My mom came rushing into the house. “Your dad rolled the ATV. He needs to go to the hospital.” I was slow to the uptake. This meant grab your coat. You’re driving him there.
A thousand things went through my mind. My mom was way too calm for this to be too dire. “What happened? Is he okay?” She assured me it was just his arm but that I needed to hurry. His doctor’s office might still be open but if we needed to we would go to the ER.
The ER took us right in. We walked past a lot of other patients in varying levels of discomfort. They let my dad sit in a small upright bed. My dad was writhing in pain at times but not groaning and moaning like others we walked by. I’m sure his head was not clear. He was wincing. He asked if a little pain medicine was too much to ask for. It seemed silly to ask the doctor when they would attend to him considering the other needs around.
30-40 minutes seemed like forever to get a diagnosis. It gave me a chance to hear more details about the accident, however. I guess my dad was going up a slope and caught on a rock sideways. He knew the ATV was going over and pushed it off him as best he could as it went by. It held up on the embankment below perched atop a cliff.
The medicine would take affect in another 30-40 minutes. They looked over his arm and braced it up good. He had significant bruising and obviously damaged the bone, but they would not be able to do much to see if he needed a cast until the swelling went down. He went back to his doctor in the coming days and it was found that the bone had lifted off of itself in a painful forearm split. It would take several days in a soft cast before he would recover. I think his hand still has some nerve damage, but it could have been much worse.
