It’s not a good sign when a friend calls after 10:30pm and asks, “Do you get squeamish at the sight of blood?”
Me: “No, not really.”
(This is the truth. I don’t know how I’d act around big, gaping wounds or protruding bones, but blood doesn’t bother me. I’ve changed diapers, cleaned up other people’s vomit, and I was there both of the times that my nephew fell down and needed stitches in his first few years of life — lots of blood there, too, and no freaking-out on my part.)
The caller was my friend Crazy Tripp. See, he had shoulder surgery last week (I mentioned it in the post about rock climbing), and even though he’s back at work, and driving his car, his left arm is completely immobilized in a heavy-duty sling. However, since he’s a self-sufficient kind of guy, he still thinks he can do things like clean ultra-sharp knives.
That’s what he was doing last night when the knife slipped and gashed his finger (on his “good” hand, of course). There was blood everywhere. He has a landlord that he lives with, but she’s out of town, so he wrapped up his finger and called me.
I put some stuff together for work the next day, just in case I ended up taking him to the hospital, and made the 15 mile/25 minute drive from Alexandria to Takoma Park, MD. (I’d like to note that the only reason this drive through D.C. took only 25 minutes was because it was after 11pm.)
His finger still looked pretty bad, even though by that point the cut had happened over an hour before. If I’d gotten a gash on my finger like that, I would have gone to the hospital (and I said the same to him). But he didn’t want to go, he said he’d be fine…so I cleaned it out with peroxide, swiped on some liquid adhesive, applied three butterfly bandages to hold it together, then wrapped everything together with gauze and tape. Since we didn’t go to the hospital and it was only around midnight, I left shortly after that to drive back home.
I can only imagine how much his finger is going to be throbbing today — not to mention it’s the only hand he has to work with right now.
