Wounded soldier

I injured my head yesterday. We were part way through our customary Monday morning run of the show and I realised I was desperate for the loo, so bolted upstairs to the staff toilets. I’m not entirely sure I know what happened, but as I pushed the door to the staff corridor open, my forehead was greeted by something hard, sharp and wooden. I immediately realised I had done something silly because I could see blood on the doorpost. I did the thing they do on movies and brought my hand up to my face to realise I was, indeed, bleeding, just above my left eye.

It’s funny the things that go through your head when you injure yourself and go into slight shock. I took myself first to a loo cubical. I wanted to hide away whilst I worked out what was wrong. It’s an animal instinct. What you don’t want in these instances is someone fussing or panicking. I had my wee, but suddenly noticed I’d started to wee on my foot, which made me realise I wasn’t entirely firing on all cylinders! 

I remember pressing loo paper against my head and realising there was a fair amount of blood, but that it wasn’t gushing from me, so I decided the best thing to do was to make a cup of sweet tea whilst I formulated a plan which didn’t involve staggering into a rehearsal room and freaking out my cast.

As I walked away from the kitchen and into the giant fancy atrium at Mountview, I was hugely relieved to see our company manager. I pointed at my head and told him I’d hurt myself, and he instantly whisked me into the staff room to apply first aid. It turns out that he’s a designated first aider.

It took about five minutes to clean me up and stick a couple of plasters on my face. The wounds are fairly superficial. I’ve taken a chunk of skin off in a few places but I didn’t feel woozy, so probably didn’t have concussion of any sort. As the adrenaline drained from my body, I started to feel a little shaky and the wounds started to sting a bit, but I consider myself to be rather lucky not to have taken a considerably bigger hit.

I took the plaster off this morning, and it’s not the most attractive sight. A flap of skin is hanging off which I don’t want to pull at. I equally feel the wound needs to dry out in the air rather than fester behind a plaster.

So, the wounded soldier limps on. And so I should. In a show with a body count as high as the one in Brass, I merely count my lucky stars not to have been born 100 years earlier.