I asked him the moment he knew he loved me

TW: brutal injury.

I’ve told this before but now it has a twist. 😂We had been hanging out for a few weeks I think? I don’t really remember but we were getting ready for our first date. I was all pretty and waiting for him to get off work and he calls me and all he can say is he hurt himself. I go over to his house anyways bc his call kinda freaked me out, and I figure out that he had hurt himself at work. He works construction, He said he was beating pipe into the ground and it broke and a piece of it hit him in the eye. I get there, He has his eye covered with a rag, and we are sitting in the dark, in the car in the driveway because “light hurts.”

I was thinking like, blacked and bloodied eye like when you get hit so hard in the eye it pops blood vessels. He didn’t move for over an hour because he was in so much pain, pain that was just intensifying, and I’m like “please let me look, let me look.” And when he took that rag down, it took all of me to not panic.

A his cornea was shredded and a piece of it was hanging off. His pupil was diamond shaped like a snake eye.

I had actually seen this before y’all, I KNOW This sounds ridiculous… I saw it in a cat that got ran over by a car when I was a kid. The vet completely removed her eye and did so quickly because the risk of infection was very high.

And I’m like listen, I know you don’t know me that well. But you have to let me drive you to the ER now, because I’m pretty sure you need surgery. Right now.

And keep in mind, we had hung out a few times but we were still pretty much strangers. He’s telling me no, that he has bo health insurance and I’m like… you will LOSE your eye. You have to go.

After the pain got even worse he finally decided to let me drive him to the ER.

The er doctor took a look at his eye and said “I’m 98% positive you’ve ruptured your pupil and sliced your cornea to hell. I’m calling a surgeon and we are transferring you to her at another hospital.” Then they shoot him up with morphine, and he no longer has any idea where or who he is or who I am. He’s the equivalent of an overcooked spaghetti noodle, this poor man. That also make shifted this crazy looking eyepatch because his eye was completely just open to bacteria and infection.

And bc he was too high to sign the papers for the ambulance ride to consent for it, I had to sign them. I’m like what do I do? I’m driving HIS car, I’m not taking off with it. I’m also not leaving him by himself with a major injury, very possible surgery and drugged to the point of a spaghetti noodle, that’s awful. So I followed the ambulance to the other hospital with the surgeon and I walk in and say I’m a visitor and looking for him and they let me back and when I got in the nurse that was with him was like “do you know what’s going on?” Because he’s like still higher than heavens gates and cannot make any sense when he speaks, And I explained, and we waited for the eye surgeon to come in and explain that if she did not operate immediately, he was losing his eye. He ruptured his pupil and sliced his cornea BAD. She had no idea if he would even have sight out of that eye ever again but her first and main goal was to save it so that there was a chance at vision later. She said “the next open OR I have, I’m taking him.” I grabbed his phone and got into it and called his mom, because I am literally just some girl he just met and they’re asking me to sign consent forms for a major surgery to save an eye. She said yes, so I signed the papers.

He cried 3 times because he forgot 3 times (still high) and I had to explain it 3 times, so he cried in my arms 3 whole times because he fully believed he was going to be blind forever and I just kept repeating you don’t know that, it’s gonna be okay. and then was sent off to surgery to have his eyeball literally sewn shut and back together.

I get into his phone again, and I call his boss and explain everything. Then I got a doctors note printed out after the doctor called me when his surgery was finished and I took that note up to his job the day after. Then I stayed with him for weeks as his eye healed. I stayed next to him 24/7, held him down to put creams, antibiotics, and a shit ton of other medications into his eyeball multiple times a day (with consent and him asking because it hurt too bad to do it alone) because it was still a chance it would get infected and fall out. I made him food and had him eat, kept track of his temperature and made him keep the god awful eyepatch on for 2 weeks. I helped him shower because he was terrified of getting water in his eye so I would stand behind him in the shower and wash his hair and face for him. There was a whole schedule of different eye drops of medications multiple times a day to keep that eyeball from getting infected because he lost the outter layer of the cornea during surgery.

A year later I asked him “when did you realize you fell Inlove with me?” And he said “when I got really hurt and almost lost my eye and I woke up from surgery panicking worrying I had lost my job, wondering where my car was, wondering how I was going to get through this. And my family had told me you had already called my job, had the doctors note, had me on paid leave with my job, and you were waiting on me outside after recovery from surgery to pick me up and take me home, and for weeks I didn’t have to worry about anything. When it’s always been me taking care of everything and everyone else. You are the first person to ever take care of me like that and I absolutely fell in love with you while you held me down and put meds in my eye. It may have been painful and I was half blind but I still had one good eye and wow you were beautiful.”

And I was like. OKAY 🙈🥺🤭❤️

His vision has recovered SIGNIFICANTLY. His surgeon was brilliant and did an amazing job. He’s doing well, able to work. Still has a tiny bit of a vision problem but his eye is healthy and still healing. She told us she’s amazed at the recovery of his vision. They were considering cornea transplant because of scarring but his eye just kept healing so well it wasn’t needed. You only know there is a problem because of a tiny white line in his eye, and his pupil is a little bit misshapen.

Hell of a first date yeah?

Can I just mention what I thought was really cool? This is added and so irrelevant, but his surgeon was very young, like not much older than us, and VERY pregnant. There was a whole baby next to his head while he had that eyeball sewed shut. I thought she was cool as hell.