International Stitch Boy
My son's first stitch came on a sunny day in rural France, when at the age of two he fell off a bench at a museum and landed head first on the popped top of a can of soda. God Bless the French, I said at the time, as we were forced to go to a nearby hospital by the museum staff, and the whole procedure from start to finish set us back by about $12. The French Medical Establishment was a little behind the times, a tad hidebound and retro, as they insisted that his mother could accompany him into the stitching room, but not me. Despite the fact that his mother couldn't go with him because blood makes her faint, whereas I was willing to go hold his hand, they would not bend. So the first stitch was a solo event, free from parental influence and comfort. I must say that both the staff of the hospital and the bleeding and broken people in the Emergency Room were all very kind-- they pushed the ever so slightly bleeding boy to the head of the line, and shortly thereafter we could hear his wails from the Sewing Room.
His next stitch, around ten years later, was in Beijing. For some reason he saw fit to run full tilt into a head high iron bar about 40 minutes after his mother had left the country. Thus I not only had to whisk him to the nearest hospital-- within sight of our apartment door, but nearly a 15 minute walk away-- but had to bring along his younger brothers as well. So off we trooped, the oldest bleeding on the sidewalk as we went, and got to the Chinese hospital. Nearly deserted on the weekend, we walked down a long, long corridor to a window where I said my son was bleeding. The woman there pointed down the hall we had just navigated and said I had to go back and do something I didn't understand. So we all walked back down the hall, and found another window. My son is bleeding I announced. Five yuan I was told. I forked over the money-- less than a dollar in American currency, and was told to go back down the hall with a slip of paper the woman at the second window gave me. We trooped back down the long corridor to the first window, where the woman asked if we wanted internal or external medicine. I wasn't sure, so I repeated that my son was bleeding. Ah, she said, we should go upstairs. So up we all went, to the second floor, where we looked around, my son bleeding onto the floor-- a good way to find our way out of this maze I thought to myself-- until we found a woman in an office. She asked what we wanted and I said my son was bleeding and offered the slip of paper as proof. She said to wait here, and she would go look for a doctor. Presently, she came back with a young fellow in a much-splattered smock, reminiscent of the outer garb worn by butchers in the market where we bought most of our food. He's bleeding, I said, and offered the somewhat wrinkled, damp, smudged slip of paper as proof. He looked at the forehead in question and said, ah, we'll need to stitch that. Fine, I said, let's go. Unfortunately, that was impossible-- only bleeding people and doctors and nurses were allowed in the operating theatre, not parental assistants. I said he couldn't go by himself. He must. He couldn't. Discussion ensued. Ultimately it was decided that the stitchery would take place in an adjacent office. In we went, and the doctor got out needles and thread and cheerfully sewed up the dangling flap of skin. I thought we were all set, but no. More conversation the gist of which was that we had to go downstairs, down the long corridor, find another set of stairs, go back to the second floor and hand the people there a new piece of paper. This we did and when we handed the person at the other end of the trip the piece of paper, she bade the victim to drop his drawers and provide his posterior for a jab. He tried to negotiate for arm or thigh, but no soap. Into the derriere when the needle and we were done. Total bill for the stitch, the shot and the piece of mystery paper came to under four dollars.
Last night, a mere six years later or so, on the eve of departure for his first day of college, with packing essentially done, sleep calling and an early alarm buzzer waiting, this same fellow, now taller but in many significant ways still the same, decided that he needed a piece of string, and rather than go look, at 1:30 in the morning, for a scissors, or a knife or some other traditional string cutting tool, he decided to use the handy sabre saw.
This proved to be a less than sterling idea.
After an hour, in which the bandaged finger refused to stop bleeding, surrender was agreed upon and we went, he and I, in a driving rain, through the deserted streets of our small town, to the nearest hospital emergency room, a place with which I had some degree of familiarity from other past incidences involving blood. Registering at the desk proved to be amusing for some reason to the filler out of forms, and then a cause of some mirth for the nurse who provided the initial inspection, and resulted in bafflement and incredulity on the part of the doctor finally called in to patch things together. Straightforward and uncomfortable for the patient was this procedure, the clock now calling out the third hour past midnight, but a successful operation, four stitches in the end of the left index finger, and instructions to keep it dry for several days. These, his first American Stitches, will no doubt cost more than either those from China or France, and I'm sure they'll do just as well at holding him together.
He made it, by the way, off to college just six or seven hours after we got home, and his first day on campus seems to have gone well. If his stitch-interval pattern holds, he should manage to graduate in several years with no further additional sewing upon his body. For this and other evidence of Grace, we live in hope.
