We had a little bit of a family crisis
yesterday. The first part of the
scenario occurred totally unbeknownst to us.
Chris and I were both working at our respective computers when a call
came through on the house phone. I
checked the caller ID as we always do, since the vast majority of spam calls
come to our land line. (Can it be considered
“spam” if it has nothing to do with a computer?). There were only four numbers that appeared –
not even a complete seven digits, much less ten - so we ignored the call. About five minutes later we got a call from
Nathan. He had just talked to the school
nurse, and Cailyn had been hit in the eye by another student’s name tag. There was evidence of a ruptured blood
vessel, but the school wanted to have it checked out for a possible
scratch.
We left immediately and hurried up to the
school. When we arrived, Cailyn was
sitting in the nurse’s office, grinning happily at the thought of leaving
school, “before we even had lunch.” The
nurse showed us the injury and explained the circumstances as she understood
them. Then she proceeded to chew us out. Yep.
She said that she had called our house phone and both our cell phones
and no one answered. Then came the
shocker, “Whenever you see this four digit number appear on your caller id you
better answer it.” Wait. Back the bus up. You mean the school’s emergency number only
appears as four digits on a caller id?
How about this … why not inform the parents and grandparents of that
tiny little detail? It might facilitate things
in the future. (I’ll give them the
benefit of the doubt. Perhaps that
tidbit of information had been communicated to April at some time in the past,
but she was engrossed in a training day for her new ER position at the
hospital). And Nathan had certainly never
heard it. He had that slippery four
digits on his cell phone and had ignored them as well.
And speaking of cell phones, that little
oversight wasn’t the worst of it. When
she insisted that she had called our cell numbers, Chris pulled her phone out
and checked her call logs. The mysterious
four digits were nowhere to be found.
She pointed to her computer screen and argued that she had called every
one of the numbers. That’s when I leaned
over to look for myself. And there was
my cell number as well. So I checked my
own call log. Again … no mysterious four
digit numbers there, so I let her know mine didn’t match her story either. That’s when she started back-tracking. Seems that she didn’t ever really call my
cell number. For some reason she must
have skipped over that one. Hmm. Interesting.
We didn’t come for a lesson in protocol,
though. There was the more pressing
matter of a possible scratched eyeball, after all. Since her cell phone was in her hand anyway,
Chris flipped over to camera mode and turned to take a picture of the injury. The nurse almost protested at the presence of
a recording device. Didn’t get out much
more than a faint grunt, though. Chris
informed her quickly that Cailyn’s Dad was not at all happy with the turn of
events, and he was expecting a photo of Cailyn’s injury as soon as possible. Can’t argue with that logic. Hey, you can’t argue with Chris at all once
she puts her mind to something. Picture
all sent, we checked her out and headed for home. Nathan in the meantime made an appointment
with the pediatrician to have it checked out.
The doctor’s office was eerily quiet. In fact, Cailyn was the only patient in the
waiting room. We did hear one crying
child on our way to the room, and one other youngster arrived as we were called
back. Very strange for a normally busy office. Cailyn was noticeably nervous. In fact she was bouncing all over the room,
dancing and making faces. I did get some
of that on video for future revelation to prospective boyfriends. The tech who
took vitals and checked us into the system was quite engaging. Cailyn fell in love with her instantly,
whispering to me, “She is one funny lady.”
After the usual preliminary once-over, the pediatrician put some special
dye in Cailyn’s eye and turned out the lights.
It was the glow-in-the-dark juice.
Her eye lit up like a Christmas tree.
I fumbled to get a picture, but forgot to take the flash off. We did manage a few pics after the fact, but much
of the dye had worn off. And the dye did
indeed reveal a scratch. That meant a
pirate patch for a few days and some antibiotic eye drops. I’m sure it was scary for her when the doc
applied the eye patch for the first time.
That fear was alleviated a bit, though, when that first tech returned
with a “Hello, Kitty” sticker that covered the entire thing. I guess it’s hard for a little girl to be
frightened in the presence of a cartoon kitty cat. Now if it was me, I’d have run screaming in
the rain to get that horrid creature away from my face. But that’s just me. And cats.
Jeremiah
17:14 says, “Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed; save me and
I will be saved, for you are the one I praise.”
Father, please bring healing
quickly to Cailyn’s eye. Amen.
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