#14 Personal Narrative—Meet New Faces

Time had crumbled the steps, like it was crumbling my past behind me. It was a long way down the side of the green hill to the park.

“Look, they’ve already started!” I scampered down ahead of my older sister Melissa. Her voice came crawling over my shoulder from behind, grumbling, “I hate being late!”

Ahead of me, I could see the huge pavilion in the center of the park swarming with people. Music blasted from speakers, and my eardrums shivered with anticipation. Long tables loaded with food invited me to come dig in. I had just turned 18, and this was my first big Young Single Adult activity. I was excited to jump in and be a part of it all. I was dressed in clean new clothes, my hair was swept back in a headband, and I was ready to go meet new faces. I heard the satisfying clang of pitched horseshoes striking metal posts, and saw people dancing about tossing footballs and playing ultimate Frisbee.

“What should we do first?” I asked. Melissa stared at her shuffling feet and the words, “are you sure you want to go?” emerged from somewhere under her long bangs. I assured her I did, and decided to join the game of ultimate Frisbee. I wanted her to come with me, but she declined, preferring to hunker down on a bench at the side and watch me. A few years ago she’d broken her leg, and she’d never enjoyed active sports since. “Have fun,” she said, and I went.

I ran around on the outskirts of the game, with little success. The Frisbee hardly came close to me, and although I got an occasional swipe at it, I wasn’t contributing much to the game. No one even seemed to notice me.

I was almost ready to humor Melissa and go home with her, when the Frisbee flew wild and headed for an empty spot of field near me. This was my chance! I could catch it and contribute to the team! I ran as fast as I could, my eyes on the sky blue Frisbee as it descended. Right before I got to it, another pair of hands snatched it out of the air. I looked down to find a young man (incidentally, a member of my team) coming at full speed from the opposite direction. It was too late for me to do anything. Our faces collided with a dull, solid impact, and I tumbled to the ground. I caught a brief glimpse of him collapsing to the grass next to me and heard him yelling “Ow, ow!" as I buried my face in my hands, trying to somehow retroactively protect it from what had already happened.

Brief snippets of thought floated through my head.

I think my nose is broken.

I’ve hurt him. I feel awful. I hope he’s all right.

I should have been looking where I was going.

I must be really sweaty; my face is moist and sticky.

The young man recovered before I did, and I heard him saying anxiously, “Are you all right? Can I help you up?” I realized I had been lying on the ground clutching my face, which was a mass of pain, for long enough that a crowd had gathered.

“I’m fine,” I mumbled. I sat up, embarrassed, and pushed my hair out of my face. The young man, crouching next to me, said, “Oh no! We’ve got blood!”

I looked down to find that what I thought was sweat was really bright red blood, pouring down my hands and arms like water. I thought it might be coming from my nose, but someone nearby said, “She’s got a cut on her forehead.”

I clapped my bloody hands to my head, trying to somehow contain the blood, as the young man helped me up and announced, “I’m taking her to the bathroom. Somebody find a girl to go in with her.”

He put his arm around me, gripped me firmly and marched me toward the bathroom. Blood gushed between my fingers and showered my clothes and sandals.

“I’m really sorry,” he said, “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

Someone, a fast runner, came panting up beside me and said, “here,” thrusting a wad of napkins from the pavilion into my hands. I gratefully pressed them against my forehead. Someone said, “They’re getting a nurse. Don’t worry.”

“Where’s my sister?” I asked of no one in particular. “It doesn’t matter,” said the young man. “Let’s just get you to the bathroom.” I glanced over my shoulder, and was relieved to see Melissa running to catch up with me.

In the park’s dingy bathroom, she dabbed at me with damp toilet tissue—there were no paper towels. The door opened and in came the nurse—the mom of one of my friends. “Oh, it’s you!” she said. She brought me back out into the light so she could have a look at the cut. The young man was waiting right outside the door, as were several other people, and they watched as she had me peel away the napkins.

“Even minor head injuries always bleed a lot,” she assured me. “I wouldn’t be too worried.” As the napkins came away, however, she took one look and said, “You’re definitely going to need stitches.”

Several things happened at once. Someone said, “Does anyone know who she is? I’ll take her to the emergency room.” Melissa spoke up, saying she’d called my parents and they were coming to get me. One lady cleaned me up with a bright-colored washcloth, and another produced a first-aid kit and got some sterile gauze to replace the napkins. The young man apologized again, and this time I had enough presence of mind to apologize back and hope he was all right. Someone wondered if he was getting a black eye, but he shrugged it off, saying he’d had worse.

While we sat on the bank of a canal by the parking lot, waiting for my parents to arrive, the nurse took a look at the purple rim developing under the young man’s eye, and agreed he was getting a “shiner.” I apologized, and he shook it off, saying, “It was my fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

My parents arrived in their work clothes, all covered in paint from painting our bathrooms. The young man ran up to them, introduced himself, and said, “I’ve hurt your daughter, and I’m really sorry. She keeps apologizing, but it was all my fault.” I was surprised, because that’s just the way I felt, except the other way around. I called back one last apology and thanks to him as I was ushered into the family van.

While waiting for treatment, I assessed myself and found a button on my shirt was missing, my nose did seem to be broken, and I was bleeding out of both nostrils—I hadn’t noticed that before. While I sat there feeling sorry for myself, I looked around and saw a girl waiting for treatment from a biking accident assessing herself cheerfully with her friends, saying, “Wow, there’s another bruise! How on earth did I get that?”

Once I was in the operating room, the doctor’s assistant came in with a timid medical student, and told her to give me a shot. As I pulled up my sleeve, I noticed the student was shaking. I wanted to say, “Why on earth are you nervous? I’m the one lying here bleeding!”

Then I wished I could comfort her—she was just as scared as I was, and she was doing something new in an unfamiliar environment.

The doctor chatted with my mom as he stitched me up, while I tried not to look at the giant face and curved needle looming over me.

Hero regains consciousness in movie to blearily look up at hovering medic, I thought.

“I’ve been working on soldiers in Iraq,” the doctor said. “For a cut like this, I’d sew them up, wish them well, and send them back to work. All in a normal day for them.”

Well, they could go back to normalcy, but I assured myself I was a special case. My face had been brutally bashed in! I had the right to withdraw from activities!

When I got home, I cleaned up, changed into fresh clothes and got a good look at my cut. Although it was covered with steri-strips and held together with at least 15 invisible stitches, I could see it was about an inch long. My first thought was to register horror at the fact that I’d be scarred in the middle of my forehead forever. My second thought was, Well, this is what I get for trying to be involved. No more activities for me.

The next day I still went to church, to my new singles’ ward, even though I wasn’t feeling well. Word had spread about the mishap, and my friend (the daughter of the nurse who helped me) was happy to tell everyone who hadn’t heard about it. I was surprised to find that lots of people expressed concern, and I became a sort of celebrity. People came out of the woodwork to ask me about it, and tell me their own accident stories. An outgoing, active girl in the ward had broken a tooth and split her lip playing ultimate Frizbee. I was surprised to learn how many people had stories similar to or worse than mine. As I walked down the hallway at church side-by-side with Melissa, along with my friend and another new friend, I wondered.

With my self-consciousness and problems, am I really as different from others as I think I am?

I might still have shied away from activities, but for one thing. I have a problem, I thought. There’s a really nice young man out there somewhere, but no one can seem to remember his name or just what he looked like.

“I guess I’ll have to go to more Young Single Adult activities,” I said to Melissa. “You never know who you might run into there. Figuratively speaking, of course. Not literally.”