Like a Band Aid | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Like a Band Aid | Previous Challenge Entry
By Anita van der Elst
08/06/14
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Daddy plops me down in the waiting room chair. Wincing, I watch through tears as he talks to the nurse at the counter. “She gashed the back of her leg on a metal kitchen cabinet door. Needs stitches, I guess.”

“How did that happen?” the nurse asks.

“She was sittin’ up next to the sink puttin’ dishes away in the cupboard, like she always does, ‘cuz she can’t reach otherwise. Didn’t see it happen but I guess when she jumped down, that one cabinet door under the sink caught ahold at the back of her knee and ripped all the way up to her butt cheek. I wrapped it up best I could but it ain’t somethin’ a band aid’ll fix. I ain’t a doctor but at least I figgered that out.”

The nurse hands Daddy some papers and he writes on them. The nurse puts them in a folder, the kind my teacher calls manila that we put our artwork in, and disappears down the hall. Daddy drums his fingers and huffs a sigh that tells me he’s impatient. A few minutes later the nurse returns.

“Doctor will take a look. Can you walk?” she asks, holding her hand out to me.

I nod, choking back a sob, and gingerly slide off the chair.

“Wull, I gotta be gettin’ back to the farm,” Daddy says.

The nurse takes a quick little indrawn breath. She says, “It’s usually standard for parents to stay with their child while medical care is given.”

“Nah. I figger you folks can handle it without me. I got too much chores to do,” Daddy shrugs. “Besides she’s eight years old, a big enough girl. She don’t need me here holdin’ her hand.”

He turns and heads for the door. I want him to stay but not because I think he’ll comfort me. I want him to stay because I don’t want the nurse to think he’s mean. As he opens the door, he half turns and says, “You call me when she’s stitched up and I’ll come fetch her.” And with that he’s gone.

My right leg throbs as the nurse leads me to the exam room. Her lips have almost disappeared she’s holding them closed so tight. She shakes her head a little and then lifts me up onto the table. “Turn over onto your tummy, honey. The doctor will be right in and will want to take a look at your leg.”

She peels off the pillowcase Daddy wrapped my leg in. She moves away and I hear the clinking of metal against metal. “I’m setting out some things that the doctor will need to fix you up,” she tells me.

“Hello, young lady,” says the doctor, bustling in. “What have you been up to? Fighting pirates again? Well, no peg leg for you. You’ll be out swashbuckling again in no time.”

I giggle in spite of myself but it’s the last giggle of the day for me because the doctor tells me he’s going to make my leg numb and to do that I’ll feel a few little pinches. Don’t ever let anybody tell you that a shot in the leg is a little pinch. It’s true that my leg goes numb so I don’t feel all the pricks of the stitches going in. But still.

Finally the doctor tells the nurse she can put the bandage on. He pats me on the shoulder and says, “Those thirty stitches will hold you together now. I’ll see you in a week to take them out.”

The nurse says, “I’ll call your dad in a few minutes but it’ll take awhile before he gets here. Why don’t you just see if you can take a nap.” She pulls a blanket up to my neck and I hear her shoes squeak out of the room.

The nurse and doctor have been so nice but I don’t feel like sleeping and tears are still seeping. There’s a word I’ve heard for how I feel but I can’t remember it. For some reason I think about what Daddy says sometimes when we come to a country crossroads. “Go left and you’ll be right. Go right and you’ll be left.” Well, it’s my right leg I’ve gashed and for sure, he’s left me all alone at the doctor’s office. The word starts to come to me. It’s sort of like a band aid. Oh, yeah, that’s it, abandoned.

(Author’s note: Fiction based on autobiographical experience.)

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