Two Inches

The distance from the pupil of my right eye to my cheekbone is two inches.

On March 29th, I was resealing the grout on my kitchen countertop. My kitchen overlooks a den which is three steps down. I was standing on the top step, stretching around to the right, so I could reach some tiles far on the back side of the countertop.

If I had placed my foot two inches to the left, I wouldn’t even have a story.

But as I focused on the counter, I placed my foot into nothingness and fell into the den. Sometimes accidents are recorded in slow motion. Not this one; I’m only left with a blur. I don’t understand the mechanics of the fall–where did I stumble, how did I turn. I know I hit my face on the corner of the reel-to-reel tape player console that sits in the den. I don’t understand how I have three distinct wounds: a two inch gash on my cheek, a cut on the outside corner of my eye, and a two inch slash on my forehead. I don’t understand how I escaped without broken or sprained wrists. I don’t even have rug burns. I can only conclude that I took the entire weight of my body on my face.

The cheekbone is also known as the zygomatic bone. This was the primary impact site.

If my face had hit the corner two inches away from where it did, the impact site would have been the center of my pupil. A different two inches and it would have been my teeth. Or my orbit, or my zygomatic arch. Any of those would have been a life-changing injury.

As I was on the ground waiting for the ambulance, holding pressure on my face to stop the bleeding, I was certain the bone under my eyebrow was broken, because my face was the wrong shape. I tried not to think about this.

I was given two CT scans at the hospital: one to rule out broken facial bones, and one to rule out brain injury. Somehow I escaped both fates; nothing was broken. The doctor put twenty-three stitches in my face, pulling my flesh back into place; my face was the right shape again.

The stitch in the corner of my eye was the worst, because the tails of the suture poked my eye for the next five days and nights.

The cervical vertebrae are less than two inches wide. And I weigh a ton. I try not to think about what things would be like had I broken my neck.

I’m writing this a month and a half after the accident. I’m fine. The hospital didn’t even keep me overnight. Five days after the accident I was able to get on a plane to Dallas to see the eclipse. My glasses were twisted out of shape, but I untwisted them. My face will never be the same, but things have healed surprisingly well. Towards the end of each day the scars throb a little. I have some nerve damage so a two-inch patch of my scalp is constantly numb. And I get a little weirded out at the top of the stairs. I can’t stop thinking about how easy it would be to miss another step by just two inches.