Stitches and glue

Last night, after supper, Hambet had a collision with a chair leg and came away with a small cut above his right eye. Naturally he was crying with surprise and pain, but a little direct pressure stopped the bleeding and a few hugs and kisses remedied everything else.
But the cut concerned me. Hambet had a similar little gash when he was first learning to walk. I hadn’t shown that cut to a doctor, and it had left a scar on his perfect little face. That one was up by his hairline, so it isn’t really visible. Last night’s little injury, though, is right above his eyebrow, and I was worried about scarring.
I called the pediatrician and she recommended bringing Hambet in to see if he needed a stitch. My husband grumbled — it was a superficial cut, it was cold outside, it was bedtime, and it would entail a trip to an emergency room — but our pediatrician warmly recommended a pediatric urgent care center in Rockville. So we bundled up and headed off.
We arrived and signed in, only to be told that the center “wasn’t doing sutures” that night. The receptionist squirted out an inky cloud of weak explanations — I’m still not sure why they weren’t doing sutures; she mentioned that they were “backed up” but their waiting room was deserted.
Off to the main emergency room. This time around it went much better — we went from triage to the treatment room in about fifteen minutes. This hospital has a dedicated treatment area for pedatric emergencies, and Hambet was the only patient there, so we got treated right away. The doctor cleaned the cut and used some “glue” to close it, so I felt vindicated (especially since I could feel vindicated without an actual needle and thread being involved.)
Hambet didn’t mind the trip at all. He had slept soundly all through the trip, and hadn’t stirred until the doctor started cleaning the cut. He perked right up when the nurse put on a Thomas the Tank Engine DVD to distract him while the glue was applied, and he was quite pleased with the sticker and teddy bear the nurses gave him when we were ready to leave. This morning he found the sticker plastered on the front of his pajamas and remarked, “The doctor, gave it t’me.”
I just hope next time he wants to see Thomas the Tank Engine, he just tells me about it so we can borrow a DVD instead of going to the emergency room.