I went home Wednesday night to see Adrian. Unfortunately, I didn’t call and found that Adrian and Danny had just left to take home Adrian’s girlfriend, Cindy.

I had to wait a few hours before Adrian and Danny returned from Egypt (North Hollywood is really far from Hacienda Heights). In the mean time, I played with the dog and when my dad came home he shared more details over a dinner of left over tamales. I asked him how he dealt with those kinds of emergency calls. He answered, “it takes it toll.” Getting little bits of information at a time was tough for him. He said he wished he would have known in the first message (received past 1 a.m.) that Adrian was conscious and even making a couple of jokes as the EMT’s carried him out on the stretcher.

My dad also thought it was interesting that my tío Chuy — who reads my blog, hi tío! — knew before anyone had called. When my dad asked how tío Chuy knew, he replied “una maquinita electrónica.”

Adrian and Danny returned close to midnight. I ran and gave him a big hug. Adrian showed me the pictures he took of his cut up ear with his cell phone.

Ouch.

See, hearing about his ear getting cut up was one thing, but seeing the photos of all the stitches and the blood encrusted around his ear and hair was worse. Adrian says he can’t eat like a pig anymore… he actually has to chew slowly since his jaw hurts. His girlfriend, lil’ Cindy, also helped him wash the crusty blood out of his hair. Oh yeah, I can’t make too many jokes because it hurts for him to laugh.

I showed Adrian all the well wishes sent to me through this blog. He kinda liked being called “el valiente” and was pleased (as I was) that so many people had wished him well. We ate some strawberry Haagen Dazs ice cream and watched a bit of Chicken Little but didn’t get through it because we were both sleepy.

I left at 7 am the next morning feeling glad to know that Adrian is good. His face is swollen up and he looks a little like Frankenstein with the bandage, but he’s good and that’s all that matters.