Skin Off

January 24

We decided to give the exterior walls of our house a new coat of paint, and had decided to do the painting on the two days of CNY since we were hardly able to take long leave together to do something like that. We got the paints the weekend before, and decided to clean the mildew on the exterior walls, allowing time to dry before we paint them.

Adrian got himself up on the top of our house porch to clean off the mildew on the front outer upper walls of our two-storey house. After about an hour of cleaning, having moved in and out through our bedroom window few rounds, he was about done when the most unfortunate thing happened. The translucent PVC roofing sheet could hot hold the weight placed on the balancing foot and broke through. His right leg went down, up to his crotch.

I was in the kitchen preparing for our CNY dinner (we were having a reunion dinner with Dad a day earlier since we had planned to have a reunion dinner the next day with my tai yee and family at her place) when he came hobbling in. I thought he wanted to ask me something when he showed the bad scrap he got from his fall. Over four inches of skin on his shin was scrapped off, and there was a 's' shaped, couple of mm broad cut on his thigh.

My first reaction was to wash off the dirts on the raw wounds, and my poor hero grimaced in pain as the water ran down his leg. I felt my own face contorted as I felt a sharpness in my heart. I could not bear to see him in pain. Having seated him on the dining chair, I got our first aid kit. As I tore open a pack of alcohol swab, I told him it would hurt bad. I ran it gently over a smaller wound so that he was able to feel, and brace for the pain intensity. It ended up with him cleaning the wounds himself as it was easier for him to take his time to build his tolerance for pain. The next half hour was a session of flowery words as he cursed his pain away.

When his wounds were dressed, he continued with the cleaning downstairs with the electrical water jet. When I was done in the kitchen and had set the soup boiling on the stove, I joined him at the front of our house and took over the cleaning.

When we were done, I looked up the part of the PVC roofing sheet that Adrian broke through, and realised the cuts he got could have been far worse judging from the sharp edges of the hole. Indeed God is kind and we thank God that it was just skin that got scrapped off.