There was a blackness, filled with a strange swirling and the groggy thought
that perhaps she had slept too late and her mother really ought to have woken
her up. Then consciousness slowly returned and she discovered that she wasn’t
in her bed at all, she was lying on the floor of what looked like a classroom.
She stared blankly at the strips of varnished, honey-colored wood. Katie
couldn’t figure out how she had got there. Memory slowly and sketchily
reasserted itself in the form of a blurry recollection of walking toward the
front of the classroom, feeling very dizzy and turning around. She supposed she
had fainted.
Katie watched a drop of blood drip to the floor. There were voices above her.
Mr. Brush said, “...hit her chin on a desk.” She didn’t remember getting up,
but she must have, because now she was in the hall between Mr. Brush and someone
else in front of...a bathroom? She had a vague feeling of a warm, dry hand
against hers.
Someone was carrying her down the hall. He had a maroon shirt on and her mind
hazily identified him as a security guard. He went into an office--the
attendance office, her mind supplied after a moment--and put her down in a
chair. Katie noticed that she was holding a paper towel to her chin. She
touched the area just under her chin and felt a gash. Katie withdrew her hand
and found it bloody.
There was a babble of noise around her. A woman asked for her name. A few
voices separated themselves from the rest of the clangor. There was a woman
saying, “We’ve got to call the parents.” Others mumbled, “...get the nurse...”
“her off day...not here” “...paramedics...”. Then her teacher came back and
replaced the bloody paper with some clean wet toilet paper. Katie put it to her
chin. Someone gave her a bag of ice. The nurse came in. She left after
arguing with someone.
Katie did not feel well. She had a headache, and her stomach hurt worse than
ever. She was aware of people telling her not to fall asleep, to stay awake.
She accomplished this by staring at a dark patch on the opposite wall.
Two men entered carrying an orange something, which turned out to be a chair
when unfolded. They told Katie to sit in it, and they buckled a strap around
her shoulders. It settles, heavy and cool, against her collar bone. They
tipped the chair back and wheeled her through the halls and out the front doors.
An ambulance sat in front of the school, gleaming whitely in the glaring
sunlight.
One of the men opened a side door, and Katie climbed in. A white covered
hospital bed lay down the middle, a bench to one side of it. One man had her
lie down on the bed, and he sat on the bench next to it. The other one sat
somewhere behind her head.
Katie shivered. The ambulance felt cold. One of the paramedics took her
blood-pressure. Her teeth chattered. They put a blanket over her.
Suddenly Mr. Brush stuck his head in.
“Her father is a doctor and has called to say that he wants her to stay here
for about a half hour until he get here.”
One of the men argued, “We can’t release her once...”
Katie wished they wouldn’t argue about her. It felt weird.
“...but upon his request we can’t...”
The argument ended, and one of the men put a band-aid on her chin. Apparently
they were going to stay. They took a sugar test, a slight prick against her
forefinger and a drop of blood. She supposed she was normal, since they didn’t
say anything. Then the questions started.
“What is your name?”
“Katie, short for Katherine.”
“Last?”
“Hunter-Smith. Hyphenated.”
“Did you eat breakfast this morning?”
“Yes.”
“Did you have liquid?”
“Yes, milk...”
“Did you have breakfast yesterday?”
“Yes.” Don’t ask what please, she thought.
She answered a few other generic questions and her mind drifted. The blanket
was scratchy, but warm, and she crossed her arms under it. She felt a little
better, but still a bit light headed. She wondered what was happening in
school. It would be fifth period by now...The man behind her was talking to the
hospital...Her father ought to be arriving soon...Why were ambulances so cold?
A bit of hair settled over her eyes. She blew on it and it disappeared. Her
finger stung a little where they had done the test and she rubbed it absently.
Strange, though, her chin didn’t really hurt at all...where was her fath--oh.
Here.
They went back into the school to get her books, and then he took her home. He
debated giving her stitches, but in the end decided to try to tape the gashes
together. Apparently, she had hit her chin on a desk while falling and then
rammed it on the floor, which pushed her right front tooth through her bottom
lip. Finger inspection found that it felt horrible.
For awhile afterward, Katie couldn’t open her mouth very far and that meant
that she couldn’t chew very well, so she had a few problems eating and drinking.
Eventually, she used a straw, which aided the process considerably. She would
have been relatively OK, if people hadn’t kept asking her what had happened to
her--the disadvantage of not getting stitches. The injury was much more
visible, and attracted much more attention. She put up with it as well as she
could, and when the bandages came off, there was barely a hint of a scar on her
lip--though the one on her chin was a bit more impressive--and only a slight
raised place inside of her mouth to remind her of what had happened.
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