The Scars We Bear

Two iced coffees and a box of chili fries later, we’re back on the street again, wending our way toward the bus stop, the pavement congested with school kids. It’s then, when we’re deeply involved in our conversation about the dress I’ll be wearing to Nachi’s bar mitzvah, that I walk into the road and see a gray BMW far too close to my face. I hear Yaffa’s panicked scream. There’s a long blast of a horn as I’m thrown into the air, and the world goes black.

***

I was unconscious for a while, my mother tells me, as I blink at the bright lights in the emergency room and reach toward my head which is throbbing rhythmically. “Don’t touch,” Mom tells me gently, holding my hands, “You’ve been given strong painkillers, and they’re going to stitch you up, but it’s quite a cut you’ve given yourself there, Dassa.” I groan. Stitches, I think, just before Nachi’s bar mitzvah, for crying out loud. And despite the fact that I know it could have been much worse, I feel incredibly sorry for myself.

***

It’s only later, when I look at the hospital bathroom mirror, that I realize how sorry I really am. In the dazzling fluorescence, the gash on my head is so horrendously prominent that it looks like I’ve used a permanent marker, and the stitches are raised, thick, ugly. You’re pathetic, a voice in my head says, you should have looked before you crossed the road. I sigh, then emerge from the bathroom and back to my bed.

“You’ll need to go to the walk-in clinic in two to three days for them to check how you are,” Dr. Rainer says, some hours later, peering over his black-rimmed spectacles at my miserable face. “We’re not worried about a concussion, because Hadassah seems fine, and the cut’s fairly shallow, but they may need to redo or change the stitches, depending on how the healing is going.” Mom nods with a creased brow, adds the recommended date for the check-up in her phone, and sighs as she finds her keys. Guilt clenches in my stomach — she’s got enough to deal with, without this, too. I hang my scarred head, and wince as the pain returns, full force. I’m going to need more painkillers, stat.