The Student News Site of McCallum High School

The Shield Online

The Student News Site of McCallum High School

The Shield Online

The Student News Site of McCallum High School

The Shield Online

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Pedaling straight to the hospital

Pumping my legs back and forth, propelling the wheels of my bike forward. To my right lies the largest religious site in the world, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and to my left jungle. I looked up and saw my brothers back in front of me trying to maintain the space between him and my father in front of him. We were not wearing helmets because the place we rented our bikes did not offer them. I breathed in the foreign air and looked at the temple complex beside me, not knowing what was to come after.

Along the side of the road there as a ditch as a way for the road to drain; anyone who chose to bike through the complex biked along the side of the ditch following it to their destination. As I pedalled along I started to feel a sense of boredom. I lifted my legs off the pedals and only kept moving because of my momentum to relive my bored senses. I turned around at my mom, wanting her to watch my tricks she looked up and watched as I did it again. Suddenly, the world was a blur.

I felt myself falling, and then I felt pain. I screamed out. I had fallen off my bike towards the ditch and had been unable to catch myself because my outstretched arms had gone into the ditch, so my head broke my fall. My mom ran out into the road to try and hail down a car while my dad looked through his bad for some tissues. Unfortunately, he only had toilet paper. When a car drove by, my mom hailed it and luckily the driver spoke English. We all piled into the car and left our bags with a kind vendor lady that happened to be across the street. So there I was with toilet paper on my head, on the way to the hospital.

When we arrived at the hospital, they put me on a wheelchair and wheeled me inside. I was lucky it was an international hospital because there are some pretty nasty hospitals in southeast Asia. It was three days before Christmas so all the nurses were wearing Santa hats. Two nurses came around me and started cleaning up my smaller cuts because we had to wait for the doctor. The next 15 minutes were some of the longest in my life. When the doctor finally came, they wheeled me into a separate room and put a green sheet of cloth over my face so I couldn’t see what they were doing and get scared. They gave me five shots around the area of the gash to numb the nerves, and began stitching.

When they were done I had 10 stitches in my head and a bad headache. We were done biking for the day, and we went back to our hotel. I ordered a cheeseburger and fries, and it was a delicious meal. We washed the clothes I had been wearing because they were very bloody, but mentally I decided never to wear them ever again. From this experience I gathered knowledge; the importance of helmets and of focusing on the road when driving a bike or anything else.

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Pedaling straight to the hospital