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It was a typical happy Father's
Day, and then . . .
By Kelly
Brinkerhoff
September 16, 2008 | Where was I? I couldn't see, but
I could feel something warm and wet penetrating the
towel covering my face. My mom was frantically screaming
at my dad to drive faster. I was in the car, but where
they taking me?
It was June of 1993, Father's Day had arrived and
we were catering to my father on his special day. We
cooked his favorite meal and ate dinner early, as we
always did on Sundays. We all pitched in and made mom's
homemade mashed potatoes, tender pot roast, carrots
and homemade rolls. It was a typical Sunday dinner;
my dad went back for thirds, while I stared at the roast
for 45 minutes reluctantly forcing it down. While we
let my dad sit-off the heavy food he just ate, the rest
of us helped clean up the mess dinner left us. After
he opened all the silly gifts we made him in school,
my two brothers and I raced each other down the stairs
to play Nintendo.
I was 11 years old, my older brother Tony was 14,
and my younger brother Tim, was six. Tony is my only
full-blood brother and my best friend. Although he picked
on me all the time, it was just your classic brutal
brotherly love.
We had a giant pea green bean bag that sat right in
front of the TV so we could be up close and personal
with the Nintendo. Tony won the race and plopped onto
the bean bag while Tim and I sat behind him on our 1970s
couch. The couch was dark brown, very worn, with big
vibrant orange and yellow flowers all over it. Tony
turned on the Nintendo and began to play Super Mario
Brothers. Blind to the world around him and deep into
the game, he jerked the controller around as if it made
Mario jump higher or run faster.
We watched for an hour before Tim became restless.
Tony wouldn't let anyone else play he had almost conquered
the game. Tim kept trying to get Tony's attention but
nothing was working so finally, he threw a pillow at
him. Lost in Mario world, nothing fazed Tony; he just
chucked the pillow back at Tim only to instigate him
more. Tossing the pillow back and forth a few times,
Tony's player finally died. This really irritated him.
Instead of lightly swinging the pillow at Tim, he threw
it as hard as he could. Only this time, he picked up
the Nintendo controller along with the pillow. The pillow
hit Tim and the controller ripped out of the console
and whipped around until it hit something, which happened
to be me. I screamed to the top of my lungs and that
was the last thing I remembered.
As my parents were walking out of the house to run
to Wal-Mart, they heard a blood-curdling scream coming
from downstairs. They rushed back in the house to find
me running up the stairs with blood squirting out of
some orifice of my face. They didn't know where it was
coming from they just knew it was serious and I needed
to get to the emergency room. They grabbed a towel,
put it on my face to wipe the blood and loaded me into
the car.
During the drive I started to come back to earth.
My mind was very confused, but I felt no pain. Was I
in a dream or was I dying? My vision was clouded with
yellow dots. By the time we reached the hospital it
felt like it had been years.
My dad carried me into the emergency room and the
nurses rushed me back to clean the blood off so they
could tell where I was hurt. It was my eye! I could
finally feel the pain throbbing through my right eye.
I couldn't hear or say anything and everything was moving
in fast motion. After they put stitches right below
my eyebrow, the bleeding finally stopped, and my eye
became the main focus.
Because it was Sunday and Father's Day, we waited
45 minutes before the on-call ophthalmologist arrived.
When Dr. Young finally came, my eye was so swollen shut
he couldn't even pry it open to see the damage. After
an hour of trying, he got it open enough to take a glance
at it. He had never witnessed anything like this in
his 20 years of practice.
My lens was completely damaged, there was no saving
it. If my dad hadn't taken that third helping and delayed
their routine trip to Wal-Mart, I would have been blind
in my right eye. If I ever wanted to see again, I would
need to go into cataract surgery within a week to replace
the lens in my eye.
Eight days after this incident, I went in for cataract
surgery. I lay on the bed counting backwards from "Ten,
nine, eight…" I was out cold and Dr. Young started the
surgery. It took him about four hours to complete this
difficult surgery, but it was a success.
I woke up from surgery to find a cold metal pirate
patch strapped to my right eye. I had to wear this patch
every day for a month. When it could finally come off,
I could see, but everything was blurry. A few months
later, I got laser surgery to correct my vision to almost
20/20. Miraculously I could almost see perfectly!
On that atrocious Father's Day I spent in the emergency
room, Tony sobbed uncontrollably while scrubbing my
blood off the carpet, wondering how he could fix me
so I wasn't hurt. To this day Tony's brutal love has
yet to be seen.
NW
MS
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