Bone-crunching spine-shiver

“OHMIGAWD! I crushed her fingers!!!!”

Caitlin spends her day at Grandma’s after school. There she will have her meals, have her daytime nap, complete her homework, wreak havoc on the old folks, and wait for Daddee to come from the office in the evening.

Grandma’s house has parquet flooring. The shelac (spelling?) is starting to peel off the flooring, sticking to the bottoms of tropical-weathered feet as they walk and step off them.

Last night I was home and playing with Caitlin. We heard Caleb starting to make noise, and I started for his room. Caitlin, ever the me-too busy-body, came along. After bouncing Caleb a few times in his bouncy thingy, and him starting to settle back down, I gestured to Caitlin let’s go. We started out the room, her infront of me, through the bedroom door.

Upon passing the door, I grabbed the door to swing it shut behind me. Caitlin stops abruptly to peel some shelac from her foot.

Then I heard something.

You know the sound when you slowly stick or force, let’s say, a screwdriver into wood? That crrreeeeeeeek sound? That’s what I heard.

Caitlin froze. I immediately realised what the noise was. Looked at the source of the noise, and her last 2 fingers were between the nearly-closed door and the door frame. She was supporting herself whilst balancing on one foot. I also immediately thought: Shit, what else could make such a noise, if not for the worst?

I quickly pushed opened the door and dropped to my knees, brought her hand out from there. Caitlin had already gasped once and started screaming. I looked at her fingers: There was an indentation of a straight line going across both the last 2 fingers, fast turning purple.

I didn’t really know what to do. With my little orthopedic knowledge, I asked her to do imitate me: I quickly and repeatedly curled-uncurled my fingers. If joints are broken, they cannot bend at all. Despite the very-likely excruciating pain, I needed to quickly know.

Despite the screaming, and trusting her Daddee, she did, and she was able to.

By this time both grandparents rushed to investigate the severe crying, wondering if she had fallen or something just as bad as I’d originally feared. They then quickly dabbed some ortho-related chinese medicinal ointment (tie-da) on the affected areas which, to my amazement, did make the purple fade…

.. And I thought I was careful with my kids. Although it soon became obvious that there was no permanent damage, I still felt like shit for quite a while.

Later that night I kept watch. For the first hour since she was still somewhat sniffling, being reminded by the throbbing sensation that would be expected. Even later, she was already using both hands to do stuff; at one point even tapping both hands like playing drums.

In the midst of the screaming, I cannot recall now whether all the mayhem woke little di-di Caleb.