Chapter III continued

One day,while my father was away,we made an unusual trip.My father was gone,I believe to a funeral,likely in Springhill. I don't know who had passed,but it was always said afterward that he'd been gone to a funeral.

So,I don't know how we came to make our trip.It was only a short drive into town,but my father would have had the car,I suppose and it's unlikely my mother would have driven in that old dodge truck.It was big inside,and keeping two children contained would have been darn near impossible.But,my mother may have been able to borrow a car,or convinced a neighbor to drive us.Under the circumstances,the convincing would likely not have been all that difficult.Or,we may have had some other car perhaps.My father was rarely to be found with fewer that two cars at any time I can remember well.But this was not such a time.

However we managed it,we went to the hospital.It would have been located in Newcastle perhaps,or maybe on the base at Chatham.My little sister had swallowed a screw.At least that's what my mother called the thing,though when I saw the thing years later,I would have called it a bolt.I don't know how important that distinction was to my sister.The end of the thing was blunt,not pointed,so I guess it could have been a good thing.

My little sister was growing,even I noticed it.She was still inside the pen whenever we were outside,because she would have been less than two years old.I'm not sure where she found the screw,but she did,and she swallowed it,and we were off to the hospital.

We were at the hospital for what seemed like a very long time.I have the great sense of myself being very impatient.There was a lot of sitting around in uncomfortable chairs,inside a waiting room.I remember looking at the holes in the ceiling tiles,wondering in bugs or worms would come out of them.I recall running to the end of a long hallway,and trying to go up a stairway,and of my mother chasing me down more than once.I couldn't get outside,and that really bothered me.It must have been a stressful time for my mother,with my sister being in with the doctors and me running up and down the halls,and her wondering if my sister would be alright,and how she would get home.But all ended well.My sister rid herself of the screw with little if any harm done.My mother kept the screw and put it in my sisters baby book.

                                                                                           continued