Thursday 8 August 2019

Next year I'll plant epinephrine, just in case.

It could have been a lot worse. 

I hate that phrase. It makes it seem as if what happened wasn't bad enough, or catastrophic enough. It's almost a gleeful sort of schadenfreude of a comment, honestly and I smacked it out of my range of hearing with the back of my hand as soon as it came out of Caleb's mouth.

 Right. I'm fine. Really, I am.

I have no stings. I walked right into a wasp nest, tucked into the middle of the huge oregano plant that I let grow crazy and bolt like fury in order to appease the bees, ironically enough. While the bees were happily buzzing around the giant four-feet wide by three feet tall shrub I had stepped to the middle of it to pull an errant weed, and at the last second I saw the nest, before stepping directly into it. Angry wasps swarmed out in a tornado of disruption and instead of screaming I closed my eyes and my mouth and hoped for the best.

I heard shouts and didn't move. I could feel them landing on my legs, my hair, brushing my eyelashes, wondering how to fight back against this giant of a human that had just levelled the house they spent all summer constructing.

Lochlan ran right into the oregano and grabbed me and I flew out of it and into his arms. He was promptly stung four times in the space between my chest and my back through his t-shirt. PJ used a blowtorch to destroy the remains of the nest and was stung twice on the arms for his efforts. Caleb stood with a curated concerned look on his face and Duncan had his phone in hand in case someone did indeed turn out to be anaphylactic (We're not. Hell, we've done this before. A few times now.) but everyone is relatively alright.

As Caleb said, I guess. It could have been worse.

Once back inside, using baking soda to treat Lochlan's stings, he undressed me slowly, untying my spare linen dress. Two wasps fall out and hit the floor, squished. A bee falls out, crushed the same way. Lochlan starts to laugh, a relief in his voice that surprises me for it's intensity.

It would never be from something like this, I tell him. He stares at me and it makes me so uncomfortable I turn the light off with my mind. He looks toward the dresser and notes the light and asks if I can not do this sort of thing so much.

The day seemed a little dull, I tell him and he laughs some more, not in amusement but in disbelief.