Courage under fire

The other night I was hiking in the woods with a new friend, when a thought occurred to us: we need apple crisp. There's just something about the fall (as muted as it is in California) that screams for some kind of dalliance of the apple variety, so we hit up the grocery store, bought apples and oats (and wasabi peas, but that's neither here nor there) and then she dropped me off at home to make my apple crisp, while she sped away to craft her own creation.

But something unexpected happened that interrupted my apple-euphoria. I was just about to pour the crumble topping on a pan of skinned apple slices when the Scooby Snacks did a bit of skinning of his own: cutting into a peach, the knife slipped and sliced his thumb. The cut bloomed and blood began to immediately pour out.

He grabbed his hand, began to pace back and forth across the room and kept repeating,, "this is going to be bad. Oh yes. This is a bad one." I grabbed some paper towels and told him to clamp down on his thumb while lifting his hand above his heart.

After a couple of minutes, I told him I needed to see it so that I could determine whether or not we should go to the emergency room. He looked at me, terror in his eyes, and then began to whimper. "No, no. Don't make me. I don't want to see it."

"You don't have to see it. You can close your eyes."

"No. I don't want to see it."

"I don't really want to see it either," I assured him. "But if I don't, how will I know if we should go to the hospital?"

After a few back and forths, I finally lost it.

"Pull yourself together!" I yelled. And, although he still looked terrified, he held out his hand. As soon as he lifted the paper towel from his finger, blood began to run down his hand like lava out of Mordor. We decided to wait a couple more minutes. If the bleeding stopped, we'd put a band-aid on and call it a night. If not, to the emergency room we would go.

After a little while longer our valiant Scooby began to complain that his good hand was cramping up from putting pressure on his bloody thumb.

"It hurts!" he whined. "I can't do it." It was around this time that I realized. I can never have kids. In fact, I shouldn't even own a hamster. It's bad enough that I don't know what to do in these situations, but I also lose my cool fairly easily.

"Well why don't you let me put pressure on it instead?" I pleaded. But he wouldn't stop pacing around the room like some possessed Energizer bunny, except (at that moment) a lot less adorable. I could feel the urge to yell again, so instead, at 9 p.m., I grabbed my shoes and his jacket and ushered him into the car for a ride to the hospital. On the drive there, Scoobs alternated between apologizing and saying, "I'm such an idiot. You think I'm a klutz don't you?"

I would never tell klutzy mcklutzerton the truth: if there is a glass of red wine within a 1 mile radius, he will spill it. If he CAN lock his keys in his car, he WILL. When I looked over at him slicing into his thumb, I thought to myself, "business as usual."

"No, sweetheart. You aren't a klutz!"

It took a little over an hour for the doctors to call Scooby back. I had toyed with the idea of going with him, but it was late and my patience was waning so I opted to sit in the waiting room and read my book.

About an hour later, there was still no sign of Scooby. There was however a sign of some crazy people, most notably, a woman who had crawled on hands and knees out of the ER and into the waiting room. She was screaming expletives at the top of her lungs as the door to the ER closed and locked behind her. She also appeared to be on her cell phone.

"Fuck you motherfuckers. Y'all are ugly," She yelled. A moment later a single file of doctors and nurses from the ER and stood in front of her as she hissed and screamed. She yelled up to them as she sat defiantly on the ground. "What are you all going to do? Fuck you. I don't give a shit."

Where the hell am I? I wondered.

Most of the doctors rolled their eyes and proceeded back into the ER, but one man knelt on the floor and offered to help. "Just tell me what's wrong and I can help you," he pleaded. But she wasn't having it.

"Oh hail no. I'm not your daughter. Get the fuck away from me." Then she started talking into the phone. "Yes, police department? I am at Alta Bates Hospital and they won't help me. Yes. I had a seizure and they won't help me."

"I take it that you're leaving then?" The kind man said to her, but she just looked right through him.

The woman stayed there. Occasionally she would bang on the door to the ER screaming, "Y'all are motherfuckers." Sometimes she would even heckle people coming out of the ER, including a young couple with a toddler.

Suddenly Craig's histrionics didn't seem so bad. I got the security guard to unlock the door to the ER, and then I tiptoed around Crazy Yelling Lady so I could see my sweetie. He was at the end of a corridor, lying on a bed, napping. I woke him up to tell him about the crazy woman, which we both agreed was a hilarious addition to our traumatizing night. Shortly after, a doctor stopped by to check out the wound.

"Oh we can just glue that shut," he said.

Ummm. What? I came to the hospital to have his wound glued?

"Yes, it's essentially sterile super glue," the doc told us. Well next time I'm just going to glue it myself, I thought.

We finally arrived home around 12:45. My apples were still sitting sliced and naked in a pan on the counter. I quickly threw the topping on and threw the pan into an un-preheated oven (Martha Stewart would be ashamed, but it was late), then I sat on the couch next to Scooby who was in remarkably good spirits.

"I wasn't very good at that--at being a nurse," I admitted. And then I thought about how easy it is to just live alone without having to take care of anyone. It was so simple when I only had to worry about myself; and if I did a sloppy job, no one else would have to suffer. He assured me that I had done a stellar job--that we had both been exceptionally courageous and cool-headed that night.

Plus, if I didn't have Scooby around, who would eat my apple crisp with me? And who would drive me to the hospital if I needed stitches? And most importantly, who would laugh with me about the crazy "fuck you motherfucker" ladies of the world?