The Dark Night

My house is a mine field. No matter how often we clean and "pick up", the floor of every room seems to magically become littered with toys that inevitably cause loss of balance when walking in broad daylight, much less the deadly nighttime bathroom trip. Helen Keller would not like it here ...

I remember quite well waking up at 3:18AM with a bladder that seemed ready to burst. The green numbers of the alarm clock winked back at me as I turned my head and tried to gain the composure necessary for a short jaunt to the bathroom. The time I remember well due to the sheer pain that frosted that journey. We tend to recall with the most clarity those things in life which cause us harm, after all.

I slipped my feet silently to the floor, ever-conscious of the other family members sleeping in the house. Without a sound, I lifted my weight carefully from the matress and rose to a vertical position, my arms instinctively reaching out for the rocking chair beside the bed. My instincts proved well as my hand gently brushed the back of the rocker sending it into a slow lullabye of motion in the silent darkness.

There was no moonlight that night to guide me, but with my heading now set by the rocker, I slowly lifted my right foot high into the air and brought it down ahead of me, my toes touching first to avoid any creaking of boards beneath me. Satisfied with the step, I lowered the rest of the foot and slowly transferred my weight, next lifting the left foot and repeating the motion to cover ground ever so softly. My wife snored on.

My left foot came down, the toes touching down in a perfect placement and, as I followed with the rest of my foot, already transferring my weight to raise the right, an instant of slight sticking found the nerves in the center of my left arch, sending a warning impulse to my brain, "You're about to step on something!" It was too late. The rest of my foot came down and by the time my heal touched the floor, the sword of a tiny plastic pirate punctured the skin and drove its way into the meat of my foot. I gasped in the darkness as the piece sunk home and I could already feel the trickle of warm blood spilling onto the carpet. Somehow, I stifled a scream.

Raising my left foot automatically, I realized that my right foot was still in the air. Physics, unfortunately, does not accomodate for the levitation of a 250-pound man and therefore, something has to come down. In this case it was my left foot that slammed to the floor, driving the plastic pirate sword deeper into the tender arch. I stumbled backward, my balance failing and both arms flailing in the darkness. My right foot finally found life and as the heel came down, with the bulk of my weight, it found only the slick cover of a Dr. Suess book, (The Foot Book, if I remember correctly, though that may have just been in my mind), which immediately slid backward on the carpetting, propelling me toward the dresser.

Had the dresser drawers been closed, the next event might well not have occured. I threw both arms behind me, sliding backward on the Suess book through the darkness with a pirate's sword sticking from my left foot and a trail of blood staining the floor. As my right hand felt wood, I immediately pushed downward in an attempt to stabilize myself and stop the rearward motion. Unfortunately, the wood that my hand had found was not the top of the bureau, but the edge of an open drawer, which gave way under my sprawling weight and came cracking from its sliders. As the drawer crashed to the floor, the back of it breaking completely away, my left hand caught a half-empty water glass that had been carelessly discarded on the top of the dresser. My head then passed where the drawer had been at a speed of about Mach-2, before breaking it's fall on the corner of the dresser, opening a gash in my scalp and leaving a lump the size of Iceland.

I hit the floor with my eyes open and in a slight twinkle of light from sources unknown, I had just enough time to see a glistening from the lip of the water glass as it crashed into my forehead. Unlike the movies, the glass didn't break, but instead dealt me a glancing blow between the eyes and on the bridge of the nose. I laid there for a moment, ready for my wife to hit me with the typical, "Are you trying to wake the whole house?", but it never came. I couldn't believe it.

Finally, I dragged myself into the bathroom, leaving a bloody trail behind me that could easily have been followed by a blind tracker and pulled the door closed behind me. From the floor, I reached up and flipped the lightswitch, bathing my world in brilliant light that hurt my eyes and made the new lumps on my head throb in protest.

Carefully, I reached down and pulled the pirate's sword from my left foot, biting down on my lip to keep from screaming at the top of my lungs. I could litterally feel every centimeter as it pulled against the flesh, slowly working its way out into the air. Holding the sword up before my eyes, I was amazed at the gruesome sight. A 2" plastic sword, soaked in the blood of an early morning battle. It had obviously won.

I crawled to the cabinet and dug out a bottle of Bactine, flipping the little lid upward and squeezing a good deal of the product into the puncture wound. Again a scream of death built behind my pursed lips and again I was successful at holding it down. The Bactine bubbled inside me and frothed its way out of my foot like a rabid dog in a Milkbone factory. Black spots floated in front of my vision and I nearly passed out from the pain.

Next, I pulled myself up the front of the cabinets high enough to get a look at my blood-soaked, swollen head in the mirror. I was grotesque; the Elephant Man after a good beating. Between my eyes was a golf-ball sized knot that reminded me of a blacksnake swallowing an egg. My nose was already black and blue and swollen to three times its normal width, giving it a long, snout-like appearance. I reached up and felt a bloody matte of hair on the back of my head where I'd hit the bureau, pushed out to a seemingly impossible distance by a mass of swelling so big it could have accomodated a second ball cap.

I spent the next twenty-minutes tending to my injuries, using nearly the full bottle of Bactine, several Band-aids and two wet washclothes, both of which bore a happy-pink color after having been rung-out. My foot throbbed in perfect rythm with the pulsing of the headwounds and I noticed that somewhere along the line I had sprained my left wrist as well. Injuries always seem to be on the left with me.

Finally, I made my way to the toilet and performed the task for which I had initially come to this room. God forbid I have to recross that treacherous zone another time later. Satisfied, I turned off the lights and stood motionless for a moment in an attempt to allow my eyes to readjust to the darkness. In my mind, I tried to remember where exactly all of the hazards had been so as not to reinjure myself during the return trip. Ultimately, I decided to crawl.

As I opened the bathroom door and began crawling across the floor, my bad knee made a slight popping sound in the darkness. From the bed, my wife suddenly sat up and yelled, "Are you trying to wake up the whole house?", then crashed back down to her pillow and back to sleep. After all of that, I still got the reprimand. Soured by the accusation, I climbed up into the bed and didn't care if I shook the mattress. I pulled more than my share of the covers around me, rolling her slightly onto her back in the process where she continued her light snoring as though nothing had happened.

The next morning, I was awakened by my wife frantically shaking me with concern in her voice. "What happened?" She yelled. "There's blood everywhere and you look like you've been in a prize fight!"

I could see the concern in her eyes and for a split second, I felt a warmth of caring and affection spill through me. Then I remembered her angry yell about waking the house up. Without missing a beat, I looked at my wife and said,

"You don't remember? How can you not remember waking up last night and hitting me in the head with that water glass? You pushed me into the dresser! It was horrible! How can you not remember?"

Funny. You'd think I'd feel some remorse over that.