Injury

I was nine years old when dad had an accident. He was helping a friend build a new house. The basement had just finished curing. Early one Saturday morning dad went up to help start getting the floor joists set for the first floor. Mom and all of the kids were going to come up later and have lunch together. Dad was walking across a two by twelve board that was laying lengthwise above the basement when the board broke. Dad fell about ten feet and landed on his head. Now I had been told many times that the hardest thing a Grindstaff had was his head. I guess that dad was just trying to prove the point. The place where dad was working was just a few minutes from town and Mom and us kids were on the road on our way to the place when we heard the ambulance. Of course as kids we were all curious and excited because it was not every day that one saw the lights and heard the sirens of an ambulance. It was headed in the opposite direction of where we were headed. We arrived at our destination and found our friends mom was crying. In short order so was my mom. We heard the tale but none of us knew how badly dad had been injured. Being nine, I did not understand the severity of much of anything. The events of that day are still blurry. I think mom went after the ambulance and I think that we went with her. Dad had been taken to the closest hospital in Roosevelt, Utah but because of the nature of the trauma to his head they could not help him. There was a helicopter arriving shortly from Salt Lake and dad would be life lighted to the University of Utah medical center. Mom could not travel with him in the helicopter and she had five kids in tow anyway. The helicopter would go straight over the Uintah mountains and over the Wasatch mountains and right to the hospital. We were told later that dad was in and out of consciousness during his ride in the ambulance asking the first responders to please let him up and to please help him. They said he was very polite for one who had just had a very serious injury. Once mom found out where they were taking dad we all piled back in the car and drove. The drive to Salt Lake from Roosevelt is over three hours. It winds through many canyons and steep roads with even sharper corners. Mom has probably never driven so fast down these small canyon roads. I don't think we stopped for anything. Every curve flew by. Because of the time it took to get dad from the accident sight to the hospital and from there onto the helicopter it was dark by the time we arrived at the hospital at the University of Utah. Now this happened before cell phones. Before we left Mom had to make some phone calls. Mom had called grandma in Bountiful and told her what had happened and asked her to meet dad at the hospital. My uncle who lived with grandma also came with her to the hospital. I think Grandma made most of the other arrangements to take care of us once we arrived. An aunt who lived in the Salt Lake valley was informed and she met us at the hospital to take us to her house where we would spend the night. When we finally arrived at the hospital we found out only that dad had been taken right away to surgery to relieve the pressure of a blood clot or blood pressure to his brain. They did this by removing a quarter sized chunk of his skull. The surgery lasted a long time. We were sitting at our aunts house waiting for news. The two youngest brothers were asleep but Chely and I staid up watching TV because we wanted to know what was happening. A cousin of ours from mom's side of the family had also come up and was keeping us company. My aunt came back about 4 in the morning and let us know that Dad had come out of surgery and would recover. They did not know much else. Mom would be staying at the hospital with my sister, the baby at the time, and we would eventually move in with grandma in Bountiful, Utah.