Because Whiffleboy asked:

People are always asking me how I stay in shape; I like to say, ‘You’ve not spent much time with my kids, have you?’ We are constantly one good thunk away from the emergency room, particularly with Henry, who is, uh, energetic AND has an INCREDIBLY high pain tolerance (seriously, it makes me nervous. Someday he’s going to break a bone and not realize it until its too late, whatever that means). We have a very nice after-hours triage line at Children’s Hospital, where you can talk to a nurse at, say, three am when your child has croup (done that!) or at six pm when he slams head first into a door frame (done THAT!) or on a Sunday when he informs you that he has cut his finger on what may or may not have been a rusty nail (you all remember that, yes?). I’ve called the help line so many times that two of the nurses REMEMBER me and will ask how the last call turned out. It’s embarassing.

But somehow (touch wood) we’ve only been to the ER once. Well, okay, we’ve TECHNICALLY had two ER-type emergencies, but the first time, when Henry fell and hit his head on the diving board of a friend’s pool and had to have stitches, we didn’t actually GO to the ER, since our host was a doctor; we just zipped out to his office and voila! Stiches in the back of my three-year-old’s head.

But the ER–right. A year ago March, one early early morning, I was trying to make coffee; the clock on the microwave said 6:14. Wade and the boys were in the family room; the boys wanted him to read to them and were bringing him books. I could hear them jockying for position (’My book first! MY BOOK FIRST!’) and then there was a thunk, and Henry started screaming. Wade said, in that exaggeratedly calm voice adults use when ALL HELL HAS BROKEN LOOSE but they are trying not to scare the children, ‘I think you should come look at this.’ And I though, jesus, all I want is some COFFEE.

Wade was on the hardwood floor holding Henry, who was bleeding EVERYWHERE. It was like a horror movie. A lovely Ikea sidetable had fallen over and sliced the tip off his big toe. I don’t mean scraped the surface of the skin–I mean SLICED THE TIP OFF HIS TOE (the hunk of skin was still stuck to the underside of the table). I said, in my Overly Calm Adult Voice, ‘Okay, I think we should go to the emergency room.’ Wade said, ‘Yes, I think so too. I need to get dressed.’ I said, ‘That’s a good idea.’ Meanwhile, Henry is SCREAMING and Charlie is peeking out from behind a chair.

Henry, who doesn’t seem to understand that Mommy doesn’t do well with blood, is INSISTING that I hold him, so I plunk him in my lap and try to look at the ceiling as much as possible. Wade calls his parents (because I’m not taking Charlie with me to the ER, no way) and when my father-in-law answers the phone, he says, ‘We’re taking Henry to the emergency room and we’re bringing Charlie to your house.’ And he hangs up. We load everyone in the car; Henry is still bleeding and is alternating between yelling, ‘MOMMY! I’M SCARED!’ and howling, ‘WHY DID CHARLIE KNOCK THE TABLE OVER ON MY FOOT?’ Wade asks me, ‘Do you want to drive?’

‘No,’ I tell him. ‘I do NOT want to drive.’

We pull into my in-laws’ driveway and fling Charlie at them. He’s still in his pyjamas and hasn’t had a clean diaper. ‘We’ll call you!’ Wade yells and we peel out.

At the hospital, I try to talk Henry into letting Daddy take him in to the ER, as he is STILL bleeding, but he sobs ‘No, I want MOMMY! YOU take me in! Please, Mommy!’ The waiting room is completely deserted and there is no one at the desk. Finally the receptionist appears, summoned I’m sure by Henry’s wails, and says, ‘Can I help you?’

Henry yells, ‘Charlie knocked a table over on my foot and I’m SCARED!’

The receptionist says, ‘Go right through that door.’ I realize later that not only is Henry bleeding and crying, but I am also covered in blood. I’m sure that expedited things. At the least, it seemed to have startled the receptionist a little.

The thing about the ER is this: if you go on a Saturday night, it’s busy. Gunshots, stabbings, sick kids, you name it. (At least that’s what it was like the night we took my grandmother.) Go on a Wednesday morning, and you’ve got the whole place to yourself. Two nurses cleaned Henry’s foot up, another took our insurance information, and a fourth (god bless her) brought me coffee. Henry was fascinated by the cleaning and examining and bandaging part of the experience; he stopped crying and asked all sorts of questions about what the nurse was doing, and told everyone who asked that Charlie had knocked a table over on his toe. To distract him, Wade told him about the time that he (Wade) broke his brother’s leg. They were playing Skateboard Joust, which involved knocking each other off the skateboards (duh). My brother-in-law still swears that Wade ruined his NCAA basketball career, although I think some of the blame needs to go to the doctor who misdiagnosed the broken leg until it really WAS too late and they had to re-break it, which is a very bad thing. ‘Was Uncle Wes mad at you?’ Henry asked. ‘Sure,’ Wade told him, ‘but it was an accident.’ Henry stared at him. ‘Is Uncle Wes STILL mad at you?’ ‘No,’ Wade said, ‘that was a long time ago.’

Henry thought about this. ‘Well, I’m still mad at Charlie, but when we grow up, I won’t be.’

The doctor came to look at his foot and told us he wanted it X rayed, although he didn’t think it was broken, and he asked AGAIN what had happened. ‘My brother knocked a table over on it,’ Henry said, ‘and I’m mad at him. But Daddy broke Uncle Wes’s leg, and he’s not mad any more, so I won’t be mad at Charlie forever. It was an accident.’ The doctor just laughed.

There were no broken bones, and nothing to stitch up (since the table had CUT THE TIP OF HIS TOE COMPLETELY OFF) so they bandaged him up and sent us home with a prescription for some Vicodan. We loaded him up with that and he was like a drunk fraternity pledge. He kept patting me on the face and saying, ‘I LUUUUUVE you Mommy. I luuuuvve you.’ It was pretty funny.

And for DAYS afterwards, every time he thought of it, he would say, ‘Charlie, I’m mad at you for knocking the table over on my toe, but when we grow up I won’t be mad any more.’ But the best part? Wade swears, to this day, that it was HENRY who bumped the table and sent it crashing over. On to his own foot. Silly boy.