There Was Blood, and it Sucked

My wife had a grandmother who fainted at the sight of blood. Any blood, paper cut or massive hematoma, she lost consciousness. I found her behavior weak to a fault and laughable until yesterday evening.

My little girl, all of 4 years old, was acting zany last night as we were waiting for a seat at a generic sit-down eatery chain. We told her calm down and she didn't. We told lower her voice and she didn't. We told her to quit rocking on her baby sister's car seat. She, in following with the theme of the evening (she was really tired) didn't and proceeded to pitch backward and hit her head on the metal edge of the door frame of the main door. She started to cry, reached her hand back to the wound and it came back red.

I know for a fact that head wounds bleed a lot, and I know from seeing with my own eyes the injury she sustained was not life-threatening. Still, when the blood went from her head to her blond hair to the napkins I ran to get from an unhelpful wait staff, these facts seemed not only academic but quite probably wrong. Instinct kicked in and suddenly my orange chicken bowl didn't matter worth a good goddamn. It was to the door and to the hospital. It wasn't even an argument - once we got to the third napkin spoiled with my child's blood it was time to go.

Luckily the women in my life had cooler heads. They grabbed some ice and kept things calm, even if the kid was pretty close to hysterics.

I remember once when I had to have stitches after a nasty bicycling accident on a construction site (still one of my best scars), my dad came in and started talking to me about where my mind was. He wanted me to go to a place that was "far away" and where I would be happy. I guess "far away" triggered something and I imagined myself in the cloud city of Bespin from "The Empire Strikes Back," fighting Darth Vader. I remember where I went in my head very clearly, and also remember the wound and the ER quite clearly.

I decided to try the same thing with my kid - get her mind onto something else and away from all the blood, but what I didn't count on was how panicked I was. I crouched down to her level and went blank. All I could think to ask her was what she was going to order, which worked for about two seconds until the trickle of blood recaptured her attention and wailing continued. It's one of many ways I don't measure up to my father, but I think I learned something for next time about myself (don't panic) and about my kid. She's looking to me for anything in that moment, and next time I hope I'll be a better dad to her.

We'll see.