I called and SO said that she had fallen in the garage and was at the hospital. She had broken her knee. Her sister was on her way down. "I'm assuming I need to come home?"
"I don't know, let's talk about it later."
I tried to get back asleep, but it was near the time I usually get up anyway so I just flopped around for a bit before looking back at my phone. In my mind, it seemed serious, but not serious-serious until I looked at some of the video from the home security cameras and saw ambulances, cops, squad...
I guess it did make me feel a little better to see one of the squad guys let the dogs in and the cop lock up everything before he left.
I texted her to see if she could talk again, but didn't get a response. Either she was busy being hospitaled, she was asleep on some marvelous pain killer, or they put her down. I got up and tried to busy myself until I could hear back from her. I spent too much time rewatching the videos - why the eff didn't they shut the lights off before they left? Why is that guy parked on my lawn? These reactions were neither pertinent nor rational.
Sitting 700 miles away miles away is somewhat helpless. I was struck by how technology has consistently made things both better and worse at the same time. Last year I visited my dead relatives. In subsequent reading of letters to/from them from their first years in the US, I read about their troubles - both big and small - that they went through. But news travelled at the pace of of boats across the ocean. No blow-by-blow partial information. Now, in nearly real time I could watch SO get wheeled out of the house on a stretcher. I could worry almost as it happened, even if I couldn't really do anything. At some level, it isn't different: go about life until... That "until" has moved. When things travelled slowly for my relatives, they didn't dash off a 2 sentence letter that a knee was broken without more of the chronology. The narrative was able to find a resting place, even if that place wasn't a good one. This is also a false comparison at some level since the idea of driving 700 miles to hunt pigs would have been quite preposterous 100 years ago. Besides, they had pigs on their farm.
SO and I talked and decided I would head home. For most of the rest of the day I felt like a tool for not going home right away. The doctor said she would be off her feet for 4-8 weeks after surgery, so it clearly wasn't a minor surgery.
But for better or worse, I had one more evening to hunt. After getting my annual dose of fast food, we fed stands. The stand I had been on the previous afternoon looked like a bomb had gone off with hog activity.
Back at the lodge I mostly sat around. I thought about reading, but didn't have the concentration. Early afternoon we headed out for hogs. Temperatures were wonderful in the upper 40s, but the wind was brutal. Not only does this make it feel much colder, but it also tends to make the animals hold tight. I was sitting on the church stand, which I like. It was moved back into a small field from where it had previously been closer to the road. The tripod stand was really comfortable. Predictably, not much was moving. I was disappointed it was my last afternoon to hunt, while at the same time I felt like an ass for not already heading home - the worst of both worlds.
Right around sunset five does came out with a buck trailing them. It spent a while rubbing its nose on trees before heading to the corn pile. For the remainder of the shooting light, deer sauntered in and out to the point I lost count. There was a lot of them. At dark:30, I unloaded and walked back to the road.
Denis had been at Sandy Bottoms and hadn't seen anything. Claude had shot at two, but only one was recovered. And it was about the same size as a big squirrel. It will still be good on the rotisserie.
Back at the lodge Denis and Claude generously shared their spaghetti with me. I packed most of my stuff up for the drive home.
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