right away in my blue uniform and I felt stunned and dizzy, but I didn't really feel much else, except all this wet warmth coming over my chin and down my chest, I looked down and saw blood running into the blue shirt. I tasted my blood, it was familiar. A bunch of kids were talking to me, but I didn't say anything to them, what was there to say? A few minutes ago they were calling me a fag or a girl, now they wanted to talk? I didn't like any of them and they didn't like me.

I walked into the auditorium, and into a side room where the mothers were gathered making ribbons or some such thing that den mothers do. There were about four women in there, one of them was my mother. When they saw me their faces went into little epileptic fits and they seemed very excited. I must have looked pretty nasty. My mother took it pretty well, I think she had gotten used to it by now. Off to the emergency hospital.

My upper lip was split right up to the skin and I had a chipped tooth. I guess I am lucky that I was scrawny, if I had weighed more maybe it would have been a lot worse. But there weren't a lot of fat kids back then anyway. Now the doctor had to stitch me up but first came the needle. I had the routine down by now. It was always a different doctor at the emergency hospital, and they were all men. This
guy kept talking to me. So I see you're a cub scout, things like that, I guess he was trying to comfort me, which was a nice thing of course, but at the time it just annoyed me. There wasn't anything to say obviously, but he kept asking me questions so I had to answer him, but that hurt a lot because my upper lip was in two sections. As usual the shot was the worst part, right in the lip. I always hoped they would just do the sewing without the shot. But they never did. There was no way I was going to let this guy see me cry, I was in uniform after all. The next day at school there was a lot of teasing of course. Hey, you got a fat lip! It wasn't very imaginative. Hey, harelip! The usual crap. I was used to it by now.

AFter a while it got to be a running joke and my oldest sister used to say OK Look, I'm not driving anyone to the emergency hospital! She got lucky, it was my mother that always wound up doing it. I feel bad for kids these days, sitting around in living rooms with video games, movies on demand, gameboys, and too much food. When they do go out they are armored up like crusaders with helmets and pads everywhere. I bet they don't get to go to the emergency hospital too much, unless it is for gout.

Everyone has a first memory, and mine is getting my tonsils removed when I was three. The memories are vivid, but they cut in and out of any decent time continuum. After all I was only three. It was the trend then to get kids' tonsils removed so that they wouldn't get sore throats or some nonsense. Maybe that is why I hate trends to this day. I really have no use for them. But since I was three I didn't understand too well what was going to happen to me; my father later told me that I grabbed my balls and looked really scared. I had a vague sense of words and I knew two things were going to be cut off. I did not know how to talk yet, but I thought they were going to castrate me. Even when you are three some things are pretty obviously more important than others; if I had known it was just some things in the back of my throat coming off I probably would not have been so scared. But I didn't know that.

I had to spend the night at the hospital, I think it was the first time
I had been away from my family. My father carried me in there and I was grabbing at the walls, I didn't want to go. And I really didn't want to lose my balls. But there was nothing on the walls for me to gain purchase of except a thermostat, and my father didn't have much trouble dislodging me, so that was it. I was in a bed and there were other people in there with me in other beds, strangers. It was semi dark and there were odd shadows dancing around. A nurse came and took a needle and put it in my thumb, drew some blood. She was not pleasant and I hated her. That is all I remember about it. After it was all over I had stitches on the back of my throat and apparently I was supposed to eat only certain things, probably soft things.

I must have understood that part because I do remember waiting until it was late and the house was mostly quiet, except for the refrigerator, it made a ticking sound.
I pulled out the crisper drawer and wolfed down a bunch of lunch meat or something. Actually I think it was hard salami. Within a few minutes there was blood coming up out of my mouth, at first I just tasted it, it had a rich taste, I kind of liked it. Then it started to flow quite a bit, so I ran to my parents' room, they were asleep. I woke them up by spewing blood all over them. I guess I was angry at them for trying to castrate me. I feel bad about it now, they were really doing their best, like most parents. However, it was off to the emergency hospital for us. I didn't know then I'd be coming back so often. I was unable to talk, and even if I had been there really wasn't anything to say. I still had my balls, so things were actually not so bad.