A true story of love...

Big Brother the Protector

“GRRRR! ARRRH! RAHHH!” I mouthed with sinister threat in the direction of my younger sibling, Lori. I was ten-years-old; she was six. I was the big, bad, monster; she was my victim. We were playing on the front lawn of our home in Fishes Eddy, NY. Yawning dusk had descended to blanket the unmanicured lawn, obscuring the danger waiting silently in the grass. I attacked, pretending to rip my sister’s body apart with my bare hands.

Obligingly, Lori fell to the ground, groaning in exaggerated pain: “Ahhhh, ohhhh, ackkkk! I’m done for!” In a last effort to kill the monster that had defeated her, my little sister reached up with an invisible sword in her small hand and stabbed me in the gut.

“Ahhhh! I’m…dead!” I cried. I fell in slow motion to the ground, my legs crumpling over Lori’s inert, tiny form with graceful abandon. My head landed with a soft plop on the cushion of grass above my sister’s curly head, and instantly a sledgehammer-like pain hit me in the forehead. Stunned, I immediately stood up, swaying, conscious something was very wrong.

A thousand sharp needles, no…thin spikes, blasted through my forehead and into the frontal lobe of my brain. I staggered, taking a few halting steps toward the front door of our house. I couldn’t walk. I stumbled and fell against the side of my eldest brother’s car that was parked in our driveway. I couldn’t make the twenty feet to the front door. I must have cried out. I’m not really sure. With blurred vision, I saw my sister bolt past me, running into the house, screaming for help.

In seconds, my eldest brother, Walt, was beside me, swooping me up into his strong arms. He ran with me into the house and set me down on the kitchen table. Immediately he and my mother assaulted me with questions to assess what had happened, to figure out the seriousness of my injury.

“Where were you?”

“What were you doing?”

“Did you bump your head?”

“Did you see the snake that bit you?” My brother asked clearly.

My mother fingered my forehead, wiping it with the damp cloth that Walt jammed into her hands. Worried expressions collided with my yowls of pain. I attempted to answer the barrage of queries that mimicked a heated interrogation. Was I in trouble? “I was playing monster with Lori…on the front lawn. I fell down…on top of her.” I stammered, “Wait… What? Snake? I was bitten by a snake?” I wailed.

Walt disappeared from view and returned almost immediately. “Whatever was there is gone now,” he announced. At this point, Walt and my mother must have decided they were getting nowhere asking me questions in my frantic state, and they started discussing my fate between them as if I were not there.

“It looks like the fangs just grazed her forehead. I’m not sure if the venom went in,” Mom stated with nervous energy.

Walt retorted, “We need to take her to the hospital. If it was poisonous, they can give her a shot of anti-venom.”

“Shot! No! No, I don’t want to go to the hospital. I’m fine! It doesn’t even hurt anymore!” I cried beseechingly.

Showing no signs that he had heard me, no signs of sympathy, no acknowledgement of my childish fear of needles, Walt scooped me up again into his arms. Acting with self-appointed authority as the eldest sibling, Walt raced with me to his car, my mother hot on his heels. He plopped me down on the front seat and my mother quickly climbed in beside me. In seconds, the car sped with rocket speed to Read Memorial Hospital in Hancock, NY with my brother at the wheel.

In the car, Mom curled her arm around me and asked how I was feeling. I switched strategies, ceasing the panicked lamenting of a little girl and cajoled with more rational appeals for them to turn the car around and go back home. I told Mom that I felt fine, but like most ten-year-olds, I was unable to lie well and blurted that my lips felt numb. She told Walt to hurry.

I was too exhausted to weep anymore, too young to comprehend that my lips were probably numb from all the crying. I persisted, begging with single-minded determination throughout the ride, asking Walt to turn the car around and return home, but my pleas fell on deaf ears. Walt audaciously ignored me.

When we arrived at the hospital, Walt bundled me up in his arms and raced with me into the emergency room of the hospital. Memory blurs at this point. I remember some anxious discourse, doctors and nurses scurrying around me, and my brother grabbing my flailing feet to restrain me. The nurse grabbed my arm and pinned it down, and my mother grasped and restrained my other arm. I was trapped, betrayed by my loved ones, or so my ten-years-old hysterical mind imagined. I was too terrified of getting a needle to understand my betrayers were trying to help me.

I lifted the nurse off her feet with a burst of pumped-up adrenaline, but I was unable to dislodge her death-like grip on my arm. Walt had thrown the full top half of his body over my legs, sprawling over them in a renewed effort to hold me down. My focus was glued in wide-eyed terror on the doctor who advanced on me like Dr. Frankenstein with his giant needle.

The doctor stabbed me with the anti-venom, emptying the syringe into my unwilling flesh. I screamed. It was over in an instant.

Wow! The shot didn’t hurt nearly as much as the snake bite had hurt. In fact, it didn’t really hurt at all! Mom was consoling, “It’s all over. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” I continued to sniffle and watch the doctor warily in case he was intent on another forceful attack on my person.

I relaxed a bit when I saw the doctor dispose of the evil syringe. He was telling my mother that we needed to stick around to make sure I didn’t exhibit further symptoms. Walt and the nurse had released their hold on me and were laughing together about my burst of super-human strength. I didn’t think this was a laughing matter. I didn’t understand what was so funny.

In about an hour, we were back in the car on our way home. I remember none of the ride home. I think I fell asleep from exhaustion.

To this day, I am not sure if the injection of anti-venom was absolutely necessary. In conversations with Walt through the years, I have voiced my doubts about the snake bite being poisonous. Yet, my brother’s response has always been dismissing.

“I was there. I saw the bite. You were too little to remember the event clearly,” he would argue.

Maybe he was right. All I know for certain is that from that time on, I no longer feared getting a hypodermic needle.

Thanks, Walt, for being my protective big brother, even if I didn’t appreciated it at the time. More importantly, thanks for helping me get over a childish fear of needles!

RIP, Niecy (Denise Dirig).