Chapter 3
A Troubling Find
"So what happened to you, sweetheart?"
The first thing that the doctors had to do was take a history from both the patient and the caretaker explaining the mechanism of injury she was brought into the E.R. for. Both the Professor and Bubbles provided a pretty clear, consistent, and matching history.
The child had been playing in her bedroom, jumping off of her bed onto a beanbag chair that was on the floor as her father was preparing a bath, and during one unfortunate leap, she happened to land in just the right spot to tear her vagina, or in Bubbles's words, her "front butt" open. There was a lot of blood.
The Professor had provided immediate medical care and applied gentle pressure to the injured area with a towel to stem the flow of blood. They still had that towel with them now, just for safekeeping.
The doctor explained to both the children and the father that these types of injuries they got in the ER from children were common. They were often called "straddle" injuries, an injury that happens when a child hurts the area between their legs.
"Straddle?" Blossom questioned at the unfamiliar word. It sounded a lot like "saddle".
"You mean like the thing they put on a horse's back?" Buttercup asked.
"Yes, it sounds like that, doesn't it? And how do we usually sit on a horse?" The female nurse asked the children patiently, almost like the way Ms. Keane would ask one of her students a question in the classroom.
Blossom and Buttercup briefly looked at each other before Buttercup ended up being the one to answer. "With our legs spread wide apart?"
The nurse nodded, giving the girl a warm smile. "That's right. And sometimes that little area can get hurt between our legs when we hit something hard. That can be the edge of a bathtub, or the top of a fence, or a balance beam, or a diving board. We've had kids in here that have gotten ouchies like that all the time. It's not very fun, but usually it's not very serious."
There was usually pain, sometimes bleeding, bruising, swelling, maybe a few small cuts, but other than that, things tended to clear up without any need for surgical repair. Usually all it took was a warm bath, or an ice pick, or an over-the-counter pain medication prescription and the problem usually resolved itself within a few days with no further complications.
"Are you gonna have to give me a shot?" Bubbles sniffled as she was placed on a blue examination chair with a sheet placed on top of it to prevent it from being soiled with blood.
"Oh no no, there's no need for that, sweetheart. What I am going to do is use this special camera to take a private look inside the part of your body that's hurting you, okay?"
"Now what name do you usually use for that part of your body?" This wasn't a pop quiz sort of question.
"I call it my private part." Bubbles said childishly, which was the terminology the nurse would be using with her then.
"Okay. Well I'm going to use this camera to look into your private part while we put a little sheet over you and your daddy holds you in his lap, okay? It won't hurt at all and you don't have to worry, but if at any point you start to feel uncomfortable, just tell me and we can stop, okay?"
"Okay." Bubbles said bravely, trying not to act like a baby in front of her sisters. She was getting stronger every single day and she needed to be courageous for things like this.
"Good girl."
"It won't hurt at all, sweetie." The Professor promised as he picked her up by her armpits and followed the nurse's instructions, holding his daughter in his lap in the proper position so she could have her genitals looked at, the nurse putting on a pair of dispensable gloves beforehand, also using a UV light to have a better look down there.
Bubbles blushed and bit her lip during this process, but she didn't express any amount of pain. She just felt slightly embarrassed, and a little exposed, even with the sheet over her. Her father stroked her head as she did this, and as she looked up at him with slightly teary eyes.
"Oh, looks like we've got some tears here, huh?" The nurse kept her tone light as she looked into Bubbles's sensitive areas with her special camera, but she was actually seeing quite a significant injury to her genitals.
It was deep and went from about her anal verge to her perineum (the area between the anus and the scrotum or vulva). There was also an extensive hematoma (or a large collection of blood underneath the skin, in layman terms, a bruise) from the perineum to the right lower labia majora (the outer lips of the vagina) and into the fossa navicularis (that was the area right outside the hymen).
Her hymen itself had a few pinprick bruises or spots of "petechiae" over it with no other remarkable findings as far as damage. This was definitely something that would need surgical repair.
The nurse put on a bright smile and said, "All done, sweetie! Now that wasn't so bad, was it?"
Bubbles shook her head. "No."
"How bad is it?" The Professor asked anxiously.
Keeping a smile that now looked a little forced, the nurse replied, "Well, I think our little patient here will have to have a bit of an operation."
Bubbles immediately whimpered at this prospect of surgery, picturing nothing but horror at the thought of going underneath the knife. A gentle hand was placed on her knee.
"Oh no, it's nothing to worry about, sweetheart. You'll be asleep while this happens and we're just going to put some stitches down there that will dissolve on their own once you're completely healed up. You won't have to come back here to have them removed like normal stitches."
"Is it really that bad?" The Professor was shocked. He was hoping Bubbles could get away with just having a sitz bath and maybe a little bit of ice applied down there, not a full-blown operation. Then again, there really was a lot of blood...
A crease formed in the nurse's forehead, even as she smiled, now somewhat apologetically. "I'm afraid it is." She made to stand up now. "Now if you guys would excuse me for just a second, I just need to make one quick phone call, and then I'll be right back, okay?"
"Okay." The Utonium family accepted easily, having no idea what kind of phone call the nurse was actually making. They thought it might be to some kind of special surgical team, but in fact it was to a pediatric forensic specialist team for further advisement on the findings she'd just uncovered, as well as to a police officer and a social worker.