My dad’s a Nervous Nelly when it comes to me or Sam getting hurt. This is why I ended up in one of the exam rooms of Mom’s ER, holding an ice pack against my backside. Dad kept asking me if I wanted to get on the gurney, but the last thing I wanted to do was sit. On the drive over, Dad let me break the seat-belt rule and lie across the backseat of the Jeep.
“You’re going to be fine,” Mom told me as she stroked my hair. “I think you bruised your tailbone.”
“Mostly just uncomfortable,” Mom said. “But since you’re already here, we’re going to have one of the emergency-room physicians take a look.”
It was so embarrassing. Beyond embarrassing. (Thank the stars Mom suggested Dad step out of the room and go call Sam.) The doctor had to pull down my shorts a bit, and then she pressed her fingers around the bottom of my spine. Which, is, well, you know where it is. And even though Mom had given me some ibuprofen when I first arrived, I squeezed her hand the whole time to fight the pain. She kept reminding me to breathe.
Then I had to get X rays.
Of. My. Butt!
There was pain when I walked. Pain when I sat down. And my stomach was growling since it was a couple of hours past lunchtime. Mom snuck down to the nurses’ lounge and swiped a slice of pizza for me. Dad went to the vending machine and got some pop and a couple of bags of chips. When he came back, he looked at me seriously. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I just realized I forgot to put your pill out this morning.”
“It’s okay,” I told him. “I could have asked Sam. So it’s kind of my fault, too.”
I suddenly remembered something. “Oh no!” I said.
“What is it, honey?” Mom asked.
“I’m missing orientation!”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Dad said. “I’m sure we can pick up your schedule and get your locker combination later.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive,” Dad said.
“Positive,” Mom agreed, wrapping her arm around me.
The three of us went back to our weird, everyone-standing picnic. Just as we finished up, the doctor came back in. “Well, good news,” she said. “No fracture or dislocation. It’s a slight contusion of the coccyx.”
Mom’s shoulders relaxed. “See, I told you.”
A contusion? Of the what? Those sounded serious.
I must have looked confused because Dad said, “Your coccyx is your tailbone.”
“A contusion is the fancy name for a bruise,” the doctor said to me as she handed Mom a prescription for pain medicine. “Rest and ice, and you’ll be good as new in a week or two.”
I grabbed Mom’s arm in a panic. “But my belt test is in eight days.”
“Let’s not worry about that just now,” Dad said.
“Honey, all I’m concerned about is getting you home and spoiling you rotten,” Mom said. “We’ll talk about it later.”
I suddenly felt too tired to argue.
The doctor left and a few minutes later, a nurse came back with an inflated thing that looked like a miniature life preserver. Mom called it a donut and said it was for sitting on.
“Cool,” Dad said. “It’s a sweet-cheek seat! Get it? Huh?”
“Or a tooshie cushie,” I said, getting into the spirit.
Dad and I looked at Mom, waiting to see what she’d say.
“You two are incorrigible,” she said. But then a devilish grin spread across her face. “I sure hope all these bun puns are done!”