Profile On: Zach Cruse - The Bunk Beds

It was around 9:30 p.m., the show they were watching had just gone off, and it was time to go to sleep.  That’s when bedtime became playtime for Cruse and his brother.

The two boys, Cruse, who was about nine, and his brother Taylor Cruse, was about five, backed up to the corner of their living room, between the couch and the kitchen, and took off, racing to the other end of the house where their bedroom was located.

It was a competition, one they had participated in before, but races between the two siblings were serious business. 

At the time, the Cruse brothers had bunk beds made out of red steel tubing sections put together. The endgame of the race was to launch their selves onto the bottom bunk, reaching the bed first.

That was the plan until Zach Cruse jumped a little too high. 

Instead of landing on the soft mattress of his bed, he ran into the bottom part of the top bunk head-first.  Instead of a dive into comfort, he dove into steel bar. 

Both Cruse brothers say that he jumped too high, and hit the top bunk by accident.  The force of the blow caused Cruse to be knocked unconscious for a few minutes.

“When I came to, I was lying on my back on our bedroom floor.  Taylor was standing over me, and I reached for my head, to feel it where I hit, and it was wet.  I looked at my fingers and they were covered in blood.”

Cruse was numb from the pain.  He couldn’t really feel anything.  The only thing he felt was anger at Taylor.  He said it wasn’t reasonable, he just knew he was scared and he was mad at this brother. 

Cruse ran out of the room crying, heading straight for his parent’s bedroom.  His mother was on the phone, talking to his grandma. 

According to Cruse, when she looked over and saw him standing there, she said, “Oh my gosh! Zach’s bleeding, I’ve got to go!”  She hung up the phone and picked him up, running to the garage to put him in the van.  She called his grandma before they left, and went to the hospital.

“It was a big ordeal, and I had to get stitches,” Cruse said.  “I remember the next few weeks I would walk around with my eyes crossed, pretending to be Frankenstein, because I had the big stitches right across my forehead.”