My son Brody is nine months and six days older than his cousin Logan, the youngest in the house. They have quite different personalities though. Logan is the Tommy; while Brody is the Chuckie. Of course, those are exaggerations, but you get the idea. They really don’t look alike either. Brody is the dark, Sicilian looking boy, and Logan has blonde hair, and a much different facial structure. But together, they get into quite a bit of trouble.
I left Saturday for the video store, and all three boys were outside playing. As I pulled back up to the house, my phone rang in my purse. I stop the car, and answer a hysterical Amy bawling in my ear. After a moment, Kacie took the phone and tells me to get back quickly – Brody was bleeding! I opened the front door, and shuffled Brody out, with his sister holding a rag to the back of his head. He had blood on his hands, his shirt, in his hoodie. Amy helped me strap him into Logan’s car seat, since his booster was shoved in the back of the car somewhere. Since we live about halfway between two different hospitals, I drove about 15 miles over the speed limit to the north one.
On the way, the bleeding slowed down a lot, and I questioned my decision to rush out the door without cleaning him up and actually inspecting the wound first. But I was almost there, so I just kept going. I know that head wounds bleed a lot, but just in case, I wanted them to clean it anyway, since the first rag his sister grabbed was also the one she had been using to dust the television downstairs. We got checked in, through triage, and into a room. Amy, minus her shoes, was shaking in a chair against the wall, overcome with anxiety. She’s probably the most sensitive child we have, and she tends to absorb the energy and emotions of people around her.
So to calm her down, I ask her to try to tell me what happened. Since she was inside the glass door, she really didn’t know. She told me that Logan had come inside, saying he was broken. Kacie was trying to calm him down, and was washing his face, when Brandon, hand covered with blood, escorted Brody inside, saying he got pushed off his Little Tykes scooter car, and had hit his head on one of the decorative garden rocks out back. That’s when everyone started freaking.
The nurse came into our room, and started to clean him up. It was then that my phone rang. Caller ID said it was my sister’s phone, but I didn’t consider the fact that she was at work. As the nurse was telling me that Brody’s head probably wouldn’t even need a stitch, Kacie was calling from the car with my sister, and Logan. They were on their way to the emergency room at the other hospital. The younger of the Trouble Twins had broken his collarbone.
The doctor came in, and confirmed what the nurse had told us: he had a puncture wound to the back of his head, but not large enough to require a stitch. Brody would continue to slowly bleed on the way home, dotting Logan’s car seat. We made it home, and gathered the other two kids from the neighbor’s house.
My sister continued to update me by cell while they were waiting for xrays to return. But she had borrowed a coworkers car to drive him, so my SIL had brought it back up to her work. I talked to the neighbor again, and drove to the other hospital to pick up my sister and my broken nephew – strapping him into his cousin’s booster seat, to have only one strap going across his body, missing his shoulder.
Brody is fine. I washed his hair last night, and he whined a bit, but overall, the $115 boo-boo is not that bad. Logan, on the other hand, is strapped down two different ways, and pretty doped up. I only started to cry a bit when he was crying the first night. He’s such a strong, daring child with so little fear, to see him vulnerable really hit me. But he’s such an amazing kid, fighting the pain, and trying to keep up his active life as usual. He learned quickly last night not to jump off his mommies’ bed though. 
