I remember the shattering, the sudden flash, then blood, the warm seeping mass that flowed so smoothly down my arm, out of a gaping gash, a deep slit imbedded in my skin. How my whole body had town through the glass door. How glass shattered on the floor covering the ground where I was to land.I remember how the arm slid across the crea glass puncturing the delicate skin as it made contact with the glass. How the blood glinted off the broken glass in little beads. How it didn’t hurt at first, but that made no difference, the tears were already flowing freely down my rosey cheeks… I screamed; I ran; I wanted to get away. glass broke under my feet as I ran. Then it started to hurt searing pain rushed up my arm. Two warm comforting arms caught me. They held me close and told me all was okay. The car doors shut, the engine whirled on; blood began to seeped through a towel that was wrapped tightly around my arm.

As I entered the emergency room, all I could think of was not what had happened to me, but what had happened to the glass door I broke. Would Dad be mad? I broke the door being careless, it was my fault, all my fault! It was all over; I was done; I could see the image in my mind; my fathers angry voice bellowing down to me, the sound waves coursing through me pounding me down to the ground.

A voice broke through the images and the vision shattered. A kind nurse was took my arm and asked me how painful it was on a scale of 1-10. I looked back at her and in between my sniffles and tears running down my face I whimpered, “eight”. She made a note on a sheet of paper with a lot of writing and boxes on it. Another nurse took me into a room and began to pull off the bloody rag that encased my arm. As the cut was revealed I could see a long 4 inch long and ¼ inch wide gash running down the right side of my right arm. It looked hideous; at the top of the cut a long and thick piece of skin was bunched up. Blood crusted around the gash and seeped out and down my arm, dripping onto the pearl white floor. It was like an endlessly, slowly moving river, pulsing and falling. It was terrifying and mesmerizing all at the same time. And then it was over, the cut was bandaged up and the nurse set me to the waiting area in anticipation of her call that would summon me off to that back room.

I sat there quietly, my mother close beside me holding my hand, and I thought. Thinking was all I had to forget the pain. I thought about how it hurt so bad, about what was going to happen to me, about how long I was going to have to wait, but most of all, I thought again and again about my Dad. Thoughts flew threw my head wondering what how mad he would be at me. It soon consumed me, terrified me. It came to the point where I begged my mother not to tell him that I had broken the door and cut myself. “I don’t want him to be mad at me, to punish me for breaking the door,” I told her.

There had always been an underlying fear of my father when I had broken things, he had never hit me, nor really harmed me in any ways except for the spankings I often received, though they did hurt. Like a time when I had broken his weed eater, he didn’t punish me for it, but was unpleased or ashamed, almost mad at me; I could feel his disappointment and frustration radiating off of him. It was more of his huge form and powerful menacing voice that cause fear to well up in my stomach. He was such a great man, I did not want to displease him and cause his “wrath” to come upon me. I especially didn’t want it this time since I had been hurt and badly at that. I just didn't want to deal with him or his stern voice telling me everything I did wrong.

More blood, more pain, my head throbbed; the minutes continued to tick by like hours, but in reality, not too soon after I had sat down I was being called off again. They took me through two grey swinging door into a brightly lit, white room. The room was very long and was filled with tons of nurses and doctors. Curtain after curtain divided up the room into individual compartments. A nurse took me to a bed at the very end; we passed by the other rooms so fast I could hardly catch a glimpse of any of them, except for one, the men whose bed was next to me. The nurse told me to lie down and I did so, but as I did I kept staring at the man. His eyes were full of sorrow; he didn’t look from the outside to have anything wrong with him, but deep inside he looked to be in pain. The Nurse began to pull a curtain up separating us, but just as the curtain passed me he looked into my eyes and smiled, as if he could tell how upset or scared I was; his eyes told me everything was going to be find, that I was going to be fine and that he was going to be fine.

My mother sat in the chair beside me and again took my hand. She was talking to me, but I couldn’t hear her. All the sounds around me were blurring and it felt serene; a perfect beautiful quiet place filled with nothing. This was of course completely untrue and I was joltingly reminded of it when I saw the image of my father as he walking into the room. My heart began to race and I sat up, but then I really looked at his face. It was distorted, shifting and turning, growing and stretching. His whole body began to expand and darkness began to close around me, I called out reaching for my mother but she was being pulled away by some unknown forces! And then it was black. There was nothing. I sat there alone on a hospital bed, arms clutched around my legs, whimpering to myself.

Bang! A jolt shot through my body and I sat up. Sweat covered my body and a chills ran down my spine. A dream, is that really all it was? Could I have imagined that? Blackness was all around me still and I began to shiver. I had forgotten it was winter and quickly pulled myself under the many blankets I used to keep drafts in my room from freezing me to death.

I pulled the blankets closer and enclosed my hand around my wrist. It was true, I could feel the scare there, a permanent memory embedded in my skin. A testament to how I had smashed a window and how I had misjudged my Dad into believing that after hurting myself he would have no empathy for me, but would instead punish me more.

A drowsiness soon covered my body once again and darkness closed my eyes. I remember now the truth. My father had been there the whole time. He had sat with me while I was getting shots. He had watched the doctors hands as they stitched my wounds shut. He had never once talked about the door, he had only loved me for being his son, and forgiven me for all that I had done. The old man in the hospital bed had been right about how things were, everything had been alright. Sleep consumed me and everything my mind faded away, leaving my body behind to sleep.