The following is a true account that happened almost three years before Brittany's passing. I wrote it a couple of weeks after the incident, so the events were fresh on my mind. I didn't quite conclude the account, so that portion I have added to the end.]
“Hello, is this Mr. Lacy?”
“Yes, it is,” I responded.
“We have your daughter, Brittany, here at the school and it looks like she has probably broken her toe. We've tried calling your home and no one was there.”
What exactly did they want? Were they expecting me to drop everything to come and pick her up? I couldn't do that. The nurses at that school call to send children home for the pettiest of things. It's a stubbed toe. The doctors couldn't do anything about it anyway. Make her stay in school and take the bus home, I thought.
“So, are you needing someone to come and pick her up?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“And my wife's not home?”
“No. No one answered when we called. We can try again and then give you a call if we get no response.”
That sounded good. I couldn't leave this large of a work-load for something small and unnecessary. They send these kids home for a tiny tummy ache or a fever that is two degrees higher than normal when there is only thirty minutes left in school!
Less that five minutes had elapsed and now my delivery had only progressed around the corner to One Hundred East. “Mr. Lacy,” the nurse said, “we still can't get a hold of your wife. This is serious. Her toe will probably need surgery. She needs to go to the emergency room right now.”
And so it was. I drove back to the office immediately and dropped on them all my work-load. I clocked out and was off as fast as I could to Three Peaks Elementary School.
I pulled my truck right up to the front in the red zone and jogged into the building. There, in the office on a little bench, a little group was huddled around my daughter. I recognized the principal, as well as Mr. Robinson, Mrs. Mackleprang, Tina Riddle, and another lady. Brittany's right foot was propped up a few inches higher than the other, with white gauze wrapped several times around her toes. Her eyes were pink from crying and the fold below her lower eyelids wet with tears.
“Would you like me to carry her out to your vehicle?” asked the principal, Mr. Taylor.
“Yes. I will clean out a spot.”
I hurried out in front of him and threw the the lunch box, coat, water bottle and snow-scraper into the back of the truck. Mr. Taylor came out the door, Brittany's legs in one arm and the nape of her neck in the other, cradling her in a tender way so as not to bump her toe. Tina Riddle came out with him, holding her backpack, shoe and coat.
Now it was only the two of us in the truck and we were on our way to the hospital. I cranked up the heat. Someone in the room mentioned that she needed to stay warm so that she didn't pass out.
“Is your toe feeling alright being down like that?” I asked, worrying that it would start throbbing by not being elevated.
“Yes.”
“Are you warm enough?”
“Yes.”
The drive to the emergency room was only ten minutes, but plenty long to extract the story from Brittany. It was during lunch and she wanted to get a book from Kerri, who is in a different class, so when she went to get it, Kerri was in there with about five other girls, but there was a boy and he's kind of a bully, and he wouldn't let her in and he stood at the door and tried to shut it, but when he tried to shut it, Brittany put her foot in front of the door to stop him, and he shut it anyway and it was all the way shut with her toe still in it, and she screamed, but he wouldn't open it until after about fifteen seconds, and when he opened it she ran crying down the hall to the nurses office. Yikes!
“So, which part of the door was your toe in?” I asked.
“The part where the hinge is.”
“What were you doing putting your foot there?”
“That's what I do.”
“Was you're shoe on?”
“Yeah.”
“Did it cut through your shoe?”
“No.”
About this time, I just happened to see Jenelle coming from the on-ramp of the freeway. I quickly pulled over and waved her to stop and told her to follow me to the hospital.
At the emergency room entrance, I cradled Brittany in my arms and carried her in while Jenelle talked to the receptionist to give them our information. Quickly we were whisked in and I carried my girl to a hospital bed where I was glad to put her down because she was quickly becoming heavy.
When the doctor came in and unwrapped the toe, I received my first glance at the wound. I will admit that it was worse than I thought. The first thing that I noticed was that I could see right through it. It wasn't simply a gash that went deep into the skin, or perhaps to the bone. This gash went all the way through. It was her second toe on her right foot, the one next to the big toe. The slice was lodged right below the cuticle and above the knuckle. It wasn't just the nail sliding off. It was the whole toe. The entire nail plate was there, lying as it should on the nail bed, and the walls of the nail still a perfect oval. The grotesque part about it all, however, was that it was attached only by a sliver of skin!
Jenelle waited in the lobby with Savanah until our neighbor could come and pick her up. No kids were allowed in the E.R. I ran outside quickly to move the truck to a normal parking spot. When I returned, only minutes later, Brittany's face was trembling tight with pain and a nurse was kneeling at her side, holding her hand and brushing her forehead. When I realized what was going on, I dropped to my knees also. The doctor with his needle gave several shots to the toe. Each shot was at a different angle, ultimately given to deaden the pain, but now the pain was enormous.
The doctor and nurse left after giving some X-rays and soon Jenelle was in the room. She was anxious that I give Brittany a blessing, so she left into the hall to find another priesthood holder. She found a young man named Corby and he and I administered to my daughter.
I had an appointment at the chiropractor, so Jenelle took over.
She called me a while later from the hospital and told me that the toe fell off. I couldn't believe it. “It just fell off?” I repeated in disbelief.
Later that evening she described what she saw after they had cleaned it all up. The bone was sticking out, at least a quarter of an inch. She, too, saw what I saw. The whole top of the toe was off. The doctor wrapped it up out of sight and we were advised to make an appoint with the Orthopedic Specialist five days later on Tuesday.
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| Showered by gifts from well-wishers after returning home from the hospital. |
[This is where the account ends. The conclusion I will draw from memory.
After that day at the hospital, they wrapped her foot in a big bandage. For me, the miracle came when her toe was carefully unwrapped some time later. To our surprise, the toe was growing back! Yes, it looked pretty mangled and it was nothing but a stub, but it was a toe none-the-less. And she even had a sliver of a toe-nail!
I had expected her to never have a toe again. You know, kind of like one of those old men you know who got his finger cut off when he was a butcher. But there it was. This was a relief for Jenelle, too, who wanted Brittany to be able to paint her toe-nails and have pretty feet like all teenagers girls want.
Over the next couple years it continued to grow. Although it never looked completely normal, we were all grateful that at least she had a toe.]
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| Taken about two years after the incident. |
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