oselle | I Haz a Hed Injry (Reply)

So there it was a normal Sunday morning. I had just gotten out of bed and I went into the living room an opened the blinds and then I realized I'd gone to bed without shutting down my laptop. The laptop was on the coffee table. I don't have a wireless internet connection so it's connected to the modem by a cord that goes across the living room and usually lies flat against the baseboard but it wasn't lying flat this morning and okay, I tripped on it.

"Tripped" is actually too mild of a word, that just implies a little stumbling embarrassment and you're back on your feet. What happened here is I got hooked into the modem cord and I went flying and at the same time I heard the laptop getting yanked off the coffee table so I spun around and tried to catch it and then BOOM went plowing into the VERY SHARP corner of this big cabinet in my living room and stopped my fall WITH MY HEAD. Or rather my head RICHOCHETS off the cabinet and then PAIN and the next thing I know I'm all fours. I've got my hand over my left eye which made contact with the cabinet and the laptop's on the floor and I was like "FUCK!" over the laptop and then I feel this hot, wet gush down my hand and I take my hand away from my eye and it's full of blood.

"Oh shit," I say. Then in the back of my mind some idiot gleefully shrieks You can use this for fanfic!!

I wisely ignore the idiot and stagger to my feet and I can't see out of my left eye at all and I thought I was either blind or had knocked my eyeball out of whack. But I blink and my vision clears a little and I realize my eye is just full of blood. I get to the bathroom, leaving blood all over the wall and doorjamb on my way and look in the mirror and..."Oh, SHIT." The whole left side of my face is covered in blood.

It's just like fanfic!!! chirps the idiot.

Then I had a Bounty towel in my hand and I have no recollection of even going into the kitchen to get it but I'm back in the bathroom cleaning my face. I've got a gash under my left eyebrow, about an inch wide and deep. But I'm thinking, It's not so bad. It's not so bad. It's a little cut, that's all. Meanwhile my head and the left side of my face feels like someone took a hammer to it.

Then some non-idiot in my head says, You just slammed your head against a hard piece of wood and you're bleeding like a stuck pig and you need to go to the hospital NOW.

I'm fine, I'm not going to the hospital, fuck it, I think and the non-idiot says, Natasha Richardson was fine, too.

I call the ambulance service. Not 911, HELL no because they would have been required by law to take me to Elmhurst General and frankly? I'd rather bleed to death. I call the ambulance from Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan because that's who my primary care doctor is affiliated with. I'll bet you anything my insurance company won't pay for this but at that point I didn't care. By now the Bounty towel is soaked in blood. There's blood all over the sink, all over my face.

Ambulance service says 15, 20 minutes I say OK. I get dressed. Turn off coffeemaker. Shut down laptop which, thankfully, seems to have come through the incident unscathed. By the time the ambulance shows up I feel stupid. Should've called a car service into the city. Whatever, too late now. They're in the lobby with a stretcher. I come down myself and tell them I don't need the stretcher but I do need to go to the hospital. They put me in the back of the ambulance and gauze me up and icepack me and take my blood pressure etc. Nice bumpy ride into Manhattan. Do those things have no shock absorbers or what? Jesus Christ! I'm staring out the back window with my one good eye. Thinking how a couple inches to the left and that blow could've killed me. Thinking how I'm going to pay through the nose for this ambulance ride. Thinking how I can TOTALLY USE ALL THIS FOR FANFIC!

ER at Lenox Hill is mercifully quiet. I am seen to promptly and courteously. My God, the difference between a good private hospital and a city hospital...like heaven and hell. I'm still bleeding so they give me a hospital gown and tape up my eye. For some mysterious reason they also make me give them a urine sample. I lie down and wait with an ice pack on my face. It's nice and quiet. I look up at the whiteboard over the nurse's station and it's got the date written on it and under that:

CHARGE RN: RUBY

I lie there staring at it. Am I seeing this for real or is this the head injury? I blink. It's still there. I start cackling a little and then stop lest they send me to psych.

The doctor comes and gives me some neuro tests of the "follow my finger with your eyes" variety. She does not think I have a concussion but she does tell me I need stitches. I also need a tetanus shot for some reason. Bleh. She says there's no damage to the eye either, thank God.

I get my quite painful tetanus shot and she numbs my face with three nasty Lidocaine little injections and then sews me up. It doesn't hurt but I can feel the thread tugging (OMG, fanfic!!) and that's kind of unpleasant. But then I practically doze off in the middle of it.

Six stitches. They have to come out next week. They give me a bunch of instructions for how to take care of it and I'm outta there by twelve noon. Gorgeous day. Subway station's right there and because I'M SO FUCKIN BADASS I take the subway home. That's right, bitches. I don't need no stinkin taxi. With my banged-up face and my blood-crusted eyelid and my hospital ID bracelets flapping on my arm and what I look like, more than anything, is someone who had a really bad Saturday night, not a really stupid Sunday morning.

I come home and clean up the walls and the bathroom sink. That was almost puke-inducing because the blood in the sink had dried to a rather...chunky consistency. Geez. I look at the evil cabinet and realize I hit the damn thing so hard that I chipped a piece of wood out of it...WITH MY HEAD. Egads, that was a close one.

NOW it hurts, okay? Lidocaine's worn off and NOW IT HURTS PEOPLE IT HURTS but I'm going to look totally black-eyed and badass by morning and I'm gonna have an ass-kickin scar that I can make up some sexy story to go with and you know what? FANFIC.

ETA: I'm just looking at my discharge papers and the doctor who treated me? Was named "Anna." What the fuck!