Trial-By-Fire Emergency (Step)Parenthood

It happened at roughly 2:30 pm - the phone call from the after school program at Jeffrey's school. He had bumped his head by running into a pole and apparently there was a lot of blood and though it wasn't serious he wanted to come home. So I rush off to pick him up. He's not happy, but not terrible either. There's two blood soaked band aids on his head and it just appears that it's just a big bump underneath. After we get home I call Stella at work and tell her what happened. While I'm talking to her I take the bandages of Jeffrey's head and see that it's not really just a bump - it's gash large enough, and deep enough, to require stitches.

At this point Jeffrey is terribly, terribly unhappy and just wants his mommy. The last thing he wants is to spend Halloween in the ER getting stitches. He's crying, saying that this is the worst day ever and saying he refuses to go, clinging desperately to the curtain in his room. Finally I convince him that it won't be that bad, that it needs to be done, and if he hurry we can be back in time to go trick-or-treating. Armed with a Harry Potter book, we finally head off to the Emergency Room so they can sew up his forehead while Stella starts the almost 90 minute commute to Berkeley from her school.

After waiting an hour for the initial consultation (reading lots of Harry Potter to Jeffrey), Stella shows up just as the clinician is interviewing us and deciding what's required. As I thought, he definitely needed stitches. After another wait (and more Harry Potter) we get into a private room where the doctor does things to Jeffrey's head that make me a little squeamish, and I don't typically get affected by stuff like that. But Jeffrey takes it all really well, with no crying at all! The local anesthesia helped a lot for sure. Everyone was very impressed with how well he accepted five stitches to his forehead. If only we had planned a Frankenstein costume for him for Halloween.

We did finally make it back in time to go trick-or-treating, which was totally crazy in the particular neighborhood we went to. They take their Halloween very seriously out here in Berkeley, I must say.

I guess this was trial-by-fire parenthood. Fortunately, I think I passed. But it proved to Stella that she needs to work in the same city that Jeffrey lives and goes to school. So after our lease is up here at the end of June, we will almost surely be moving to San Francisco.