Hold Still, Sister

So I was minding my own business, removing Matt’s man whiskers from his sink, when I heard a child-like shriek.  It wasn’t the type of shriek that is angry with a sibling or is mad at the cat.  It was the type of shriek that lets your mother instincts know that a human who is biologically related to you through conception is in trouble.  I ran into the living room and found Makayla on her back, her legs in the air, and blood dripping from various places on both feet.

“What happened?” I shrieked, horrified at the sight of my little girl bleeding

“The nails!” she wailed, “I ran over the nails when I was being a car!”

The nails that are uprooted since Matt is remodeling the dining room and pulled the carpet up.  Those hundreds of tiny little nails that hold the carpet down had impaled my child. 

I sat down in front of her and examined her feet.  There was so much blood that it was hard to see what the damage was and I saw it was dripping on the carpet, so I hollered for Caleb to bring a towel.  He brought the towel and I instructed my newly four year old to hold his sisters ankles over the towel and not touch her feet.  He did so, his huge brown eyes even huger with worry and as I went to fetch supplies I heard him saying, “OK.  It’s OK, Sister.  Don’t move.  Hold still, sister.  I will take care of you.  I will help you, Sister.”

I rushed back with sanitizing equipment, bandages, and socks and Caleb looked up at me with giant, horrified eyes.

“Is she going to die, Mommy?” he asked, “Will her heart get all beat up?”

“No, Bubba,” I said as I sat down and took Makayla’s feet from him, “Sister is going to be OK.”

I sanitized Makayla’s wounds and she withered around and screamed in agony which made me believe she was being dramatic.  Once I got everything clean, I saw that not only had she ripped pieces of the skin down her foot, she had various nail holes in her feet.  I felt bad for believing she was being dramatic and Caleb held her hand while telling her, “Hold still.  Just hold still, Sister.”

I pulled out the scissors to cut the gauze I was going to wrap around Makayla’s foot and Caleb screamed, “No Mommy!  Don’t cut her feet off!  Don’t cut her feet off, Mommy!”

Makayla forgot her excruciating pain at that moment and laughed and said, “Bubba, Mommy is just going to cut that stuff to wrap it on my foot.  She would have to have a saw or something to cut my foot off anyway.”

Caleb eyeballed the scissors with a furrowed little brow as I cut the gauze and wrapped Makayla’s foot.  I put band-aids over the smaller wounds and Caleb announced he needed band-aids too.  I obliged and after the band-aids were administered, I put socks on Makayla’s feet to help prevent any yucky stuff from getting into her wounds.  I got up to go fix lunch and as I waited for the pizza to cook, looked into the living room and saw my son tenderly kissing the soles of his big sister’s feet.

“Does that make it better, Sister?” he asked.

“Yes, Bubba, thank you,” she said  pitifully.

“I’ll always take care of your feet, sister,” he said, "Jesus wants to kiss your feet too, huh, sister?  And me and Jesus don't even care about the germs on there, Sister."

I believe I might have literally gotten a little teary eyed.