Honors and Stitches

Most of you have seen, on facebook, that our 5 year old daughter had to get stitches. It was quite the night....

Josh, on the banjo. I, on my ukulele. We were filling the house with music of all sorts. Our offspring enjoying it with dancing through out the living room, swinging each other around, having the best time.... until big brother lets go and Eve crashes into the rocking chair. Right away, I went to Eve, holding her up into my arms, setting her on the couch to examine her. Josh asked me, "Where's it coming from?" I thought, where is what coming from? until I tilted her head up and blood was just dripping from her face. All over her clothes and the floor. Oh my ... head wounds... gotta love em.

Meema was able to come over to stay with the babies, so we could take her to the hospital. Isaiah felt so guilty, his countenance down completely, saying to everyone that he passed, "It's all my fault." We let him come with us and he said the same thing to all the doctors... poor thing. One nurse said, "It happens." Another nurse suggested he take him out and rough him up a bit for doing this. ;)

When we got to our room, Josh turned a shade of pale and had to sit down. I asked him what was wrong. He told me that his heart dropped because he was nervous they were going to put us in "that" room. What? What room? He looked at me, like I should know better. Then I realized it... and finally caught up with him... we were right across from the room that Sarah was brought to and pronounced dead. I was so consumed in Eve and supporting her that I completely didn't even think about where we were. We didn't tell the staff about it, but just tried to sort through all that to ourselves.

The Childlife specialist was great during the whole thing. Making Eve feel comfortable, giving her and Isaiah dolls to draw on and pretend that they are hurt, and then going through the motions of what to expect with the washing of the wound and the stitches. It was great. They had fun with it, and they were stealing the hearts of everyone that came in the room. They loved how protective Isaiah was of Eve.

The actual procedure went well. They had her all numbed up and after the instructional doll... she was busy playing a princess game on an IPOD during the stitching.. ignoring the doctors warnings about tugging, she was too busy picking shoes for her princess.

When that was done, it was time to leave, and when we walked outside the room, Josh made sure to point out the room to me. Within seconds, my head spun with keeping it from the kids, out of protection?, or telling them about it, out of honor? ... Honor won over. I stopped us and pointed the room out to Isaiah and Eve and said, "Look! That's the room that Sarah was in when she died." I explained other things like how people were there with us, and pointed another room out close to it where they had me sitting while we waited to be able to see her. I mapped it all out to them. It felt good and they were intrigued, taking it in, like it became more real to them, that she was, in fact, here.

Walking out of the ER, Eve exclaimed, "Well, that was fun!" I'm glad she thought so. We came home to our house, just the way we left it.... instruments on the table and music out. Josh and I looked at each other, embraced each other, and knew... things were ok.