Blood and Guts

I was splayed out on the couch on Tuesday afternoon, lazily trying to straddle that glorious state of consciousness between actually sleeping, and the cat-like readiness necessary to spring into action to keep my toddling little girl from injuring herself as she dug out every box of raisins in the snack drawer for the fortieth time. As I sleepily forced my eyes to remain at least partially open, I was constantly reminded of the utter devastation that my increasingly mobile 13 month old could wreak upon herself and everything around her. Sasha's right hand was bandaged to the hilt..Two days earlier, her older sister had tried to help her with safety conscientiousness by "cutting the scissors away from her" and taking a chunk of her tiny fingertip along with it.
I had been trying to pull myself together to prepare for church as the girls were playing (I thought) safely and happily on the other side of the room. Unbeknownst to me (but knownst to them), Victoria had pulled down my wife's sewing kit, Sasha had seized the supernaturally sharp implements of doom known as my wife's sewing scissors, and...well...I've already mentioned where this leads. Suddenly, Victoria shouted out, "Daddy, Sasha's bleeding!"...this was certainly true. Great gushes of blood were gurgling forth from her digit like a zombie ET. I clamped a wash-cloth around the fount of gore as I hustled Shawna out of the shower. My poor baby was coughing out hideous, semi-silent cries as my wet wife threw on whatever clothes were closest at hand, and we rushed to the emergency room....
I was determined to keep Sasha from happening upon, say, a cleaver this time...so I stared, exhausted and intent, as my sweet little destruction magnet made a physically staggering, albeit medically benign little patch of chaos in the hotel kitchenette. Shawna and Victoria had left just minutes before for their "Beauty Day" (a fancy way of saying they were going to get haircuts, but it was guaranteed to keep Victoria sitting still as a stranger came at her with...you guessed it...scissors). I perked up when my phone chimed out its cheesy MIDIfied rendition of "Beautiful Day", indicating that my sexy vixen of a wife was calling. "Sean," she moaned in a wheezing whisper, "I need help...we've been in an accident." She assured me that she and Vika were alright, but that the car was totalled. Ten minutes later, I stood staring at what had been our Montero Sport...honestly feeling nothing but peaceful relief that nobody had been seriously hurt. Still, Shawna's arm was in bad shape, and so after we filled out the police report and exchanged all of the necessary information with the guy that I pray will not sue us, I made the trip to the emergency room for the second time in two days. I'm maxing out my frequent bleeder miles. Her wrist was broken, and so I've taken a few days off to help her with things until I shuffle her and the kids off to Utah for a couple of weeks.
All of this talk about the twisted crunch of burgundy steel formerly known as my car and emergency rooms reminds me of the last time Shawna and Sasha were rushed to the hospital...but that's a story for another post...