Seems Arnold's outdoor recreation class is in the middle of their unit on mountain biking. Arnold went down a steep, rocky hill (one the kids all love to sled on when it snows). He then had the idea that it would be fun to do it again FASTER!
Turns out that was a bad idea. Arnold and the bike parted ways at the bottom of the hill.
We were at the hospital for over three hours, and on the way home, it occurred to me that in those three hours we had pretty much experienced the seven stages of grief. On the way to the hospital, Arnold was commenting about how cool this was going to look at the starting line tomorrow (denial). The cross country team traveled to Juneau tonight for the Regional meet.
(skipping lots of boring waiting and what-not) ... the doctor looks at his knee, confirms that he'll need stitches. I tell the doctor "but he'll be running a 5k race tomorrow" and the doctor says "no, he won't be running for a couple of weeks." (here comes the emotional pain)
The the nurse is flitting around getting things ready for cleaning the wound and she comments "Oh, there will be other 5k's. I know you'll bounce back from this." Fortunately she was not looking at Arnold at the time. Arnold was wearing his angry face. It's pretty scary. (anger)
Anyway, by the time he got all cleaned up and moved to the procedure room (about 4:00), it was clear that the wound was much deeper than Arnold thought. Lots of local anesthetic later, he was sitting there looking into the hole in his leg while the doctor said "That's your muscle there -- flex it." And we could see the muscle flexing and Arnold was saying "Wow!" Forty-five minutes and 13 stitches later...
A few phone calls between us and the coach letting her know Arnold wouldn't be running, the coaches want him to go anyway to support the team, etc etc, and we made it to the pre-flight team dinner just in time for Arnold to head to the airport with the rest of the team. 
My camera battery died before we got to the stitching part, sorry. It was pretty cool.
