“Hey Maggie, what are you doing today?”
I wasn’t expecting a call from Alec today.
“Nothing much, why?”
“I’m going to be in Amery today, and I was just wondering if you might want to join me for lunch or something?”
“Sure! It’s been forever since I’ve seen you!”
“12:00 at Ida Mae’s sound good?”
“Yeah, see ya there!” I hung up the phone and started getting ready to go. It had been almost a year since I had talked to Alec face-to-face, and I was starting to miss him. He was my cousin, but he was also like a second brother to me. I knew it would take me half an hour to bike to town, so I’d have to leave shortly before 11:30. I was just too excited though, so I ran out to my bike around 11:10.
It was a beautiful day for a bike ride. The skies were clear, the wind was warm, and the air wasn’t dripping with humidity. I even had a light tail wind all the way into town which shaved a whole 10 minutes off my commute time. That was a new personal record!
That gave me half an hour to kill, so I decided to go over to the dam to listen to the rushing sounds water. It wasn’t far from Ida Mae’s, so I could leave whenever I wanted. I was just coming around the corner past the bike shop with the sounds of the water still on my mind. After that I wasn’t 100% sure what happened, because the next thing I knew, I was lying in a heap in the middle of the road and my bike was lying next to me. That was my first time really crashing my bike. I heard the bike shop guy holler, “Are you okay?” I feebly stood up and responded, “I’m fine!” That’s when I noticed that I wasn’t. When I raised my arm to wave, I saw that it was covered in blood.
My voice started to shake when I replied, “You got a Band-Aid or something?”
I tried my best to stay calm because Mark (I saw his name tag) seemed sort of freaked out. As I started limping across the road to the shop, he ran in and started digging for a first aid kit. I sat down on a stool at the counter because I was afraid I would fall down. My vision started to get tunneled, and I couldn’t hear out my left ear. Did I have a concussion? When Mark came back, he had a first aid kit and a Gatorade.
“Drink this; don’t want you to pass out or anything.” He sounded like he was a hundred miles away. As he spoke he handed me the Gatorade.
“Thanks.” My hands were shaking so badly I could hardly twist the cap off, but once I did I took a big swig of the beautiful green liquid. It tasted heavenly. My vision was starting to clear up, and I could begin to hear out of my left ear again. My arm was still covered with blood so I asked, “You got a sink around here?”
“Yeah, right over there,” he replied and gestured toward the door to the bathroom. He still sounded like he was a hundred miles away. I hopped off my stool and got a little dizzy for a second. Once I figured I was alright I walked over to the bathroom. I looked in the mirror and checked to make sure there were no scrapes on my face. I figured if I hit my head, there would be some blood, but there was none. Next, I started rinsing the blood off my arm. It turned out that there was a really deep gash on the inside of my elbow. I poked at it a bit to see if there was any gravel in it, but I couldn’t tell. It felt a bit numb.
I must have just left my bike and everything lying in the middle of the road, so Mark brought it all in for me. My bike was next to the door, and my cellphone and baseball cap were waiting for me at the counter. I must have been really dazed.
I figured I should call someone since I was meeting Alec at 12:00 and it was already 11:45. I needed someone to help patch me up since there were only a few Band-Aids and some rubbing alcohol in the first aid kit. My elbow would need a bit more work than that. I flipped my phone open and dialed my mom’s number. I waited for it to ring, but it went straight to voicemail. I had forgotten she was at the dentist. The next number in my mental emergency list was my dad’s. This time the phone rang, and rang, and rang. When it finally picked up his monotone voicemail voice responded, “Hi, this is Bob. I can’t come to the phone, so just leave a message, and I’ll get back to you.”
Now I was starting to panic. Who else was there to call? Bethany was in France, so that would be rather useless. Rosalie was the only name I could think of off the top of my head.
“You got a phone book?” I asked with a shaky voice. By now the pain was starting to set in and it was horrible. My heartbeat was quickening with panic. Mark flopped the book on the counter and I started fumbling through the pages. R&S Wolff. I dialed the number and waited for what seemed to be an eternity.
“Hello?” I had never been so relieved to hear Rosalie’s voice!
“Hi, Rosalie? This is Maggie.” Now I started to calm down a bit.
“Hey! What’s up buddy?”
“I took a digger on my bike.”
“Oh my gosh! Are you okay? Where are you? Is anyone with you?”
“I garffed my elbow pretty bad, I’m sitting at the bike shop, and just the bike shop guy. No one’s picking up their phones and I didn’t know who else to call. Are your parents home?”
“No, but my mom said if there was ever an emergency I could take the truck. Do you want me to pick you up?” Now she sounded panicked, too.
“You shouldn’t drive without a license, but if I can’t get ahold of anyone I’ll call you back. I’m more freaked out than injured anyway.”
“Okay, just call me if you need anything.”
“Thanks, bye.” The phone went silent after she hung up. I sat there for a second thinking about who I could call. Then I remembered the one person who was always available. My uncle John, and if he couldn’t come he would know how to find my dad. I dialed the number and it only rang once before I heard his usual greeting, “Yello?”
“Hi John, this is Maggie.”

“Hey Mags! What’s goin on?”
“I took a digger on my bike.”
“Well what’d you do that for?”

“I don’t know. Is Dad around?”
“Yeah, just a sec,” I could still hear him when he hollered across wherever he was, “Hey Reno! Your kid had an accident!” The next voice I heard was my dad’s.
“What happened, Maggie?”
“I fell off my bike and garffed my elbow. I’m at the bike shop and I need someone to come get me fixed up so I can go to lunch with Alec at 12:00.”
“Okay, I’ll be there in about 10 minutes.”
“Okay.” He hung up and I sat there mentally assessing things. The only semi-major injury I was aware of was on my elbow, but on top of that I couldn’t straighten my arm. With nothing else to think about, I started to notice that my hip and the side of my knee felt a little sore. I rolled my pant leg up high enough to see it. It wasn’t bleeding too badly. I looked back at my elbow and muttered, “Well that looks disgusting.” It looked like a goodly sized chunk of flesh was missing.
As I waited for my dad to arrive I sat in awkward silence with Mark. He broke the silence by asking, “How did that even happen?”
“I have no idea.” I was still trying to figure that out.
“I heard you hit the ground, and I was kind of surprised that you didn’t have very many injuries.”
“Guess I’m just lucky.” Just then my dad’s truck pulled up to the door and he came into the store. He just looked at me, smirked, and chuckled with an air of mockery. I got off the stool and he came over to look at my elbow.
“Well isn’t that just lovely,” he remarked sarcastically. I shrugged and replied, “I dunno what happened. One second I was biking along, and then I was sprawled out on the road.”
“Alright,” he began. “Let’s get you to Diane and Doc’s. They’ll have some stuff to get that all cleaned up and wrapped.” He thanked Mark for keeping an eye on me, and we started to leave. I noticed that the chain had gotten knocked off my bike, so I asked Mark if he could take a look at it. He exclaimed, “No problem! It’ll be all ready to go in about 20 minutes.”
I got into the car with my dad and we started driving to Diane and Doc’s. My dad had been living there since he and my mom had gotten divorced, so their house became our landing spot over the past few months. We arrived at our destination in just a couple minutes, and Diane was very surprised and happy to see u. She is by far the most eccentric aunt ever.
“Hi guys, how’s it going?” Then she saw my elbow and went into full emergency mode. She was trained as an EMT for part of her career, but she didn’t always sound like one. “Oh, that doesn’t look very good. I’m going to need gauze, my sanitizing spritzy stuff, Neosporin and a towel.” She ran upstairs and started gathering her supplies while my dad took me over to the sink to thoroughly clean my injury. He had to scrub it to make sure there wasn’t any sand or gravel in it, and that really hurt.
“Oh, gosh that hurts!” I protested and squirmed, but it did no good.
“Well that’s your problem; we gotta get it cleaned out good.” My dad stated. “Okay, all done.” My elbow was really starting to sting, so I was apprehensive about anything they were going to do for fear that it would hurt more. Diane came downstairs with a roll of gauze, scissors, a spray bottle of some kind of fluid, Neosporin, a towel, and she was sporting a pair of purple rubber gloves.
“Alright, get your arm up here where I can see it.” I obeyed. She looked at it and grabbed the bottle of fluid.
“Whoa whoa whoa, what’s that?” I was worried that it was rubbing alcohol.
“This is sanitary water. It’ll make sure there’s no bad stuff left in your little cut thingy there.” She proceeded to spray the cold water on my elbow. It didn’t sting, so that was good. Next she dried my arm as best as she could, and put a bit of Neosporin on the gash. She then opened a small gauze patch that said “no stick” on it. Diane didn’t want to lull me into a false sense of security, so she said, “It says that, but it lies, just to warn you.” She had me hold that on my arm while she cut a length of gauze wrap. She wrapped it around my elbow and asked, “Is that too tight?”
“No,” I replied, “It’s just fine.” She taped the end and looked very satisfied with her work.
“There you be. All ready to go gallivanting!” She sounded very pleased.
“Thanks,” I felt much better now that I didn’t have to worry about bleeding all over the place. “Dad, can you take me back to my bike so I can still go to lunch?” I was still determined to meet Alec even if I was a bit late. My dad agreed to take me, so we jumped into the car and drove back to the bike shop. When we arrived, Mark had put the chain back on my bike and said that it still worked perfectly. I thanked him again and left with my bike.
“Are you sure you’re gonna be able to get where you’re going?” My dad asked jokingly.
“Of course I will. You should keep your phone on just in case though.”
“Alright, see ya Thursday.”
“See ya, Dad.” He got back in his car and drove away. I cautiously hopped on my bike and started pedaling down the road. Now I was exceedingly cautious about everything in the road in front of me. It only took about 2 minutes to get to Ida Mae’s, and Alec was sitting at a table waiting for me.
“I thought you weren’t going to come,” he said with a smile.
“I had a bit of an accident,” I showed him my elbow.
“What happened?” I then proceeded to tell him about all the events of my morning of panic while we enjoyed our lunch together.