Love is Thicker than Blood

I hate the sight of blood with all my guts, but I love my little sister with all my heart. I guess I showed it well that wet fall afternoon.

I was in fifth grade, and my sister in first. Since I was the big sister, my parents made me take her to her classroom after recess every day. That day, she had been playing in the playground by herself, running around and splashing in the puddles. I was hanging out with my friends until the bell rang, when I went for her and quickly walked her up the stairs to her classroom.

At the tops of the stairs, my sister looked down, opened her eyes wide, and said in a frightened voice ‘Nani, look!’ It was then that I saw bright red blood running down her left leg, already drenching her white sock. Apparently at some point she had fallen, and her knee had been cut with a piece of broken glass.

I immediately felt faint, but tried to reassure her.

‘Don’t worry, it’s all right,’ I told her.

I was able to ask a teacher to help us, against the traffic of children coming up the stairs, to go downstairs to the school office.

At the office, the principal, the receptionist and the custodian started squirming around. I couldn’t quite understand what they were saying, but I heard:

‘It doesn’t look good, we need to take her to the hospital.’

‘We’ll take her from here, you can go to your classroom,’ they told me.

I was supposed to be in math class, and we were going to have an important test that day. That was my chance out of this, away from all that blood that was making my head spin, my stomach churn, and my skin cold and sweaty.

I’ve always had a thing about blood. I have fainted from the sight of a few drops, like when a tooth falls off and when I get my fingertip pricked for lab tests. But as sick as I felt, no way was I going to leave my sister then. My parents always told me to look after my little sister, and she seemed pretty scared. She held on to my hand tightly.

‘I’ll go with her,’ I told them all. 

So off we went, in the PE teacher’s orange VW beetle, all the way to the county hospital. The road was wet, and people seemed to be driving slower than ever.

‘Go, go, go faster,’ I kept thinking to myself.

I wanted it all to be over soon. I didn’t want to see my sister’s leg, so I kept looking out the car window, praying to get to the hospital before I passed out.

We finally made it to the emergency room, and my sister’s cut was stitched up. Seven stitches, I later learned. I stood by her side holding her hand, until I could not stand any longer. The room began turning dark. Voices and sounds sounded more distant. My mouth got dry. I sat on the floor.

That’s the last thing I remember, because everything turned black as I fainted. And that is the scene my mother found when she arrived at the hospital: my sister lying on the examining table, with a big bandage on her knee, and me sitting on the floor, eyes closed, pale and sweaty, but still holding my little sister’s hand.

My family has been repeating this story since then. Not because it was a serious accident, as my sister was left with barely a small scar. But because I did not let go of her hand for a second. I held it all the way from her classroom to the school’s main office, to the PE teacher's car, into the emergency room, as my sister’s knee was sewn up, and even after fainting. 

I hope we don’t have to go through anything like this again, but I felt proud of being a big sister that day. Some say that blood is thicker than water. I say that love is thicker than blood.