I was dead! (My second thought)

Yes, terribly selfish of me I know, but let’s look at this logically. My second thought was very, very important. It also related to my first thought. So in some ways that was my third thought. My fourth was definitely back to my second thought. I was dead. Not now, not immediately, but once my father found out… and my mother… I was dead! By now I think we are at the fifth, six and seventh… and depending on the multitude of punishment scenarios that flew through my head with lightning speed, we may as well say, around a hundred thoughts came to me in that very instance of my younger brother bleeding and crashing to the soft grass. I was dead.

The blood raced out of my brothers gaping head injury as if trying to create a minor torrent and carve a channel through the grassland of the park. I was definitely dead. There was a slight groan from my brother….he was not! He was not…. The thought sluggishly worked against the torrent of other emotions. He … was… not…. Dead.

I still was regardless, but he was not. He was hurt, but alive. He was bleeding profusely, but he was alive. He was losing blood, lots of it, so he could die. I was dead.

It was the sudden shouting and some screaming of all of us at the park, which really got me moving. ‘He’s not dead’. I remember calling out. ‘You’ve killed him!’ was the insistence of the majority gathered. “He’s dead!’ the opinion of the rest.  I was racing back to my second thought when my body raced forward to the prone form. The blood was already covering his face and staining the grass. First Aid! Application of pressure, staunch the wound, cover the injury to prevent dirt. All was forgotten. Out the window. Those Thursday nights in the scouts hut, messing around attempting to strangle one another with a poorly tied triangular bandage or covering the head like a blindfold to annoy the ‘patient’, the fellow cub or scout. All was forgotten as I swooped and lifted my younger bleeding brother in my arms. He was unconscious, but not dead. He didn’t even groan. He was dead! It was a short repeated battle going backwards and forwards in my head as each thought traded blows with the other.

I believe I have mentioned that I was not tall? Short is another word for it. So the action of ‘swooping and lifting’ raised his injured body a little, a very short distance from the ground. I don’t believe I dropped him on the first attempt, but as mentioned on day one of this blog, this is my history and how I remember it. I gathered my younger brother into my arms, reminiscent of those ‘Great War’ portraits, the soldier lifting his wounded comrade. I was back to thinking…. ‘He’s Dead!’. I’m really, really going to cop it.

(Continued tomorrow)