“This Summer I…”

I had a nose job when I was eight years old. My mother didn’t even hesitate when she signed the forms at the hospital. You must think my mother is crazy for letting an eight year old child have plastic surgery. Well, I’m about to tell you something even crazier.
Sometime in August of 1996, I thought I died. At least, that’s what my cousin Micah screamed to my parents when he found me lying in the middle of the street, bleeding, and tangled up with my bike. For a split second, I believed him.
We, my cousins, my aunt and uncle, my parents, my big brother, and I, were staying at the Pocono Mountains for a week. We all piled into my aunt’s station wagon and drove what seemed like all day. To pass the time, my cousins, my brother, and I all talked about going swimming in the lake, riding our bikes, and staying up late every night. It was going to be an adventure for the Grosses and Kellys.
The first few days were filled with swimming in the cold lake with dead catfish, bike races, and lying on the dock soaking up the sun. Until the day it rained. It rained so hard that we were banned from all outdoor activities for the day. I couldn’t believe it! What good was a summer vacation if you couldn’t go outside? So the five of us kids devised a plan to take over the living room and build a giant fort, and then spend the day eating junk food and watching movies. After all the excitement of being allowed to watch movies all day, we fell asleep in our fort.
Later we woke up to a sunny afternoon! Immediately we decided to ride our bikes down to the lake. My brother got on his bike first and put Michaela, the youngest, on his lap. Micah followed them and they raced down the long, steep driveway. Misha and I took a slower approach to admire a family of deer we found a few yards away. I started to pedal faster in an attempt to race down the driveway and my bike stopped. My bike stopped, but I didn’t. I kept going. I went right over the handle bars. I flew head first into the wet street. I quickly sat up; I was in total shock! I had just flown off my bike! Misha didn’t say anything. Was I okay?
I turned around to look for Misha – that was when the screaming started. I couldn’t figure out why she was screaming. Yeah, I fell off my bike. I had done that a million times. It wasn’t until I looked down at my hands and knees that I realized this fall was different from the rest: the blood was everywhere. I could feel it pumping and racing through my veins. When I put my hand to my face this sound erupted from me. I don’t think you could call it a scream; it was more a shriek of pain and a cry for help. My face had never hurt like that before: it was like a Mack truck had come and driven across my face. There was more blood on my nose than on my hands and knees. There was so much! My heart started racing and my adrenaline was pumping, but the pain was beginning to push through the shock. Everything hurt so badly; everything hurt worse than the time my brother pushed me down the stairs to see what would happen (and that hurt pretty bad).
I blacked out and came to with my Mom in my face. She was checking my pulse and my breathing and trying to assess how much blood I lost. She had that look on her face: what I call the “nurse” look. It’s an appropriate term since that’s what she is: a nurse. For once the look helped calm me down and I knew I wasn’t dead. She started asking me questions like “what day is it” and “what’s your full name?” I looked at her and asked “you don’t know who I am?!” I must have gotten my heart rate up really high, really fast because I blacked out a second time.
My brother Michael and our youngest cousin Michaela eventually came to the scene. Michaela saw everyone and thought it was a party in the driveway and began dancing around. Michael knew who was hurt immediately. He knew how much of a klutz I could be and didn’t need to ask who was hurt. He did come up to me and ask me what I did “this time” and question my character as an “accomplished bike rider.” He mercilessly made fun of me for have only learned how to ride a bike with two wheels that very summer. I guess that was the price I paid for not wearing my helmet or not having enough experience to ride on a wet, steep hill at “high speed.”
After Mom pushed Michael out of the way, my aunt Maureen pulled up in her old station wagon. We were headed to the hospital which was twenty-four miles away. I wanted to wait for an ambulance. I wanted to ride in the ambulance just so I could tell my friends “hey! I rode in an ambulance!” But Mom told me it would take too long and that I needed to get to the ER right away. I actually tried to fight her on the subject, but I blacked out again. I woke up in the car. My uncle Phil had put me in the car and placed me on Mom’s lap. Magically, Mom pulled out a bag full of ice and placed it on my nose and head. It felt so good. I still don’t know how anyone had time to put ice cubes in a bag, but I was grateful for it.
The next part of my story always scares Mom and as I look back, it scares me too. I kept repeating the same sentence over and over: “I love you, Mommy.” I’d say it a dozen times and then black out, wake up, say it another dozen times, and black out. I repeated this process over and over, the whole twenty-four miles.
We got to the hospital at long last and my Dad took me out of the car. I didn’t remember this, but he was out getting ice cream for us kids and was coming back to the house as my aunt was driving away with Mom and me in the backseat. So he followed us to the hospital. I think he still had the ice cream in his truck, too. As soon as I saw him I felt more relief; knowing that both of my parents and my favorite aunt Maureen were there to make sure I was taken care of made me feel so much better.
After checking in at the ER, my Mom sat me down on my Dad’s lap and went off in search of a doctor. I blacked out and woke up to her yelling at nurses and doctors to come and help her daughter. She was speaking so quickly and spouting out medical jargon. Dad and I looked at each other and shared a quiet joke about Mom. Sadly I cannot remember the joke because – you guessed it – I blacked out yet again.
I’ll spare you further hospital details. I prefer to skip the details of sitting in a hospital room being poked and prodded and questioned. So I will share my diagnosis: a broken nose and gravel trapped under my skin. If I didn’t get the gravel out, it would permanently “tattoo” my face, hands, and knees. So the doctor told us that I had to have rhinoplasty. To phrase it better: I had to have a nose job. This is my favorite part of the story. No one thinks of an eight year old child having plastic surgery. When I tell people this now, they’re grossed out, and yet intrigued at the same time.
As an eight year old, I was scared out of my mind! The only word I understood was “surgery.” That was enough to put me in a panic. So the doctor sent us home, only to come back the very next morning for my operation.
Mom and I got to the hospital around seven in the morning. I wasn’t nervous about it all. I wasn’t even nervous when they were sticking needles in me. What did make me nervous was the nurse who took me into the OR – he called me Kimberley! I freaked! I wanted to scream “I’m not Kimberley! I’m Bridget!” I didn’t want them performing the wrong surgery. But the anesthesia had started to take effect and I couldn’t speak. When the surgeon told me to start counting down from 100, I took my own direction and repeated my name until I was out. I woke up three hours later with a nurse next to my bed. Oh wait. It was Mom. She assured me that everything went well and that I could go back to sleep for a little while. When I woke up, we drove back to the house and finished the worst vacation ever.
At long last we packed up and drove home. Looking back now, the best thing that came out of this trip was on my first day of third grade and the teacher asked what we did over the summer. I had the best story to tell.