UMW Student's Chore Brings Gore

BY MEGAN GRIGORIAN

When I looked across the courtyard, I could barely make out a thing.  The rain had picked up from a slight drizzle to a monsoon-like downpour in just minutes.  As I approached the back staircase to my apartment building, completely soaked, I noticed my roommate sprawled out on the cement with blood ferociously flowing from her head.

After I recovered from the stun of finding her in the precarious position, seemingly unconscious, I noticed that she was actually awake and attempting to stand up.  Upon feeling her head and trying to run her fingers through her hair, which by that time was drenched with blood, she immediately began to bawl.

“Oh my God!  What the hell happened?” was all she could muster in between her sobs.

All this commotion started with the laundry.

I’ve never been a fan of laundry.  The whole process: sorting, washing, drying, folding is a daunting enough task without the added inconvenience of walking to my laundry room, which is two buildings over from my apartment building.  So naturally I let the pile of doom accumulate in my closet until all that is left hanging are winter coats and an “I’m With The Band” t-shirt.

By the time I actually get around do doing it, I have five or more baskets of clothes to carry outside and usually need the assistance of a SWAT team.  On this particular Thursday afternoon, I enlisted one of my roommates, Bailee, for backup.

When we started at around 1 p.m. it was fairly cold and misting outside, not the best weather for carrying your freshly clean and dry clothes in, but I was desperate.  Trying to beat the heavy rain that was looming, Bailee dropped my baskets on the floor of the laundry room and sprinted back to our apartment.  Ten minutes later when I exited the building, I found her.

After unsuccessfully trying to calm her down, we made it upstairs where her memory came rushing back.  Running in her leopard-print slippers, she had slipped and made a head-on collision with the corner of the jagged-edge brick wall.

Obviously neither of us was familiar with head injuries, since I thought ice would somehow heal the wound and she wanted to go to sleep.

When the bleeding wouldn’t stop, we decided to head to the hospital.  With no dish towels, paper towels or wash cloths, she clamped a sock against her cut-open head.

We walked in the emergency room to find at least 30 plus people and a waiting list that would take at least three hours to get through.  Apparently having your head split open wasn’t as large of a concern to the Mary Washington Hospital as it was to us.

When it was finally our turn, they stuck us in the Pediatrics section with screaming children and every character from Winnie the Pooh adorned on the wall.

Eleven staples and six hours later, we left, cranky and bandaged.
Since we were both in vile moods, I tried to lighten the atmosphere by saying the timeless, ever-comforting cliché, “You know, we are really going to look back and laugh at this.”

Bailee didn’t even crack a smile and, completely unamused by this assumption said, “I’m never helping you with your laundry again.”