Just fiddling around...hold all expectations.
Title: Three Short Stories That Start With "Oops"
Warning: Language
Beta: None
Contribution to Society: None
Season: Post-Series
Thanks: For Reading
Three Short Stories That Start With “Oops”
by: muchtvs
******************
Number One
“Oops,” says Sophie, looking at Ryan with wide eyes.
Ryan stares at the carpet.
Stares at Kirsten’s new carpet.
Kirsten’s new, white carpet.
Kirsten’s new, now formally white, carpet.
“Oh man,” says Seth, glancing over Ryan’s shoulder. “That’s gonna’ be a bitch to clean up.”
Ryan watches gloomily as the grape juice stain spreads thread by thread, like a Berber tye-dye.
Purple and white.
White and purple.
“Bitch!” screams out Sophie, then sing-songs, “bitch, bitch, bitch.”
She’s only copying the unfamiliar word Seth just said and she doesn’t have a clue it’s an unacceptable term but still, listening to a three year old chanting the word “bitch,” over and over is disturbing and not at all helping the situation.
“Don’t say that word,” Ryan gently chastises Sophie. “Say…Seth is an idiot.”
“Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot,” Sophie mimics, proudly smiling at Ryan.
Ryan sighs, retrieves a wet dish-cloth and gets down on his hands and knees and starts scrubbing.
“You’re doing that all wrong,” Seth tells him. “You’re supposed to soak it up with a dry towel first.”
Ryan stands up.
“Now you tell me that?”
Seth shrugs.
“Don’t you have somewhere to go?” Ryan asks him, trying to keep his temper in check in front of Sophie.
“Nope,” Seth answers with a smirk. “There’s no place I’d rather be.”
Then the front door opens and Kirsten is home, about two hours earlier than anyone expected her, and she’s carrying a few grocery bags and greets everyone with a string of, “Hello’s” until she comes to a dead stop directly over the grape juice stain.
“They did it,” Seth claims as he backpedals, his hands in the air, distancing himself from his siblings.
Kirsten stares down at her new, formally white, carpet.
“Sorry,” Ryan mutters guiltily.
Sophie, thrilled to see her mother, thrusts his hands in Kirsten’s direction and screams, “Idiot! Bitch!”
***************
Number Two
“Oops,” says Ryan. “I lost it.”
“Lost what?” Taylor asks.
“Seth’s ring,” he answers, patting the right pocket of his suit.
“Seth’s ring?” Taylor repeats, not quite comprehending what Ryan’s saying.
“Well,” he clarifies, “Not Seth’s ring. Summer’s ring, the one Seth gave me to hold on to.”
“You lost Summer’s wedding ring?” Taylor asks in disbelief. “On her wedding day?”
“Yeah, evidently,” Ryan surmises, searching the other pocket of his jacket before fishing around in both his pants pocket.
“Ryan!” Taylor hits him on the arm. “You goof. This is a very big deal, as in mushroom cloud, big deal. You’re Seth’s best man, his brother, his meilleur ami.”
Ryan blows out a deep breath and just stands there, looking confused and befuddled.
“Did you check your shirt pocket?” Taylor asks him, a bit panicked because the wedding is scheduled to start in a few minutes.
Ryan furrows his brows.
He cocks his head to the side and says, “I have one of those? There’s too many damn pockets.”
Exasperated with him, Taylor shoves Ryan’s hand aside and opens up his jacket. She runs her fingers along the starched white shirt until she comes to the pocket in question.
“There’s something in here.”
She reaches deep in and pulls out a shiny, shimmering, single solitaire ring.
There’s just one problem.
It’s the wrong one.
Taylor holds up the ring for Ryan’s inspection and tells him, “This isn’t the right ring. Seth showed it to me before he gave it to you. This isn’t Summer’s ring.”
“I know,” Ryan smiles, his eyes sparkling as he leans into Taylor and kisses her .
He taps the tip of her nose before telling her, “It’s yours.”
******************
Number Three
“Oops,” Pete The Construction Worker says, as he watches his yellow hard hat plummet towards the earth from the twenty-first story beam he’s perched on. “That’s a my bad.”
“Klutz,” Jim The Buddy name calls. “Nice goin’ there Mr. Handy.”
Then it occurs to the two of them that perhaps warnings should be issued.
“Look out below,” Pete yells, cupping his hand to the side of his mouth.
“Fore!” shouts Jim.
“Thud,” says the hard hat, as all twenty-one stories of it collides with Ryan’s head.
An ambulance is summoned because someone just dented the skull of the lead architect.
Ryan eventually remembers his last name and tells the nurse to call his brother, because everyone else will overreact.
When Seth arrives in the ER, it’s just in time to watch Ryan get his scalp stitched up.
Seth grimaces in genuine sympathy.
“Ouch, man, that has to hurt.”
“It doesn’t tickle,” Ryan grinds out between clenched teeth as the needle slices through another layer of skin.
“What happened?” Seth asks, resisting the urge to either vomit or pass out as the needle comes away with a glob of Ryan’s blood dripping off of it.
Ryan clutches a portion of the railing surrounding his bed as the intern pulls at a new stitch.
“I got hit by a falling hard hat.”
Seth looks at Ryan and blinks and asks, “Excuse me?”
“A hard hat,” Ryan repeats before holding his hand up, gesturing for the intern to stop a second so he can muster the stamina to go another round of being treated like an Amish quilt.
“Someone dropped their hard hat from the twenty-first floor.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Seth concludes. “I mean...who gets hit by a falling hard hat? Other than you, of course.”
“Can you give me a ride home or not?” Ryan asks, losing patience and possibly, if the intern keeps up at the current rate he’s going, his lunch.
“You have to spend the night,” the intern informs him. “Sorry. Concussion.”
“That’ll go over well with Taylor,” Seth says under his breath. Louder, he asks Ryan, “Where exactly was your hard hat? You have to wear one, right? Did you have one on?”
“Jake wore it to school,” Ryan explains. “It was show and tell day. I was gonna’ grab a new one at the site.”
“Huh,” Seth nods. “Well clearly that plan backfired.”
At stitch number thirty-two, Ryan indeed throws up his lunch and Seth makes some phone calls.
There’s no getting out of being admitted overnight for observation.
The parade of panic starts flooding in, Taylor in the front twirling the baton of, “Oh my God, Ryan. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”
Summer tries to calm Taylor down while Sandy picks up the rear with his patented, “Are you okay, kid?”
Kirsten flutters around, questioning the doctor repeatedly about Ryan’s condition
in-between calling home every fifteen minutes to check on Sophie, who is babysitting the assorted grandkids.
Ryan lies in bed, his arm draped across the bridge of his nose, and tries to ignore them all.
His head hurts.
His pride hurts worse.
Seth sits on a swivel stool he’s rolled to the side of Ryan, casually flipping through the latest edition of Legion.
And in the hallway, the intern who sewed up Ryan’s head is laughing hysterically with the nurses because…the guy in room 204 ?…Seriously?…Really?…A falling hard hat?
That’s ridiculous.