A trip to the hospital

On Monday night I drove J to the hospital. 

Before anyone starts freaking out, don’t!  Don’t worry, he’s fine, and healing up well. 

We had both just submitted our Doctrine assignments, due at 11:55pm.  I had finished a little before J, but because it was already waaay past my bedtime I went to bed and didn’t wait for him. 

When he got home at about midnight I was still awake but in bed with the lights off.  As he started getting ready for bed and went to untie his shoelaces…

THUMP!

I was impressed that he didn’t swear, or even use any form of exclamation really.  Though, I’d probably be more surprised if he had sworn.  Maybe his silence was the shock from the pain and the sight of his own blood (who ever likes the sight of their own blood?). 

We had just bought a new wooden dresser from the student op-shop at college, but we haven’t integrated it into the room yet so it’s still standing at the end of our bed.  J had bent down to untie his shoelaces and forgotten it was there (not seeing it in the dark), smashing his head into the edge of it.  He chipped a tooth and cut into his lower lip.  And wow, do head-wounds bleed a lot!

Once we got the bleeding stopped I thought the cut looked deep enough to warrant some immediate attention, though it was now getting close to 1:00 AM.  So we bustled into the car and I drove (I drove!!) us to the nearest hospital, a couple of suburbs over from us. 

The result was about two hours waiting in emergency, two stiches, a tetanus shot and an iceblock (to ease the swelling).  We got back into bed at 4:00 AM and skipped college that day. 

As much as it would have been great that this never happened in the first place there are a number of things we are thankful for that we realised in the process.

We are thankful that I can now drive J’s manual car.  I’m much more confident than I was (I even drove to college on Wednesday when we didn’t have anyone else in the car with us!).  I wanted to learn so that I could drive in an emergency and not freak out.  And that’s what happened, my learning was put to good use.

We’re thankful for the love of others where we live.  We’re rostered on to drive to and from college every day in the car pool, but we clearly weren’t going to be driving on Tuesday morning.  Someone else offered to drive and everything was sorted out fine without us. 

We’re also thankful for the love of our fellow students.  We missed our three Doctrine lectures and one hour of Hebrew for J.  People have given us notes and advice about those lectures and been really caring of us.  We’ve appreciated it all so much.  Thank you everyone.