Emergency!

A trip to Birmingham is like an ER visit: I was homesick, and I have been healed.

This one even included a trip to a real ER at Children's Hospital. At the end of a lively game of Guesstures, which my grand-niece V and I won, V decided to try four more cards. The last involved her doing the worm on the kitchen floor, and when we guessed correctly, she tried to bolt up and popped her chin on the tile. Her mother picked her up in celebration and said, "What's this?"

A small slit under her chin was bleeding, deep enough to merit butterfly bandages and a trip downtown to a beautiful new hospital. 

One of many beautiful works of art in the new Children's Hospital of Alabama.

I drove, so my niece-in-law could hold V in the backseat. Her sister sat in the front. On the 15-minute drive, there was much weeping and wailing and crying and shaking. The word "stitches" threw poor V into a full-out tizzy.

By the time her father (my nephew) got there, she had already been cleaned and given numbing cream. Finally, her sister E and I got to see her, still shaking in her mother's arms (both lying on a hospital bed), but with "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can" attitude and numbing cream, she was ready.

A bit later, three neat stitches had closed the wound, and we wound our way home. She now has a war story and a slightly sore chin. But I hope she remembers that she did ONE AWESOME WORM!