Is telling the truth always the way?

This true tale starts with my daughter Patty suffering and surviving a horrible freak accident. Aged 10 she had an ornate gate fall on her, the sharp top of which caught the back of her slim leg, opening it to the bone.

Fortunately my husband has nerves of tempered steel and he wrapped the dreadful wounds in a clean towel and packed her sister and me into the car and drove us to the emergency section at the hospital with no loss of time.

We were blessed that there was a reputable plastic surgeon on call and within an hour she was being operated on.

Unfortunately as she had been eating birthday cake up to the time of the accident, there was no chance of a general anaesthetic and the surgeon began the difficult task of applying local anaesthetic injections and then doing the delicate surgery involved in repairing her leg.

I am a teacher and NOT a nurse.
I was barely controlling my revulsion and shock so you can imagine that the child was hysterical. I stood bravely beside her holding her hands in mine as she begged, ‘ put me to sleep Mummy!’ My explanation to her fell on deaf ears. She continued to beg, ‘Mummy can’t you help me?’
Finally I couldn’t cope anymore and I felt a welcome darkness descend as I fainted clean away. I came round with the surgeon’s head swimming into view as he peered upside down at me under the operating table. ‘Can’t say I blame you,’ he said kindly and just then my husband rushed in having settled our older daughter with a nearby friend and Dr Renishaw (bless him forever and ever……..) indicated that he should help me onto a trolley used for transporting patients and put me beside our child who had sobbed herself into a state of exhaustion and silence.

By 10pm we were all back home, 3 of us tranquilised by wonderful chemicals that knocked us out as our heads hit our pillows until late the following Sunday morning.

Patty healed in an amazing way and the scars though minimized, were there as the trauma had been enormous.
In the meantime as soon as possible she was back swimming that hot summer and she enjoyed the attention and status these scars gave her.

To my astonishment I heard her tell new kids on the scene that she had been savaged by a shark and she had her audience enthralled and horrified.

image source Pixabay

After enjoying the limelight for a while she would shout, ‘all bluff……. a stupid old gate fell on me,’ and the children would gasp and pretend to punch her on the arm and laugh about how they had been taken in.

One day a boy 2 years older than she, a braggart and a bully, came over to swim with a neighbour friend. Patty took an immediate dislike to Derek as he strutted his stuff and demanded that they all watch him dive from the board. He made a couple of the small ones cry as he scorned their attempts to copy his example when suddenly he caught sight of the impressive scars on the calf of her leg.
‘Whoa……………and what happened here?’ he asked, shutting up long enough for Penny to tell him an embroidered version of her ‘shark attack.’ He was truly impressed and searched her eyes for the veracity of her story and did not suspect her for a minute such was her blatant STARE. The rest of the youngsters waited all afternoon for Patty’s , ‘all bluff……….a stupid gate fell on my leg. But it did not happen.
There was a conspiracy of silence amongst them, cemented by the fact that he toned down his obnoxious behaviour in the face of such an impressive story.

At dinner that night my older daughter outlined briefly what had happened, to their dad and me and she asked, ‘Patty, why didn’t you tell Derek the truth about the scars on your leg? You’ve always told everyone what really happened.’
Patty stopped, her loaded fork half way to her mouth. She put it carefully back amongst the roast potatoes and fixed us on the steely points of her outraged eyes. I waited breathlessly for her answer, knowing that she knew that NOT lying was the number 1 rule in our home…..

‘Mom, Dad, Jeanie’ she took a deep breath and looked at each of us meaningfully ‘he was a beast of a bully boy and he simply ………didn’t deserve it……… the gift of the truth I mean,’ and she added some hot gravy to the cooling dinner on her plate. She then chewed it thoughtfully and with relish.

The shrug of her shoulders silenced the 3 of us observers and we each seemed to be complicit in her deception.

To this day some years later, I ponder her answer…………’he didn’t deserve it,’ and how by our silence round the dinner table that evening, we supported her judgement.

Is telling the truth and nothing but the truth always the best outcome?