A Quick Slip of the Knife
Before the blade moved through my thumb, I told Steve the dishwasher as he looked on: ‘You need to be careful when you do this, Steve.’
For the split-second the blade was in my thumb, many feelings happened. I felt surprise and anger, annoyance and pain but there was something else I couldn’t describe.
Steve yelled and went to get Murphy, the guys crowded around and I began to feel woozy and nauseous. My thumb pulsed in my fist and blood ran down my arm. Someone told me to hold it under running water and when I did, the pain roared.
The knife lay on the steel table where I dropped it with a faint red streak along the edge. My stomach flipped and I felt a raw edge coming on and I tried to say something but I burped and said I needed some air. Pushing past everyone, I went out the back door.
Murphy followed behind me and told me to sit down on the plastic patio chair in the alcove but I was already making a beeline for it and he took a look at the wound and said it was a nice one and asked how I was feeling. I was feeling sick. He nodded and told me to put my head between my knees and hold my thumb up and he would get me some bandages.
The blood rushed to my head and I remembered that when I was eleven or twelve, I had passed out after getting my ear pierced at a kiosk at the mall. My mom screamed at my face going white, everything went black and I woke up on the floor. We went to get pizza after. The next day at school, people told me it looked cool. I couldn’t remember if back then, I told them the whole story.
Murphy came back with bandages and a soda. He bandaged me up and told me to hold it up for a few minutes and see how I felt about coming back to work. I wish I could say my work ethic kicked in and I bravely stood up, waved him away and went back in the kitchen, but I wanted to go home. The shift had barely started and it was going to be busy. I felt more guilty than brave.
Would I lose my thumb, I wondered? I looked up at the stars in the sky past the back of the buildings across the parking lot. Would I ever be able to play guitar again? I was left-handed so I could still write.
A waiter from the Italian restaurant next door came out the back with a box of wine-bottles. I brought my head back up and he inhaled sharply with concern, shook his head and gave me a look of understanding mixed with something else. I nodded.
I finished my soda and went back into the kitchen and put a rubber glove on my injured hand. The thumb pulsed a bit and I had to ask coworkers to do certain tasks for me but I got through the shift.
After work, Tim the bartender told me I shouldn’t be drinking with an injury and may need to go to the hospital to get stitches. I nodded, reaching into my pocket with two fingers to fish out money for my next pint.
Oliver Sullivan 