The photo below – warning! not for the faint of heart – does not do it justice. It being Philip’s bleeding, bloody gums, lip and eye. Oy.
The irony in his apperance is this: while we were catching up on the Olympics Friday afternoon, we happened to see a horrendous accident in the Modern Pentatholon. A French athlete was unseated from his horse during the jumping portion of the event. The horse just happened to roll over onto the athlete whose leg was stuck in the stirrup. Then, as he (the horse) was struggling to get up, he kicked the man in the face, stepped on his groin and drug him for a distance. (The upside, and the thing I love the most about the Olympics is that the athlete, beat up though he was, remounted the horse and finshed the round.) As we watched the horror unfolding – kids with buggy eyes and mouths agape and me with a sinking feeling in my stomach – I thought “THIS is what nightmares are made of.” For the remainder of the afternoon, the boys would ask odd questions about the event. “Did he get a band aid?” “Where was his mom?” “Why didn’t the horse get in trouble?” They kept it up through dinner, AFTER Philip got the stick in the eye, and then filled Susan in on the gorefest with great detail. (see the last image of this slideshow)
Then, when we heard the crash and the scream that followed, I thought of that poor athlete and the blood. I knew someone was bleeding. Jacques leapt up, taking the stairs two at a time and losing his flip-flops in the process. I followed, filled with dread and fear. I had been unable to get a good look at the athlete’s “after” pictures, unlike the boys who drank them in. Now it was my own child. Talk about nightmares!
At the end of the hall, Jac was already performing triage. I saw Philipi standing next to a puddle of blood, face and hand covered with the stuff. From teh look of it, it seemed his entire cheek was ripped open. I didn’t want to look, so I picked him up, pressing his face into me. He screamed and gurgled and I felt sick. Jac dabbed, I soothed and we talked in hushed tones to each other with worried looks.
We brought Philip downstairs to get him to calm down and – to bring things full circle – watch the Olympics. He did little watching of the races that night, choosing to watch me instead. I tried to put on a brave face, to look encouraging and be balm for him. He went to sleep rather quickly, and slept soundly until early morning, bleeding all over his pillow.
Prologue: Philip woke up early, complaining of his mouth hurting, but slept in bed with us after some tylenol. When he woke again, he was cheerful and sunny. And by last evening he was tripping over himslef and jumping in a bouncy castle at a parish picnic. Back on the horse for him, too.
