Carrie Classon
We are still in Mexico, and Peter’s abscessed tooth had been extracted earlier that day. The extraction had been difficult. Peter was sore and tired, and he had not eaten since the night before. All this factored into what happened next.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m feeling a little faint. …”
I ran to the bathroom. “Put your head down!” But it was too late. Peter fell straight forward like a falling tree. He hit the wall with his forehead, shattered the ceramic toilet paper holder and knocked himself out.
I am not great in emergencies, as it turns out.
Peter’s fall made a mighty crash, and I yelled something (I have no idea what) and moments later a downstairs neighbor, whom we had never met (his name turned out to be Jim), was knocking on the door.
“Is everything OK up there?” Jim asked.
I don’t remember what I told him, but he got the idea. Jim was a big, strong guy, and he wrestled Peter into a seated position. Peter had a huge gash in his forehead and was still out cold.
“Peter! Wake up! Can you hear me?” I hollered into Peter’s ear.
Peter made sounds that indicated he heard me, but he was clearly not awake.
“You hold this towel on his head. I’ll go get Jorge!” Jim ran downstairs to tell Jorge, our landlord, and I followed orders.
While I sat there on the floor with my unconscious husband, our cat, Felix, cautiously crept into the bathroom to see what all the excitement was about. He examined the blood spattered all over and tentatively made his way over to check out Peter’s face.
A moment later, Jim was back in the bathroom. Felix bolted.
“Jorge called the Red Cross,” Jim reported. Then he added, “Do you have a black-and-white cat?”
“Yes!”
“I think she just ran out the door.”
Peter started to come to. His eyes slowly focused on this tall stranger standing in his bathroom.
“We’re going to take you to the hospital,” Jim informed Peter.
“Oh, no!” Peter said, “I don’t think that’s necessary. …”
“You’re going to the hospital!” I informed Peter. I was relieved Peter was arguing because now I knew he was fully conscious.
Felix had not gone far. He had run out the front door and made a daring leap to our balcony (three stories above the ground) where he was now waiting, expecting to be let in. Felix dove under the bed just as the men from the Red Cross showed up.
Three men dressed in red carried Peter to the living room, gave him an IV, checked his blood pressure, put a bandage on his head and hauled him out to a waiting ambulance in a matter of minutes. (Felix stayed under the bed while these three terrifying men in red did their work.)
Peter had a CT scan, and everything was normal (“except it showed I have no brain!” Peter noted), and he was sent home with a lot of stitches. The ambulance was free, I discovered, because the Red Cross is a nonprofit organization.
Jim and his wife checked out the next day. “I’m so sorry we didn’t get to thank Jim again,” I told Peter.
“I wondered what that guy was doing in my bathroom!” Peter said, examining his Frankenstein-style stitches. “Things can change in a moment, can’t they?”
They can. They do. And I thought how much worse everything could have been if we had not had caring people all around us.
Till next time,
Carrie
