cobl04
45:33
great stuff Cass! if you have an exploratory essays on Embryonic or The Soft Bulletin (even Yoshimi) i'd love to read them!
i'm really excited, next topic in creative writing is Review, and that's our assignment. i get to write 1500 words on something, one of my favourite albums. just got to pick one!
in the meantime, this is the personal narrative i'm submitting for assessment, it's about 300 words too long, so if you have any suggestions for parts to be excised, or any comments at all, please post!
Thumb-Wrestling // Daniel Paproth
“Oh my FUCKING GOD!”
I didn’t squeal, or scream, necessarily, but it was enough to relay to Ve, the Vietnamese lead hand, that I needed attention. Preferably of the medical kind.
“What-wrong-mate,” says Ve.
What’s wrong, as I turn off the deceptively-powerful drill press, is that I can’t see my left thumb. I can see four fingers, sickly drops of deep red blood, and a shredded polyurethane glove. No thumb.
It is at this moment that my heart skips three beats; I realise that the reason I can’t see my thumb is because it’s barely there.
I spot a bit of purple flesh on the 6.5mm drill bit that I was using. I try to pull my hand away – what’s left of it – but nothing happens. So with my free hand I reach up to the drill head and slowly wind it counter-clockwise, which disgustingly frees the thumb.
I gaze down at what was a fully functional thumb. It’s a glorious array of blood-related colours; red, blue, pink, purple. The tip of it is just hanging there. Looks bad, but I remind myself Leigh had an accident with the drill a few weeks ago and apart from a heap of blood he was ok. Calm down.
“You-go-a-see-Robs-Clarkes-he-help-you,” says Ve. Rob Clarke is the first-aid officer here at Holmwood Highgate, the sheet metal factory in which I work.
Unfortunately it’s quite a walk from the drill press to his office, and I wish I got a dollar for every “oh shit, what happened?” or “you’ll be right, run it under some cold water.” Looking behind me, I think that I won’t have to worry finding my way back to the machine, as I’ve left a Hansel and Gretel trail of blood splatter in my path.
Rob is not as confident H2O will solve the problem. “It’s broken.” FUCK. “Can you move the tip there?” I try. Nothing. SHIT. “You can’t move that at all?” FUCKKKK. “No,” I sort of half-whimper. You’ve gotta be a man in these places, you can’t admit to worry and pain.
“Clayton, take him to the hospital mate. Are you in pain?”
“Nah.”
“Do you want some water?”
“Yeah, I could use a cup, yeah.”
As I get into Clayton’s car my thumb begins to throb as if someone’s using it as a bass drum. As we drive, all I can hear, feel and think is blood. Some morphine’d be bloody nice right now.
***
“What’s your name?”
“Daniel Paproth.”
“You’re going to have to spell that for me.”
“P-a-p-r—is this the emergency department?”
“Yes. P-A-P-R?” This woman asks me, a little impatiently.
“O-t-h. How long is the wait going to be?” I ask.
“As long as it takes.”
I sit down in the cramped waiting room at Williamstown hospital. The seats are small and plastic, and if there was one thing I’d like right now besides medical attention it’s probably a comfortable seat. People sporting very furrowed brows sit in seats as far away from each other as possible – it’s like we all hate each other.
My thumb continues to pound insidiously as I look around the room. No one else seems to be in quite the obvious physical discomfort I am. The walls are a vomit shade of yellow and have apparently been neglected by the cleaners for years.
Outside is not a calming, picturesque garden, but instead scaffolding, flattened cigarette butts and aggressive weeds.
This depressing setting has made me furrow my brow as well, and while I continue to wait to be seen for an emergency, I think back to the incident.
I was drilling holes in aluminium corner posts, and the shavings were getting clogged in the drill bit. To remove it I was turning the machine off. At first. But that became too hard, didn’t it? What better idea than to remove it by gently touching it with my thumb as it’s rotating?
Every now and then the pulsations become a searing stab of fresh pain and I twitch uncontrollably.
My screaming thumb and the incessant waiting and thoughts bouncing around my brain are making me angry. I’m having trouble sitting still, so I tap the ground with my right boot and the armrest with my right hand. Thoughts run into one another.
I’m so goddam stupid.
I need to take a piss.
This can’t be the emergency department.
I’ve been here sitting here for fifteen minutes.
If I had a grinder sticking out of my head would I be told to wait for a doctor as I bleed out?
What if I can’t use it ever again?
I bet all the blokes at work are having a good old laugh.
Everything in this waiting room seems to be amplified. The drone of the TV, the woman trying to get her kid to be quiet, the dull whirr of construction workers up on the scaffolding.
Finally one of the nurses calls me through. “Just have a lie down on this bed,” she smiles. “Are your parents aware that this has happened?”
“Yeah, I think Dad was called.”
“And is he on his way?”
I think about that for a second. To be honest, as much as I’m trying to be macho and pretend I’ve only had a minor incident, I’m in a world of pain, and Dad would know how to calm me down. So – in a hesitant, offhanded way mind you – I tell the nurse that she should probably let him know to come down. “I’m going to need a lift home anyway,” I reason. She obliges and says a doctor will see me shortly.
Glancing around the room reminds me why I hate hospitals. Everything is so pristine, so clean, so white. It reminds me of when I used to visit Nan, and how the only colour in the room was her yellow, jaundiced skin.
It’s been about an hour since the accident now, and the blood is spreading throughout the hastily-applied bandage and it gives off an unpleasant odour as well. Where is Dad, I think to myself, over and over and over.
After about five minutes a slim Vietnamese doctor walks in. A Dr Tran. He must be extremely efficient at his job as he wastes no time.
“Let me see,” he half-demands. I wasn’t looking forward to this, I don’t have a very high pain threshold, I don’t want to see the thumb, I don’t want to be asked questions, I don’t want to try and move it, I just want some painkillers and Dad.
“Broken!” Dr. Tran says. “You have X-Rays now, you come back, we have a look, and maybe you have surgery tomorrow.” And with that he rushes out the room.
The word surgery was the breaking point. Fighting back tears, I got a flashback to Nan’s funeral where I didn’t cry for a second. Yet now I’m sniffling like a schoolgirl. Where the fuck is Dad…
The X-Rays revealed a clean break at the knuckle, and Dr. Tran insists on emergency surgery at Sunshine hospital the following morning at 7am. Luckily Dad’s here now, and he puts a firm hand down on my shoulder. I instinctively went to move away, but he grabbed tighter.
A lovely young nurse from Wisconsin has been with us for ten minutes, has administered some wonderful pain meds, and the three of us are chatting about our family’s upcoming trip to the States. Wiping away the remaining evidence of my little breakdown earlier, my spirits have risen slightly thanks to this nurse, who seems to have no problem with casual laughter and conversation as she removes the swathe of bandages and cleans up my sanguineous thumb.
***
They have that rule for surgery, that you’re not allowed to eat or drink after midnight until your operation. It’s never bothered me. My guts are swirling that much food is the thought furthest from my mind.
Dad and I got there at 7am, and are instructed to the waiting room. There aren’t even two seats together; we’re packed like sardines in a crushed tin box. At about 9am, after we’ve sat through two hours of morning shows (something I’ll become very familiar with over the weeks to come), a man wanting to be known as Dr Luke calls us through.
We sit in a corner, barely hidden from all the other patients, enclosed by one of those short, pinboard walls they erect at expos.
“Hope the wait hasn’t been too painful,” Dr Luke winks.
I like Dr Luke. He’s young, sarcastic, cool even. He examines my thumb carefully.
“It’s not good,” he says. “It’s badly broken, so we’ll put a K-wire in there.”
“Will I be able to use it again?” I ask, trepidation gripping me.
“We’ll do the best we can,” Dr Luke assures me. “We’ll see in you in the theatre,” and he walks away. I punch the wall next to me. Dad sympathises. He broke his arm this time last year after a drunken night at the cricket club. “At least you’ll be getting compo,” he says.
I’m led into another waiting room where I’m instructed to put on the humiliating hospital getup, the white coat with strings at the back, and given a blanket to keep my legs warm as I wait. I’m saved from total boredom for the next two hours by Peter, who is 30-odd and pretty enthusiastic for a man about to have a hernia operation.
“Second time,” he tells me. He’s happy to talk about his fantasy football team until he’s shipped off for hernia removal, leaving me with another morning show.
Midday rolls around and I’m starting to think that perhaps I’ll be here for the rest of my life, edging ever closer to the operating table, waiting room by waiting room.
That hallucination is quashed thankfully as a nurse leads me through a corridor and puts me into a bed. Everything is so white. So white that it’s intimidating. I can hear my heart pounding as they wheel me feet-first through a number of swinging doors and wide corridors.
The anaesthetist’s room is probably the worst of them all. It feels much colder than any other. People crowd over me with masks and words I don’t recognise. I feel like I’m on alien spaceship awaiting probe.
In goes the needle.
***
My eyes feel like they weigh a few hundred kilos each. I feel like I’ve gone a few rounds with Floyd Mayweather, Jr. I squint around the room – there’s Peter! – there’s about 20 of us in here, in evenly spaced beds, like the girls’ bedroom in Madeline.
I try to go back to sleep but it proves futile, the throbbing is unbearable. I ask Dr Luke what the prognosis is for my thumb. He repeats his line from earlier – “we’ve done the best we can” – and says only weeks, months even, of rehab will tell.
The painkillers I’ve been given have eased the pain for now. In my drug-happy state I’m not at all concerned.
I’ll just tell girls it was a thumb-wrestling injury. “You should see the other bloke!”