Spare Us the Cutter

“Yeah, I forgot about the ice. I should have iced it to numb it,” said Sam, talking eagerly and confidently, from the dirty end of the Stupid Bong.

It’s now a few days since I stabbed myself in the right pinky knuckle with my mechanical pencil and I can still barely move my left arm. And Sam is still thinking of ways to improve the procedure, in case the need arises again.

On Monday morning, as I confidently reached my right hand into my right pocket, my right pinky knuckle met with the tip of my mechanical pencil, which pointed upward in my pocket. The tip, with graphite engaged drove deep underneath my skin, leaving a fair amount of the graphite lead in the skin. It did not hurt, it just looked horrifically stupid.

The details of my mini-freakout, including the gulping of a snickers bar for comfort shall be excluded from this tale. This story is dedicated entirely to Sam, stalwart battlefield medic and all around, valiant quack.

Sam saw me struggling at my desk, under a pile of first aid supplies, peroxide, tweezers, and candy wrappers. He is the man you go to when you have a problem because he will cause the problem to be resolved, by his own hands, or he will nudge the problem into the right hands. He quickly assessed the situation and decided that his own hands could and would cause the solution.

He immediately began working at my knuckle using the sharp tweezers that Matt keeps in his pen cup, making sure to wash off the blood every so often with peroxide. When he realized, from my incessant bleating, that all of the progressively painful wriggling and clipping of the visible portion of the graphite was fruitless, he quickly drew up a very sober seeming, two-step approach to the problem. He enthusiastically explained the problem in figure one.

“See, half of the lead broke off and the part we’re seeing is all under the skin.”

And then he went on to explain the solution.

“So what we have to do is cut into the skin like so, and we may have to cut out these little pleats on either end of the cut, kind of like an episiotomy. Once we cut the skin, we’ll fold it back and just knock the remaining lead loose. See? Just like that.” Yes, just like folding back the sarcophagus and knocking the remaining mummy loose. Just like that.

After shooting a dirty, confused, incredulous look, I began looking through my wallet for my medical card and I started to dial for REAL HELP.

“Oh SEE how you are?” He said, using his index finger as conductor’s baton.

“What do you mean how 'I' am? Yes, I’m going to a doctor. I’m not letting you perform minor surgery on me at my desk with a razor blade and blue masking tape.”

“It’s not a big deal at all. It’s just under the surface. Look, you can see it, it’s just right there. It just needs a little nudging. People do it all the time. All we need is a brand new X-acto blade that's never been used, and we can do it right here. Why waste your day in urgent care, we can do it right now, come on.”

He held up the sketch. “See?”

I paused and imagined Blind Justice with her stupid scales and I borrowed them for a minute. I began piling thoughts on either side of the scale, in no particular order:

1. My day is really busy and I have no time to waste at the Urgent Care Facility that aslo doubles as a Pizza Hut.
2. On the other hand the other coworkers, Dawn in particular, seem pretty upset by what they have seen and heard so far, and I'm not sure they should handle any further civil war battlefield surgery at my desk.
3. But it would be nice to get this all out, and Sam has communicated what needs to occur more clearly and more concisely than any doctor has ever done for me. I know exactly what to expect.
4. And, I'm sure that with enough peroxide and alcohol, we can make a semi-sterile environent, and then we could just slather up a bunch of Neosporin on the cut once it was all over.
5. But, haven't I learned anything from how my parents mis-handled similar situations? Don't I remember the time I was 12 when they didn't send me to the hospital after I cut my eye open with a wrench? Don't I remember that my eye swelled shut for a week and that my grandma, during our week-long road trip pumped me full of non-FDA approved antibiotics that she got from a friend who went to Tijuana?
6. But I'm not really interested in forking over that $100 emergency room co-pay. Man, fuck Blue Cross.
7. Maybe this will be different.

Sam looked at me expectantly during the time freeze, while I played with the borrowed scales, moving things on and off, left to right, and back again. When I felt ready, I un-paused. I gathered myself and all of my blood, and I went in search of new blades.

To be continued.