The Emergency Room

I have always had a cool head in a crisis. While others would panic, I would calm down and take charge. That's why, if I hadn't been in the Air Force, I truly believe I could have been a hero. In the current crisis, I had to get myself to the emergency room. Fast.

I had a pack of fresh shop rags under the workbench. I tore one into strips with my teeth and, straightening my finger with pressure against the surface of the workbench, I used a pencil as a splint and quickly wrapped the chainsaw-damaged digit with the rag. Then I used another piece to wrap it to my next two fingers to immobilize it. Finally, I took another, whole rag and wrapped my entire hand.

Time to go. The blood was soaking through the rags already and it was starting to hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. I ran into the house for my car keys and cell phone -- dripping blood with every step. I went back to the garage, grabbing a bath towel and some extra shop rags along the way. I folded the towel on my lap to catch the blood that ran down my arm and, bending my elbow, raised my hand so that my fingers were pointing skyward. I backed out of the garage.

As an aside: When my oldest son got home from school about twenty minutes later he was completely traumatized. My normally neat workshop was strewn with sawdust and blood splatter. The chainsaw was on the floor in front of the workbench, more blood up on the work surface. And there was a trail of blood into the house and back. He was angry that I didn't leave a note. (I'm such an inconsiderate bastard.)

While I drove one handed, I tried to dial my wife's office on the cell phone. The Gate Keeper answered the phone. My wife is the Controller for a national corporation and the receptionist, who answers the phones, felt it was her job to keep undesirables away from the executives. Apparently she considered husbands undesirable. (Good luck with that.)

So after a pre-ordained exercise in futility, the best I could do was leave a message. We have two hospitals in the town where we lived and under the best of conditions I could never remember their names. Knowing this, I left the following message. "I cut my hand with a chainsaw and I am on my way to the emergency room . . . uh, I'll meet you at the last one we were at. Get there as soon as you can."

I figured she would get there before me. The hospital was on the other side of town from where we lived; on the same side of town where she worked. When I finally, somehow got to the hospital she hadn't arrived yet. The pain in my hand was really intense now. I had re-wrapped the outer rag twice during the trip, replacing the blood soaked one with a fresh one each time. I hurried through the automatic door into the emergency room's waiting room and . . . well, waited.

First I waited in line to be "Next." I noticed when they took the guy ahead of me they called him "Next", also. So the next time they said "Next", I figured I was next. (Blood loss usually clarifies my thinking that way.)

The lady in white looked at me and said, "Next."

"Hi!" I said cheerfully. "I cut my hand with a chainsaw? It's messed up pretty bad. But if you have someone else with a headache or a marble up their nose, I'll gladly wait some more. I can just bleed into that wastebasket over there." I gestured with my bad hand, flinging blood for about three feet. I looked back to see her reaction.

"I'll just need some insurance information, sir." She said politely.

So after another twenty minutes I was talking to an intern. He had my hand unwrapped and was making tsking sounds. "The good news is you only knicked the bone." he finally said.

"What's the bad news?" I reflexively asked. He stared at me like I was an idiot then very slowly said, "You cut your finger with a chainsaw."

Just then my wife rushed in, breathless. "You told me the wrong hospital." She said. Not: "How are you?", but, "You told me the wrong hospital." Apparently I was inconveniencing her, too.

"No I didn't." I responded. Then I said, "How are you?" Just for the hell of it.

"You said you would be at the last hospital we were at." she insisted. "That was St. Joe's for your knee surgery!"

"Uh . . . I said I'd be at the last emergency room we were at." I countered, "We came here when I chased that mole into the bathroom and it bit me, remember?" I paused to watch that sink in and asked again, "So, how are you doing?"

Finally she was at my side, holding my good hand, asking me how I was. The doctor answered for me. "He was lucky. The finger bone is intact. He chewed the skin up pretty badly and he cut the tendon but we should be able to be repaired that. For a chainsaw accident he was quite fortunate."

I turned to him, putting on my serious face. "Tell me, Doc, will I be able to play the piano after the surgery?"

After a moment's thought, he replied, "I don't see why not."

"That's great!" I beamed. "Because I never could before the accident."

NOTE TO SELF: Don't f**k with the Doctor until after he cleans out the wound.

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