The damage (permanent damage) I had inflicted on the poor bath-room what a God awful mess, pieces of glass here and there mixed in with a bric-a-brac randomness of cosmetic supplies, doodads, thing-of-a bobs and doohickeys. A roll of toilet paper has somehow had managed to come unspooled and it looked as if someone had tried to do a mini-Christos piece or an over enthusiastic Egyptologist decided to mummify our can. But, all the crap could easily be swept up. Wetness felt heavy against my face. I remembered the shard of glass that had sliced into me. I gingerly touched my cheek, the gash was deep. I reached down and quickly wrapped some of the toilet paper around my hand in a big mass and pressed it against my cheek. My wife stood on her tip toes to try to see how bad my injury was underneath my hand. I tried to verbally redirect her from my face, "Its fixable." I said. Pixie nodded. "Even the gouges in the walls are possible to putty over, sand down and paint again. I'm not overly concerned Pix."
"What the hell happened J?"
"I have no idea, Babe. Walking by the bathroom I heard a dripping sound. I went in to check it out and...And well, you know the rest, here we are."
My wife leaned over the threshold of the bathroom to take a quick peak. She clucked her tongue that at any other time might have irritated me, but this time I took a small sense of well being from the sound as if were a kind mantra back to what passed as normality.
"When you were in the middle of your fit or what have you, your eyes were rolling around in your head and bouncing left to right."
"Really," her revelation sent a chill through me, a chill of recognition of something not quite familiar and not quite alien; something that I should have remembered and not the disjointed recollection and blankness between words that I was experiencing. Blood seeped through the toilet paper into my hand. This was no shaving cut that I could staunch with tiny pieces of paper. I balled up some more paper and held it against the blood saturated deteriorating paper trying to add to its effectiveness.
"Yeah, remember that TV show when we we're kids about the talking car?"
"My Mother the Car," I asked.
"No, that other one, the one where the car had a red light sensor thing that moved back and forth on its front.”
"You mean on the grill," I stated more than asked. She nodded vigorously. "Knight Rider, the show was Knight Rider." I told her.
"That's the one, that's the one," I found her excited response to be contagious.
"Your eyes reminded me of that show traveling back and forth like that car's red sensor thing, almost as if you were reading something." She reached up and removed my hand from my face. "Shit J, I can see your cheekbone. Here." Barefoot, she had picked her away among the minefield of debris that covered are bathroom floor.
"Be careful," I yelled to her.
"Don't say that, you'll jinx me." She replied and somehow, somewhere found a clean wash cloth, antibiotic ointment and peroxide. She picked her way back to the safety of the carpeted hallway. "You're definitely going to need stitches or staples or something. Let's clean you up in the bedroom bathroom first, I think..." She stopped talking and walking all at once. "You're right J, the crap on the floor won't be difficult to clean, but there is blood everywhere; the floor, ceiling, the tile, tub, sink...I mean everywhere. We may have to hire professional cleaners." She had another look, took my offered hand, switched off the light and locked the door behind her.
In our bathroom it seemed brighter than usual. "I don't feel so good Pix."
"You lost a lot of blood, babe, of course you don't feel well." She bent my face over the sink; removed my half-assed makeshift bandage and poured peroxide into my wound, it fucking hurt.
"Fuck me!" I bellowed.
"Hold still and don't be such a baby. She peered at my face closer. "J, I think there is still some glass in your cheek. We're going to the emergency room now."
"Just dress it here."
"Like hell, every time you talk or move you start bleeding out pretty good again. We're going, and that's final." I'll call Marta and Cole and ask them to pick up the kids after swim practice, they won't mind."
"Yeah, okay," I replied only half listening. My head was swooning. "I'll drive." I said.
"Like hell," She said again. "J, I think it's the same side of your face that has that other scar, but can't tell because of all the blood."
"What other scar?" I asked.
CHAPTER 3.
I don't remember much about the ride into the hospital. I do remember Pixie telling me to hold the dressing tight against my face. She had placed gauze around the glass shrapnel and wouldn't let me pull it out. She told me that I needed to let the doctors remove it or I would lose even more blood. So I applied pressure with my hand while my fingers straddled around the glass. Whenever Pix hit a bump a sharp edge of shard bit into the web of my hand between my flip off digit and ring finger. The glass made a slight scraping sound almost imperceptible by pinging out tiny Morse code messages on my wedding band. I think I may have gone into semi-shock and drifted off into unconsciousness, when I opened my eyes again my wife and a PA or a doctor stood over me. The guy had to be too young to be a doctor, but he had already cultivated one of those, "I'm-the -doctor-and-you're-not" attitudes.
"There is evidence of former reconstructive surgery. Has you husband had facial injuries before?"
"None that he could recall, but he has had a scar on his cheek, barely noticeable, really, ever since I met him. He doesn't remember how he got it. Is he in a lot of pain?"
"The inner scar tissue is quite extensive. The former injury must have been traumatic. I gave him something for the pain. He'll be zoned out for a while. I'm not sure if there is any nerve damage, time will tell."
"Will there be a big scar Doctor?"
"Plastic surgery techniques are state of the art these days, evolving all the time. I'm sure the plastic surgeon can repair the recent damage very well. That shouldn't be a problem. The older injuries, I'm not so sure about, be sure to get all the details from the surgeon. We stapled off and stitched the bleeds. He shouldn't lose anymore blood. I am worried about the chance of infection, so I'm prescribing antibiotics just in case."
His youngness annoyed me, even though I faded in and out, I found him irritating. Even though I was snowed, I knew he was trying to impress my wife. He kept checking her out. She didn't seem to notice, but I noticed.
"There is one thing that I think should be investigated, Mrs. ,um..."
"Sally, just call me Sally."
His voice lowered into a slick conspiratorial whisper. If I wasn't doped up, I might have hit him. "Sally, I ordered a psychiatric consult just in case, his injury is self-inflicted."
Self inflicted? Are you fucking kidding me? I remember thinking to myself, Pompous ass, why didn't Pix hear the insincerity in his voice.
"You think he did it on purpose?"
"Past traumatic events can be easily blocked out by the mind. From the older scar tissue one can deduct that there has been earlier trauma." His voice dropped to another level that sounded slimy to me, worse than the psychobabble he fed my wife. "Don't concern yourself too much Sally. It is routine that we seek a psychiatrist when it comes to severe disfiguration of the face, to help the victim, er, patient deal with the shit."
Did that little asshole say shit? If he did, Pix didn't seem to be too concerned with his bedside manner, let alone his beside language.
"His face will be disfigured? I thought you said that he would be all right."
"I did, but sometimes, the patients react badly to the news of a facial injury and it is good to have a professional nearby just in case. Sally, would you like to get a cup of coffee?"
I knew it, that fucker! If I could just focus, I would show him facial disfigurement.
"I'm not thirsty doctor, but if you lock the door and draw the curtain I'll show you close up and personal what you've been undressing with your eyes for about the last ten minutes."
"Suddenly I don't want coffee either Sally."
This couldn't be happening, through the shadows of my eyelids and the fog in my mind, my wife took off her clothes as the dick-head doctor, locked the examining room door and pulled the curtain around them.
"Call me Pixie," she said, dropping onto her knees and unbuckling his pants."
"Pixie it is then."
"Can he see us?" She asked him as she took him in her mouth.
The doctor turned back and looked at me through the crack of the semi-closed curtain. He laughed, "I don't know, he's so drugged up…Yeah, probably."
"Good." My wife said; her mouth full. Acidic tears squirted from my eyes as I watched helpless.
"Very good," the doctor had mistaken my wife's statement as a question.
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