Getting the phone call

Foreword: for those of a nervous disposition, my LittleBear is absolutely fine, please don't panic.

Yesterday was a rather trying day.

I was late to work after having had the plumber here to bleed my bank account dry fix the central heating and hot water system. I had been at work for less than an hour, and was busy in the lab with a catastrophically broken instrument (a bit had literally just fallen off) when a call came over the tannoy, "PhysicsBear, there's a call for you on line 5, it's the school". My colleagues evaporated into the walls as I reached for the nearest phone, kindly leaving me in peace to take The Call.

"LittleBear is fine, and he's being well looked after, but there's been an accident and he's hurt his eye. The first-aider thinks he needs further medical attention. Can you come and get him?"

I asked her to clarify what "further medical attention" might be - a trip to the GP? A trip to A&E? This proved to be more information than she was privy to.

"Hold on a moment," ..... bump, rustle, clip, clop, clip, clop..... clip, clop, clip, clop, rustle, bump ..... "The first-aider thinks he needs to go to A&E".

I explained I was at work and it would take me 25 minutes to reach the school...

"Would you like us to call your mobile if there are any further updates?"

I don't have a hands-free kit for my car, and didn't fancy getting into trouble with the Long Arm of the Law by answering my phone so I told her there wouldn't be much point and sprinted for the car, literally yelling over my shoulder in the general direction of my boss that it was LittleBear's eye and I had to go.

Obviously, if I'd been level-headed and clear-thinking, I would have tried to extract more information as to the nature of this eye injury before setting off. And it might have saved me from 25 very unpleasant minutes in the car...

What sort of injury? How bad? Bad enough to need A&E but not bad enough to need an ambulance? An injury that might create an "update" within 25 minutes? Something in his eye? Glue? Bleach? A sharp implement? A bite or sting that's made it swell closed? What sort of injuries to an eye can be fixed? What if he loses the sight in his eye? Please no... not my baby boy's eye... please not his sight... please... please... please...

Suddenly I knew exactly what people mean when they talk about your bowels liquifying in fear.

I pulled onto the grass verge outside the school and ran down the path, only to have the door opened before me by LittleBear's new teacher, waiting for me.

"He has a nasty cut above his eyebrow that will need stitches or similar"

Oh thank God, it's only a flesh wound. Patching up a bad cut I can bear. It's not his eye. I have never been so happy to know that my son has a cut.

And as we rounded the corner towards the first-aid station I could hear my beautiful boy's gurgling laugh. He was playing on an iPad with two members of staff, a blood-stained dressing taped to his head, and someone else's clothes on. When he saw me, it obviously all hit home again as he went all trembly and clambered into my arms. He was terribly shaky and upset, and so scared of what might happen at the hospital. And he didn't quite believe me when I explained what would happen or told him that the doctors were specially trained to not hurt people.

It doesn't, here, matter quite what happened, or how, or why, or any of those details. In the aftermath, the first-aiders and LittleBear's teachers had done a sterling job of staunching the flow of blood and getting him clean and calm while he waited for me. They were right though, he definitely needed the trip to A&E.

It became abundantly clear that it was the blood that had distressed him most of all, not the pain, which is why the staff had thought to take his own clothes off and put him in clean, dry clothes. This was brought home to me as I cursed the designers of lifts who think it's a good idea to fit them with mirrors. One look at the blood-soaked dressing on his head had my LittleBear teary-eyed and quivering again.

The staff at our lovely, big teaching hospital were as brilliant with my boy as they have always been, and we were whisked straight out of A&E and into Paediatric A&E where there are toys and books instead of drunks and dripping blood. We had a surprisingly calm and enjoyable time playing (and getting hungry) for an hour and a half before my baby was patched up. "I don't feel hungry yet Mummy, not until after the operation."

I really, really tried to persuade him it wouldn't be that bad, but there was no convincing him.

And finally it was our turn, and I had to hold my baby as he sobbed and trembled while a delightful, kind, gentle doctor peeled the dressing off, cleaned the cut and pulled the edges together before taping and gluing it closed. And one glimpse of the open wound was all I needed to turn my stomach. My admiration for the first-aider at school went up several notches.

But then there was chocolate cake and chocolate ice-cream and cuddles. And it doesn't look that bad now.