An Unmerry Christmas

I type this from the living room. In front of me is the Christmas fern I bought yesterday as a Christmas surprise. Clancy is downstairs in the basement, and can’t see it. I’m not sure when she will be able to leave the basement. We’ll have to drop off Lain at a babysitters before she does, though. If she does any time soon.

Last night, at just after twelve, Clancy had to go in to the hospital to see to a pregnant patient. She’s been working or on call just about every day this month. She’s covering for a lot of people who are going to see their families over the holidays. Christmas day, though, she was actually supposed to get off, oddly enough.

At around 3:30 in the morning, my phone started blasting out Macon Greyson, meaning that I was getting a phone call. I was co-sleeping with the baby as we help her adjust to her new post-crib existence. Clancy knew this, and it was odd that she would be calling at such a late hour. I figured it was a butt-dial. Instead, she was explaining about some sort of… accident.

It was 3:30 in the morning, and then 4 by the time she got home and I – along with one of her colleagues – ushered her into the house as we tried to manage her crutches. To say that I was tired would be an understatement. I was also groggy after having taken 9mg of Melatonin. I almost never take that much Melatonin, but I did last night. She explained to me, both other the phone and in person, what had happened. She’d fallen down and busted her kneecap. Also, something about a nurse all but telling her that she needed to toughen up and stop being such a wimp. Surgery would be required, but couldn’t be performed for several days until the swelling is down. She tried to explain it all to me,

I spent the morning contacting my aunt to let her know that we would not be able to make it to the Christmas luncheon on Saturday. Then immediately calling my parents before my aunt did. Clancy was supposed to call her parents, but she must have fallen asleep because I got a frantic call from her mom asking what was going on. Unfortunately, I didn’t know anything more this morning than I did previously. We don’t know what kind of mobility she is going to have until surgery. Or, for that matter, what the long term ramifications of it may be.

She’s getting some much-needed sleep. For that I am grateful. Even when she wakes up, I don’t think that we will have very much in the way of answers. Including when she will be able to see Lain again, for fear of Lain jumping on her leg and causing unnecessary damage. We do have the tri-state medical community having her back. Her colleague has already contacted an orthopedist in Millsburg. If there’s a list, there’s a good chance that she will find herself near the front of it. Which is not right, and unfair, but I can’t really say that such is high on my list of priorities right now.

My parents arrive in a few days. It’s looking unlikely that I will have the house in the shape that I was hoping to have it in. Which may be another year of snide comments from my mother about how we live. Which, to be fair, I probably would have gotten regardless of how much cleaning I’d managed to accomplish. That said, I’m glad that they’re coming. Between that and a nearby family willing to look after Lain, that’s going to be some much-needed help as we wade through some rough waters.