A difficult weekend

I was having a pretty good day on Saturday. That is, until I got home. The phone rang, and it was the police to say that Chris had been 'given the wrong incident number'. When I asked what had happened, the officer would only tell me that Chris had been the victim of an assault earlier that day. She said that he was at the hospital, but he was OK so I didn't need to worry.
Of course, I was panicking, so I phoned the hospital and was put through innumerable switchboards until I finally got to the department where he was and got to speak to him. Chris said that he was all right except for a small gash on his head, and explained what had happened.
He told me that he'd gone to a local gala day. Some idiot threw a rock at him and Chris hit the guy (not hard, and usually he wouldn't react like that - he says that he just saw red). He hoped that would be the end of it, but when he was leaving the event, he saw the man who'd thrown the rock standing with another guy. Chris thought that if they tried anything, he could handle it. But, at that point, a third man hit him from behind. Chris fell down and they all started kicking him in the head. He doesn't know what happened after that, as he was knocked out. The next thing he knew, they were gone and two passers-by were with him, trying to stop the bleeding, then an ambulance came and took him to hospital.
By the time I got to the hospital, he'd been x-rayed and examined, and the doctor was in the middle of stitching him. As well as the local anaesthetic, they were giving him laughing gas - it's probably the only time I'll ever see Chris intoxicated! It made him talk very loudly and slowly. When the doctor said that he didn't need any more of the gas, because she was finished, Chris wouldn't give the mouthpiece back and I had to take it away from him.
They let him go home, because I was there to accompany him and to keep an eye on him in case he developed any more symptoms relating to his head injuries.
He was very dizzy for a couple of days, but he's beginning to feel better, apart from the headache. However, he looks worse now, as all the bruising and swelling took a while to fully develop.





He's got four stitches in the gash on his forehead and three in the triangular cut by his eye, as well as the black eye and assorted bruises and scrapes. We hope that the forehead one will heal quite well, as the skin there doesn't move around much, and the doctor pointed out that, in a few years, the cut by his eye will be disguised by the crows-feet!

The whole incident scared the crap out of me, and as well as feeling sorry for him, I'm also a bit mad at Chris because, if he hadn't hit the guy and had just ignored him, then this wouldn't have happened. I'm also scared that they might try to finish what they started, although Chris says that he won't be walking anywhere in the estate again, except for the very short path to the bus stop. This morning I started thinking about how easy it would have been for the thugs to not have stopped and for me to have come home to find that I was a widow. I suppose it'll stop dwelling on my mind soon.