Trail of Blood

"Heads Up!"

Years ago, while I was still married and living in New Hampshire, we had a three-bedroom home with an attached two-car garage. Both house and garage door were entirely covered with dark brown wood shingles. 

The shingles gained weight when we had a heavy rain. I found that out when we lost power during a storm, and I had to manually lift the garage door. I think that’s why there was a commercial grade garage door opener installed.  We didn’t know how old it was. It came with the house. It may have been the original, which would have made it well over twenty-five years old. 

One evening I decided to go to the grocery store to pick up a few things we needed for breakfast the next morning.  It had been raining all day.

I went to the garage, flicked on the light, and pushed the button just outside the door on the wall for the opener. The door came up a few inches and stopped, making a grinding sound of metal against metal. I tried the button once more. Again, only the grinding sound.

Thinking it must be stuck in the track somewhere, I knelt and grabbed the handle near the floor in the center between both garage doors and gave it a hefty tug upwards. It didn’t budge.  As I stood there, deciding what to do, I heard a loud bang, like a gunshot.

When I came to, I was lying on the floor of the garage. I didn’t know how long I had been there, but my God, my head hurt! Looking up, I could see the top third of the heavy garage door, like an extra-wide flap on an envelope, had collapsed down onto the rest of the garage door below.

That must have let go, dropped down, and slammed me on the head!

When I sat up, I saw a large pool of blood behind me on the floor where my head had been, and it was now running down my face, into my eyes and down onto the front of me.

Then I blacked out again.

The next time I woke up, I was on the steps that led up to the door of the house. Blood was everywhere and I was dizzy. I yelled to my husband several times to come and help me.

He was shocked when he saw me and all the blood. He knew I had been gone a long time, but he thought I was still at the grocery. I explained the best I could at what I knew and what I only guessed had happened.

He helped me into the house and put a wet towel and a plastic bag full of ice on my head. Then he moved my hair aside to see the damage. He said he could see my skull in the gash and he knew I would need stitches —-we were going straight to the emergency room.  He helped me back to the garage. For the life of me, I can’t remember how he got the heavy garage door open, only that he did.

Once in the car, he asked why I had wandered around both cars parked in the garage, before going to the steps and the door to the house. I assured him I hadn’t, but he pointed to a blood trail that weaved in and around both parked cars, with blood droplets and smears on the cars, as well.  I was dumbfounded. I had no memory of that at all.

At the E.R., I was X-rayed, stitched up, and told not to go to sleep, because I had a mild concussion, but there were no further problems, other than a terrible headache.

That was years ago now.  I still don’t remember my trek around the cars in the garage, only the pain and the blood everywhere …