About midmorning she gave me a bottle of formula in case I was thirsty, then went to do the laundry. I finished about half the bottle and discovered a few minutes later that I was sitting in a wet diaper. I got up and began tottering out to the utility room connected to the kitchen. As I was walking in front of the refrigerator, one of my feet hit a wet spot from some spilled formula that Gina had missed and I started to fall. I grabbed the mop handle in an attempt to keep myself upright, but my weight pulled the handle over causing it to strike my head and knock me silly. I sat there stunned for a moment before the realization of what had happened hit me. Then I tried to get up and discovered that my knees were shaky and I was unable to stand. I tried to call for help, but with my swollen tongue all I could manage was a gurgle. Blood was streaming down the side of my head and I had a hard time focusing my eyes. My earlier depression became a pit of black despair. I began to beat my fists against the floor beside me while I wept silent tears at my predicament. My control soon broke down and I started to wail at the top of my lungs, making the very welkins ring with my anguished cries. Gina rushed into the kitchen from the utility room and found me in a bloody heap on the floor. She took me into the nursery and cleaned me up, changing my diaper and putting a bandaid on the cut of my head. When she tried to stand me up on the floor to lead me back to the family room, my knees buckled beneath me and I fell to the floor.
Gina was very solicitous of my accident, telling me that the house was too dangerous a place to wander around in my condition. Before I knew it, she had gotten out the playpen she had bought the day before and set it up in the family room. I spent the rest of the morning crawling around the padded floor of the playpen as if I had never learned to walk. As the day progressed, she would take me out of the playpen to feed me lunch or change my diaper, but then it would be back into the playpen when she was done.
