Huge french doors opened to the the deck, kids and guests roamed from house to yard. The front room was filled with musical instruments of every description and it was all available to be picked up and played by anybody at any time. All in all, it was a pretty sweet deal.
When everyone was inside the house, for whatever reason, it was very busy. The only way to cope with all the action that five to seven kids can generate, is to ignore everything but complete emergencies. There were fights and brawls, unfair games, hair pulling, locked doors, TV channel switching, stolen candy, hurt feelings, hurt toes, fights over toys and treasures....plus all the emotional hand grenades that young girls and one young boy can conjure up. Most of it was easy to fix with a first aid kit or fire extinguisher.
One day, however stands out from all the rest.
A winter evening, the house full of kids. Loud, busy, fights and laughter blur together. I'm on the other side of the house, doing my best to ignore all but the highlights. At one point, I sensed a change in the tone of the ruckus. This was when my step daughter Reanne got one of her frequent nose bleeds. There was a lull in the action. Reanne's mom went to help with the usual nosebleed fixes. I'm reading the paper at the kitchen table, staying back from the circus.
The tone of the voices in the bathroom get frantic. I have mild curiosity. I may have even looked up from my paper a bit.
Actual shrieks come next.
In our house, with our gang, that could mean anything, from a mouse on the floor, to a room on fire.
I'm still not sold on the idea that I need to get up.
"Mike!!....come quick"
"What now?" ...not looking up from an incredible article on Jesus' face found on a pizza platter.
The kids were famous for playing tricks and gags....so I was always cautious when responding to their calls to " come see ". I couldn't smell smoke and didn't hear them riding the dirt bike in the house, so I remained blissfully unconcerned.
"Mike.....Reanne is bleeding out of her eyeballs," ......her little sister called out.
That was a new one, I thought, wow....they're at high dough tonight.
I was unmoved, heard it all before. Someone has put lipstick on her eyelids, or better yet, smeared nose blood on her cheeks. I could picture it all easily. It wasn't even a stretch for this bunch. Even half a second later when my wife called me to the bathroom, I was still not sold on the deal. Who better to help out with the joke than mom?
"Really...there's blood coming out of her eyes!"
Ever so slowly, I pulled myself out of the chair, knowing full well that I'm getting sucked in to something....a joke on Mike...a version of the pie in the face. Making my way across the kitchen, I'm thinking, "this better be really fucking special to get me out of my nice comfy chair.
At the bathroom, the door is open, Reannes mom has a comforting arm around her. Reanne turns to face me....and my whole world screeches to a halt.
There....right in front of me is a girl with blood pouring out of her lower eyelids...gushing and running down her cheeks. I stop in mid stride.
The first thing Reanne says to me is
"Am I going to die?"
The poor girl looks to me for the answer through badly hemorrhaging eyeballs.
Too much time goes by.
I'm staring, surely slack jawed....ever so temporarily stunned.
All I can think of, is the book I read about the Ebola virus, where blood gushes out of every orifice...and an ugly death follows.
Reanne is crying blood out of her eyeballs,
I should probably try to answer her question.
The trouble is....the answer that is shooting around inside my head is...
"Holy fuck, your bleeding out of your eyes!...are you going to die?? ....how the fuck am I supposed to know?"
But that answer won't cut it, that's not the one they are all waiting for.
I have to replay the question in my head. I make my decision and go on pure instinct.
No....?
It wouldn't have convinced a mentally deficient rabbit.
Christ, that wasn't a good answer, I thought. Too late, it was out.
I went for Plan B.
"Let's have a look"
Going for the "dad's in charge" move.
Trying to appear unruffled. Inside thinking...Holy crap what kind of "Exorcist" nightmare is this...blood pouring out of eyeballs....
Reanne's mom and I make really clumsy attempts to communicate through eyebrow and eye twitches...trying to sound and look like we know what the hell we are doing. The other kids circled at the bathroom door, waiting for one of the so called responsible adults to declare this a non-emergency,
a non event, easily explainable....nothing to worry about.
That wasn't going to happen.
I had nothing to go on. Nothing in the memory banks was coming up that was helpful here, except for the Ebola virus, and that wasn't a good thing to bring up at the moment.
I couldn't imagine what Reanne was feeling at that point. We all kept telling her that everything was going to be OK.
"Really? 'cause I'm bleeding out of my freaking eyeballs here and I've never even heard of that before, and your telling me that everything is going to be just peachy and fine?"....would have been the proper reaction.
In my calmest tone that I could muster, I suggested that maybe we should go for a drive up to the hospital and get a professional opinion. Kind of saunter up that a way...no rush. Just ease our way to the emergency room. Because after all, I'm sure that bleeding from the eyeballs isn't really a bad sign.
No one believed that.
We had no idea if Reanne was going on a one way trip or not.
My wife and I bundled up Reanne and piled into our truck for the drive from Roberts Creek to Sechelt. I had to choke back the urge to throw on the four way flashers and do a "Starsky and Hutch" approach at mach 1, complete with screeching tires. Getting us all killed wouldn't help at all.
Along the way, Reanne asked a few more times, "Am I going to die?"
Of course we had to lie to her the best we could.
"No hunny bunny, you're gonna be just fine, we're just going to get you checked out"
Lies, lies and more lies.
We had no clue what so ever what the fuck was going on. No idea if she was going to make it ten seconds, ten minutes or ten hours. I was hanging on to the steering wheel tight enough to bend it.
I'm surprised that I don't have my own parking stall at the emergency entrance to the hospital. We march in and head to the admitting nurse. At this point in time, the bleeding from the eyeballs has temporarily stopped. The admitting nurse signs us in and we are asked to wait.
None of the others in the waiting room are bleeding from their eyes tonight.
Lucky for us ( lucky is such a relative term ) we sit right across from the nurses station, and in seconds after sitting down...Reanne starts to gush blood out of her eyes again. Her mom dives in to help her. I look across at the nurse, to call her. The nurse is already looking up from her paper work and staring at Reanne. I could see the look of near horror as the scene registered on the nurses face The nurse calls across at the same time she is launching out of her chair, "you guys, bring her in right now!"
We are ushered into the emergency ward and a doctor is paged.
The doctor arrives without delay and sets to checking out a little girl who still wants to know if she is going to die or not.
And do you know, in a few minutes the doctor pulls back and tells us calmly and clearly that nothing is seriously wrong. He has a perfectly good explanation.
The only issue is that Reanne is one of a few people that doesn't have a one way flow in place between her tear ducts and nasal passages. Normally, tears can run into the nose, but nose goodies can't go into the tear ducts When her nose was bleeding, and she had it pinched off, the blood backed up into her tear ducts and out her eyelids.
Sounds simple now, doesn't it?
To this day, everyone in the family tells the story to friends, each other and horrified miscellaneous others, about the time that Reanne was bleeding from her eyeballs.
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| Me and Reanne several years ago in non-eyeball bleeding times |
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| Reanne and me a few Halloweens back |
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| It all happened here, Roberts Creek BC |
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