Not for the squeamish...

Just as the summer haze has settled here on my blog, dust was starting to collect and readership was dropping to all-time lows, Brant and a garage door window pane have stepped up to provide some exciting blog-worthy fodder with that can't-help-but-look photo to boot.

Drew and I were over in Cary Sunday evening.....alone, holding hands, enjoying a perfect beverage and celebrating Flag Day with Elvis Costello---any excuse for an outdoor concert, I say----when, just 5 songs into the first set, do we get a frantic text from Will.

Generally speaking, FRANTIC usually finds me in person or over a landline telephone, but as I embrace new technologies, FRANTIC has proven it is completely capable of finding me via Verizon and it's world's largest and most reliable network. Will's urgent text went something like this:

"We R takin B 2 the hospital.

Call back ASAP.

HURRY. HURRY."

Those all-caps kind of messages are just the kind that make a mother's heart drop to her flip flops......and her mind race to figure out who "we" is and what scenario could have possibly played out to warrant a trip to the ER this time.

Since Brant doesn't have his license yet, I was fairly confident he wasn't in a car accident......so, what then??

Had he been hit by someone else driving another car? Not likely on our quiet cul-de-sac.

Could he have gotten knocked out playing football/basketball/wiffle ball/cops & robbers with friends? Maybe....but it was more likely that, with B's size, he'd be the one doing the knocking out......

Was there some sort of cooking accident? I couldn't envision how microwaving a Hot Pocket could end very badly....well....for Brant any way. (In 2005, Will once microwaved a Hot Pocket for 14 minutes, though I've gotten very good at suppressing that memory. PLUS, the text didn't mention a melting microwave interior or a smoky charred dinner brick of any sort.)

Had B been electrocuted by my hair dryer (which, BTW, I always really, really DO mean to remove from its precarious home near the sink where B brushes his teeth)??? Hmmmm.....THIS was a definite possibility.

Finally, whilst running to the parking lot, I got Will on the line and he gave me the gory details....

During an energetic game of wall ball with neighborhood buds, Brant had run full-speed into our garage door where broken glass from a window pane made a mess of his left forearm. Will was with an adult neighbor and the neighbor's friend---who just happened to be a nurse----on the way to our county hospital. Will used excited and graphic phrases like "cut wide open" and "to the bone" along with helpful adjectives like "gross" and "really bloody."

The nurse-friend (aka, "Complete Stranger") assured me that Brant was okay and conscious; he was likely in shock, but alert. She says Brant will get good care where they're going, but no one will be able to handle this injury in the ER and he'll probably be admitted for surgery.

What????? I immediately called my friend Kris to go be with Brant. I could count on her to take charge of the situation, assess things and hold Brant's (other) hand until I could get there.

By the time Drew and I winged in on 2 wheels around 10 o'clock, every body involved had determined that, in deed, no doctor there or on call was the right one for the job. Hands are tricky, apparently and no one wants to touch them if they don't have to.

So.......after a quick interlude precipitated only by my embarrassing, woozy swooning and cold sweats.....the attending doc stitched up Brant as best he could and sent us home. A hand specialist will do the official honors on Wednesday.