Cleanup

The blood was still dripping from his forehead as he sopped it up off the tile floor. He’d put a pad of folded-over paper towels over the wound and wrapped a bandana around his head, but it had soaked through and was dripping again. The Boy Scout manual open to the first aid section on the floor next to him -- now smeared with bloody fingerprints -- said that scalp wounds bled a lot, and that he should apply direct pressure in order to stop the bleeding.

How was he supposed to apply direct pressure, he wondered, and still get the blood up before his mother got home? He looked up at the clock on the microwave: five twenty-four. He had maybe fifteen or twenty minutes until she came in.

The most bitter thing was the cookies. They were mostly still in their little plastic tray, upside down in the blood. When he’d woken up after the fall, the first thing he’d seen was the blood-soaked cookies. He hadn’t cried until then.

But crying wouldn’t get the blood up. He managed to soak it up with the towel -- he’d found the pink towel from the cupboard, the one that had been washed with his Boy Scout t-shirts, so hopefully it wouldn’t be too obvious -- and changed the pad of paper-towels under the bandana. The cookies went into the big trash can downstairs, tucked under last night’s table scraps; there’d be hell to pay when they turned up missing, of course, but... well, probably less hell to pay than there would have been if she’d come home to blood all over the kitchen.

He carefully re-traced his steps with a wet paper towel, tracking down all the little drips and drops of blood he’d left behind him. His head seemed to be clearing as he worked; in fact, he was feeling much better -- a little light-headed maybe, but sort of euphoric, like he’d just won a race. Almost done, he told himself; this was the feeling of impending success.

He froze at the sound of footsteps on the porch. Not his mother’s footsteps, his mind told him as he ran back into the kitchen, shoving the bloody, wet paper towel down to the bottom of the trash can as the doorbell rang.

There was a policeman on the front steps. His back was turned as the door opened, looking around the neighborhood with the automatic wariness that comes quickly. He turned and looked down at the boy who answered the door.

The boy’s head was wrapped in a bloody rag and he looked pale and... well, sort of wobbly.

“Hey,” said the policeman, “You OK, kid?”

The kid nodded, staring mutely up at him.

“Listen,” said the policeman, “I need you to come with me, your mom’s been in an accident.”

The boy blinked, and a woozy smile spread itself over his face. “Thank God,” the boy said, and then he fainted.