In Stitches, by Jenifer Hemphill

A text from my 19-year-old pings my phone:

hey i hurt myself at work 
i’d like a second opinion
can i come over?

Pressure balloons in my chest. 

Almost two years out of high school, this son has been working for a small, local renovation company. And I’ve been waiting for him to get hurt. He’s always been somewhat injury-prone. When he was a boy, every time he needed stitches, we’d have to cajole him into the car to go to the ER. He never wanted to get stitches— who does? Needles and skin are a painful pairing— but once he was in the car, he didn’t fight. He’d just ask questions:

“What happens if I don’t get stitches?” 

“It could get infected or take longer to heal.” 

“Won’t it hurt?”

“Yes, it will probably hurt.”

“What if I really don’t want to?”

“Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to.”

“Would you get stitches?”

“I would.” 

We would deconstruct Do I have to? in this way until he settled with the inevitable answer as we pulled into the ER parking garage. Yes. 

yes. come over… a cut?

yeah, small but deep

i think i messed up the muscle

I press three fingertips to the center of my creased forehead and rub.

When he was eight years old, he cut himself with a whittling knife that we, his doting parents, had given him. The blade glanced off the walking stick he was carving and across his left thumb— which, had he been properly supervised, shouldn’t have been in the way— cleanly slicing through the main rope-of-a-tendon. The appendage collapsed into the palm of his hand, no longer opposable. He had to be convinced to go to the ER that time, too. 

“I don’t think it’s that bad, Mommy,” he’d said, ghost-gray face, dark hazel eyes imploring me not to make him go. “It isn’t bleeding. It doesn’t even hurt. Look.”  He offered me his wounded hand.

I think I saw the bone.

I text him back:

is it bleeding a lot?

no i stopped the bleeding at work

picture?

The image that pops up on my screen is his hand, purple knuckles, blood-darkened Band-Aids. The bad lighting renders it pale, lifeless. 

don’t worry i had more than just a bandaid on it at work

Worry? I cover my eyes. There is a pain like a stitch in my side, like you get from running too fast. It’s hard to inhale.

***

Still wearing dirty work clothes, he arrives and unwinds an ace bandage from his injured hand for my inspection. He describes scraping a two-by-four with a wood chisel when it glanced off, slicing a flap of skin from a knuckle and then the tip landing in his left wrist. He and his foreman stopped the bleeding with a coagulant gel and Neosporin and wrapped it tight. Out of sight, out of mind, he kept working. 

Even with his explanation, I can’t picture how he did it. But there’s the flap of skin. There’s the small blood-red eye glaring at me from the crease of his wrist. 

“I think I saw the bone,” he says, cradling his puffy, still-dirty hand.

I want to cradle him. I want to squeeze him hard and then push him away. I want to yell, When the hell are you going to learn not to put your left hand in harm’s way? I pinch my lips closed between my teeth, allowing him space. 

“Whenever I try to pick something up, my wrist collapses. I need to be able to work!” His hazel eyes are clear, wide, and wild around the edges.

“Maybe you just wrapped it too tight.” My insides are wrapped too tight. “Give it some time.” Who am I saying this to? 

The air around his body buzzes with anxiety. He runs his good hand through his long curly hair over and over. I want to grab his hand and still it.

“What do you want to do?” A similar electricity surrounds my body, radiating out from my core. I begin shivering. I’m a sounding board, and yet, a vessel. I pray that he’ll hear what he needs to hear, and that I won’t overflow. 

While he talks, I coax him upstairs to the bathroom to clean his hands without doing anything he doesn’t want: running water over the wounds or getting soap in them or touching them at all. If he were still a tousle-topped boy, I’d just tell him what’s best. Since he turned 18, he’s been throwing the I’m-an-adult-now card on the table to trump my mother-knows-best play. Now I need to tip-toe, hold back. I need to let him convince himself. It’s a new way to mother him, without him realizing, all smoke and mirrors, stealth and trickery. He moved out a few months ago, and since then, I’ve realized that he comes over to vent, to say his thoughts out loud and listen to how they sound. He is and isn’t asking for advice.

I’m fit to burst, so I do the only thing I can and gently wash each of his hands between mine. Then he rinses them himself under the stream of water. Coagulant gel gone, the blood begins flowing again. I hand him squares of pure white gauze. He carefully dabs and blots the wounds and returns them, bloodstained, to my open, waiting hand. I throw each away. One grazes the wall leaving a brief smear of red that I won’t notice until the next morning.

“Can’t it wait till first thing in the morning?” he pleads. Who is he asking? “I just want to go to bed.” His heavy eyebrows furrow. His face collapses. “I’m so tired.”

Then maybe it all will have been a bad dream. 

“Will you be able to sleep?” I won’t. I will lay awake all night imagining the wound festering. “Do you want another opinion?” Not mine; my time has not yet come.

“Sure,” he responds, more eagerly than I expected.

I call my mom, a retired nurse, and put her on speaker. I know what she’s going to say. Maybe he does too. She advises him to go to the ER. Immediately.

Before gangrene sets in and infection enters your bloodstream! I think, precariously close to blurting out the words. It would be so much easier to voice all my fears. But then how would he learn to take care of himself? How would I learn to let him?

After rewrapping his injury, we return downstairs. We both stand, leaning against the kitchen counter while he devours hummus and pita, the only thing left over from dinner. I study him. He’s too thin. His unruly mustache and beard bespeak manliness, the adult he’s struggling to be. 

Food ingested, his blood sugar must be on the rise, the air around him crackles less. When he’s anxious, he doesn’t eat enough. When he doesn’t eat enough, he can’t think straight. When he can’t think straight, the world seems like it’s against him. 

When he eats, it comforts me. I’m starting to relax somewhat, too.

“If you think I should go to the ER, Mommy, I’ll go,” he says, finally.

Hearing my name in his deep voice pricks my heart, and the balloon that had been taking up all the space in my chest deflates. I take a deep breath. Nobody told me that mothering doesn’t cease when the kid leaves home, but that it does completely change. Nobody told me that mothering turns so quiet, so hands off. Nobody told me how hard it would be to walk this line— mothering by not mothering at all. Sitting back. Waiting.

Nobody told me because I never asked. This is my first child, my oldest son, and I too feel the need to figure everything out on my own. When I was his age, I wouldn’t have listened to my mother either. I’m happy for his proximity right now. He wanted to come over. And so I held back, emptied myself as much as I could so he’d stay for a little bit. I miss him.

I finally feel free to tell him aloud what I think. I just had to wait for him to ask. 

“I think you should. Do you want a ride?”

–

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Jenifer Hemphill is an emerging writer from Pittsburgh, PA, where she lives with her husband and two cats. They are on the verge of being empty nesters– one son living on his own nearby and the other talking about moving out any day now. She is a longtime rock climber, teaches ESL in the evenings, and is finishing up a memoir about rock climbing and motherhood.  She is a member of the Madwomen in the Attic writing community.

© 2024, Jenifer Hemphill