The Blood

This may sound a bit morbid, but for some reason I'm still having trouble getting past the image of all the blood.  My blood.

It seemed like it was everywhere after my accident:  all over my riding jacket and pants, in the road, covering my sunglasses and on my bike.

Who knew facial injuries could generate so much blood?

I guess it makes sense when you think about it, though. The face is so vascular. It is also so vulnerable and so unprotected.  But thankfully, probably due to how vascular it is, the face (or at least my face) heals quickly.

But back to the blood.  Why can't I shake the image?

I guess part of it for me was the novelty of it all.  I mean, how often do you actually see your own blood scattered about on so many different things?

And then to leave it there, staining the road, for others to see or bike past or drive over.  It's such a personal thing.  A life force that was inside my body is now outside my body and on display.  How odd is that?

Actually, I'll admit that the blood in the road did come in handy the day immediately after my accident. We were told by the ER trauma nurse that if you lose a tooth whole, as I did, that it can often be reinserted back into place if done quickly.  We didn't have the tooth and were wondering later if we had missed an opportunity.

So the next day, my husband, Ted, drove over to "the scene," as I now refer to it, followed the blood and looked for the tooth.  Alas, no whole tooth, so no missed opportunity.  However, he did find pieces of my teeth (here I go being morbid again) which he collected and handed to me when he returned home. This might sound odd but it was actually one of the nicest things Ted could have done for me at the time.  I could see the relief on his face as he told me he couldn't stand to have parts of his wife still scattered on the streets of North Andover.  In fact, that was his real motivation for going over there.

But back to the blood.

My bloody clothes were whisked off as soon as I returned home from the hospital, soaked in cold water and all evidence was washed out thoroughly.  So facing them later wasn't an issue.

The blood in the road was something I knew I had to see again to help make sense of it all.  Ted and I went back to "the scene" a few days later. I stood in the road and stared at the blood for several minutes. Then we got back in the car and went home.  The next day it was washed away by heavy rain showers.

My sunglasses were another thing. They sat tucked away in a corner, still covered in dried blood, for almost a week before I could muster up the courage to touch them.  Once I did, I quickly ran them under hot water, wiped them clean and bent them back into shape.  They now await my face if I'm ever ready to use them again.

The blood on the bike was the hardest to face.  Ted offered but I knew I had to do it.  A full two weeks passed before I was mentally able to pull my bike out of the garage and wipe it clean.  (Oddly, I found the most blood was located under my seat.)  After I removed any evidence of DNA, I loaded my bike into my van and brought to the repair shop (more on that later).  

So now, all evidence of my insides has been washed away or finally cleaned up.  I'm hoping it won't make an appearance again any time soon.

I think I'm ready to put this image behind me now.