Forever Changed

chapter 9



I snapped a quick picture. I jumped up so quickly, that I nearly fell over the edge of the falls myself. I started running at full force back to my house.

I was trying to get to my dark room as fast as possible, so that I could develop the film! I had to see if my eyes were lying to me. The skies had cleared up and no longer did they look like a storm was coming.

I felt a stitch in my side, I could hear my pulse in my ears, but I didn’t stop running.

I was not paying attention to where I was going and tripped over a root of a huge oak tree that was sticking up from the ground.

I landed hard on a rock, with a sharp edge. I felt the stab of pain, as I struck the rock. I sat up, since I had landed on my knees then stomach and looked at the damage done.

My black slacks had been ripped and a piece of the rock had broken off into my knee. It was sticking in my knee, as if a thorn from a beautiful red rose was stuck in your finger. I gently touched the broken part of the rock and winced from the pain. It was wedged in there pretty good and hurt tremendously. Now what was I going to do.

“Where is my camera,” I gasped, in fear that it got broken or scratched in the fall. I looked behind me and seen it laying a little to the right of where I fell. I picked it up and turned it over and over in my hands, looking for any sign that it may have caused harm to the film inside. I sighed with relief; my camera was unscathed in the fall.

Now, I had to figure out how to get home with my knee in the shape it was. After thinking for a little bit, I decided that the rock had to come out, if I wanted to make it home. So, with a lot of mind over matter, I grabbed the end of the rock firmly and quickly pulled. I screamed out in pain, as the two inch rock slid out. I automatically clasped a hand over the wound and the other over my mouth.

I sat there rocking back and forth crying from the numbing pain in my knee. I slowly gained control over myself, ripped a strip off the bottom of my shirt, wrapped and tied it around my knee, so that the bleeding would stop. I will inspect and take care of it better when I get home.

I got up and limped my way toward my house. I had run a pretty good distance before I fell. I was only fifty yards away from the back door. I should have been more careful, but I really needed to check this film, so it was my own stupidity for not paying attention.

Every time I lifted my foot to take a step, searing pain would shoot through my knee. I looked down and the blood had leaked through my makeshift bandage. I guess fixing this knee will have to come before developing my film. I growled in anger and aggravation.

I continued on to the house and let myself in through the back door. There was no way I was walking all the way around the front that is a long walk.

I stopped at the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water. After closing the door to the refrigerator, I walked through the huge kitchen to the dining room table. I pulled a chair out and sat down. The bleeding from the wound was so bad that my black slacks were soaked and my socks and Nikes were covered in my own blood. I had even had bloody shoe prints all over the kitchen floor.

I needed to get to my bathroom upstairs, I have everything I needed to clean and sew this wound up, in the closet. I didn’t think I could make it up the stairs to my room. I was dreading it.

Why the hell did I have to fall for? If I wouldn’t have fallen, then I wouldn’t have gotten hurt, and I would not be in such a predicament now. I was becoming angry and my blood pressure started rising. I heard a clap of thunder, but ignored it, overcome with anger. I wanted to develop my film and now I was in a major situation.

I stomped the floor with my foot and the pain in my knee was horrific. I screamed out over the clap of thunder and clamped my hand on my knee. I was so mad my face was blood red and the thunder sounded like it was getting closer. It sounded as if it was in the dining room with me.

I felt a hot pain in my knee, but started kicking the wall. I was throwing a two year old tantrum. I picked up the chair and slung it to the other side of the dining room. I have only been this angry once and that was when I slammed through the door of the closet, I was hiding in the night my father died. Then I realized that my anger was not going to do anything and I needed to think rationally.

I caught my breath and tried relaxing. Breathing in and breathing out. It was working, my blood pressure was going down, and for some reason the thunder was losing the intense rhythm that it had displayed before. I walked over picked the chair up, that I had slung through the dining room. I placed it back where it belonged. I was fixing to sit back down when I noticed something. I stopped with my butt about an inch from the seat. How can that be?

I looked down; the bleeding from my knee had stopped. I sat the rest of the way down, to have a closer look. I gritted my teeth while pulling back the rip in the black slacks, expecting to feel the pain that never came. There was no blood and no proof that I even had a wound at all, except for the blood down my leg, on my slacks, and on my shoes.