The Good Samaritan never got sued

Yesterday a bloody man showed up in our backyard.

Fortunately for him, we were outside eating lunch.  He approached, rather disquietingly, bare-chested, holding his shirt to the top of his head, blood smeared down his face and splattered all the way to his feet.


We get a lot of regular walkers in the park, many of which we secretly give names to because we see them so often.  I have seen shirtless men behind my house before. 


But covered in blood and approaching me and my children..... not a usual occurrence. 


Thankfully.

"Um, I hit my head..." was his greeting. 


We ran for ice and paper towels, which he received gratefully.  Apparently he was parking the tractor in the baseball field shed when it jumped and his head hit the top of the doorframe.

I told him I wasn't an expert, but offered to look at it, since he obviously couldn't look at it himself.  After a peek, and drawing on my vast experience as a mother of children (and wife of a husband) who sometimes bleed from the head, I told him it didn't look serious.  I asked if he had blacked out; he answered in the negative and asked me if he seemed to be conversing normally.  Which, yes, discounting the head-to-toe blood trail and lack of upper body clothing, he was perfectly normal.


After sending Mr. Head Injury on his friendly way, I recounted all this to Jeddy inside, who had missed the excitement. 


Jeddy said, "Hm, so I guess he won't sue you if you're wrong?"


I didn't think of that. 

I went over symptoms of concussion.  I thought of every other head injury I have witnessed and mentally compared them to this one.  I went over and over the precise amount of blood splattered on him.  I anxiously hovered near the window and finally went back outside to spy on him from a distance to see if he was staggering, fainting, bleeding out, or calling a lawyer. 

Should I have put him on my own donkey and upended my bottle of olive oil on his head? 


What if the Good Samaritan victim had woken up in a strange inn and wondered how he got there?  What if he had bleeding on the brain no one knew about and he really should have had a CT scan?


More to the point, the Good Samaritan didn't check the wound and say, "It doesn't look serious.  You're fine."

No bodies have been found in our park and I haven't been summoned to court.


Mr. Head Injury, wherever you are, I hope you feel better.  Keep some ice on it for a while and I'm pretty sure you'll be fine. 


But if not, please accept my "I'm no expert" comment as protection against any and all legal proceedings.