The Splinter

          When my mother suddenly became ill with a heart problem, I was drafted as a temporary replacement for her in my father’s medical office near the Smoky Mountains. I didn’t relish the idea of taking any leave from my glamorous job as a U.S. Senate lawyer, but it was a genuine emergency and I was assured it would only be for a couple of days.
          How could I say no?
          So I rushed home from Washington to fill in as a receptionist for a rural family doctor in East Tennessee. But, to my growing horror, the “couple of days” stretched into weeks, and then into months. This was a deeply unwelcome career detour and I have to admit I wasn’t graceful about the transition from white marble columns and gilded domes to naugahyde and peeling linoleum, from Neiman Marcus to Wal-mart.
          I was moping and sulking behind the reception desk when Jason Wolfe burst through the door and stood in the middle of the waiting room flailing his right arm and making garbled swearing sounds. I looked up from reading my horoscope. Jason said, “I got a splinter in my hand.”
          “Okay,” I said, “I’ll put you down,” and went back to my reading.
          Jason, the owner and boss of a local construction crew, had dark brown eyes, dark skin, and high cheekbones that marked him as part Cherokee. He wore his straight black hair long, tied back in a ponytail. He was handsome and knew it and was a big flirt.
I heard another incomprehensible burst of sound. I looked up again, perplexed, to see Jason swinging his arm around wildly. It seemed like quite a production over a splinter.
He saw my expression and brandished his right hand, first giving me a look at the back side where there was a strange lump over one knuckle. Then he came closer, stood, and brought his hand level with my eye. Then, with a flourish, he flipped it around to expose the palm side.
          Good God. He had a piece of wood the size of a steak knife driven through his hand like a spike. His entire palm was impaled on it. One jagged raw end of it protruded at least three inches from the palm. The splintered stick was slightly triangular, with the pointy end stabbed into the flesh of his hand. About an inch or so of it seemed to be trying to emerge from the back side of his hand, but it had stopped before it pierced the skin, just raising it like a tent pole over the knuckle of his middle finger.
          The stick wasn’t driven straight through either. It took the long way, angling at about thirty degrees. About three inches of it was buried inside his hand. I looked at the thing in shock.
          Jason shook his hand in my face for a second and then resumed his flailing and said,           “Yeah. Right. I need some help!”
          I agreed. I hopped off my chair and said, “Come on back.”
          I could hear someone saying, “Somebody needs to do something. Somebody needs to do something about this.” Then I realized it was me. I went toward the back to get somebody, anybody, to help him.
          Daddy met Jason halfway down the hall, took hold of his wrist, and began to examine his hand. Daddy flipped the hand back and forth, first looking at the raw end of the piece of wood and then at the nauseating tent of skin over the knuckle. He flipped it at least a dozen times. I guessed he was trying to evaluate its trajectory, trying to visualize what bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, blood vessels, and nerves might be involved. The sight was just hard to take in. It was almost like one of those silly trick arrows that people wore on their heads at parties. Daddy kept flipping the hand. He too seemed to be looking for the trick.
          “I pulled on it,” Jason said, panting, “but I couldn’t get it to come out. Then Wormey tried.” Wormey was Jason’s assistant. “He pulled on it hard, but he couldn’t get it out either. It’s killing me.”
“Come on back here and lay down and we’ll see what we can do,” Daddy said.
          He led Jason down the hall by his wrist and had him stretch out on the surgical table. He said over his shoulder, “Alma, get him fifty milligrams of Demerol.”
She went away to draw up the pain medicine while Daddy laid out the surgical instruments. He draped a stainless steel tray with a sterile moisture-proof sheet and then arrayed an assortment of sterile bandages, gauze, and gold-handled stainless steel instruments atop it.
          Alma gave Jason the injection and Daddy resumed his flipping, carefully studying the situation. “How’d you do this?” he asked.
          “We’re building an extension on a horse barn. I was up on a scaffold. The board I was standing on broke. I tried to grab hold of something to catch myself. Whatever it was I grabbed hold of broke off in my hand.”
          Jason’s forehead was beaded with sweat. Rivulets began to run down his temples and into his hair.
          “Turn on the fan,” Daddy said.
          Alma adjusted the fan so it would blow across Jason’s face. At least this was part of a recognizable routine. It was common for people who were hurt to need the fan while Daddy worked on them. Cooling them off reduced their nausea. And mine too. I got several squares of gauze and swabbed Jason’s face to comfort him and divert his mind.
          My swabbing and the fan seemed to help a little, but when Jason looked at me his pupils were hugely dilated. They were so large, I could make out only the thinnest band of brown iris around the edge of the black. No way had one shot of pain medicine done that. Especially since the pain medicine didn’t seem to be working yet.
          “Well, there’s no point in x-raying you because wood doesn’t show up on an x-ray,” Daddy said, then he left the room. He went into his private office next door, where I could hear him fiddling with something. Alma could hear him too and she looked worried. What was going on? Whatever it was, she knew, and didn’t like it. Maybe this would be a good time for me to leave. I tried to sneak out, intending to return to the reception desk. I glanced into Daddy’s office as I tiptoed by and stopped dead. He had a toolbox out and was rummaging around in it.
          It wasn’t some sort of fancy Neiman Marcus toolbox for doctors, either. It was an ancient grungy battered metal toolbox. He pulled out a pair of pliers. Oh no. I turned to take off, but Daddy saw me. “Carolyn,” he said, “come here, I can use you for a second.”
          Apprehensively, I followed him back into Room 3. He rolled the instrument tray around behind Jason’s head so he couldn’t see it and then laid the pliers on it. Then he looked at Jason’s eyes and checked his pulse. The pain medicine should have kicked in by now, but even I could see it wasn’t working. Daddy told Alma to get him another twenty-five milligrams of Demerol.
          “We’re gonna get you another shot of pain medicine. That’ll help you relax a little bit,” Daddy said. I raised my eyebrows and bugged my eyes at him to ask why the pain medicine wasn’t kicking in and he mouthed “adrenaline.” The fear and pain were flooding Jason’s system with adrenaline and this was offsetting the pain medicine.
          The bright surgical lamp was turned on and adjusted to shine on Jason’s stomach. Then Daddy took Jason’s hand and placed it atop his stomach in the middle of the circle of light. Daddy gestured for me to go around to the far side of the table, then he began to pull on his sterile surgical gloves, a wisp of talcum powder escaping from each glove as he tugged at it.
          Daddy swabbed the entry wound with bright orange merthiolate. I appreciated this because the bright orange disinfectant made the red of the blood and the pink of the torn flesh much less noticeable.
          Then he said, “Carolyn, you stand on that side. Alma can help me keep this hand in position.”
          I didn’t take a genius to know what he meant. He wanted me to hold down Jason’s left side and Alma his right.
          Daddy looked at Alma and me. “Once we get started we’re not gonna stop until this is out,” he said. Then he looked at Jason. “This might hurt. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
Might hurt? I felt sick.
          I already had Jason’s left hand in both of mine, holding it so the back of it was against my chest. I adjusted it so it was against a breast, hoping that would distract him. He swiveled his head to look at me in surprise. I leaned over him and wiped his dripping forehead. His eyes were bulging and his chest was heaving with each breath. He was terrified and in a lot of pain. I saw Daddy turn and reach for the pliers and decided to go for broke. I kept a strong grip on his left hand with my right one and then placed my left hand on his thigh, high on the inside of his thigh, you might even say on his groin. I asked, “Are these hot?”
          Jason’s wild eyes swung away from Daddy again to look at me in shock. He croaked,           “What?”
          “These overalls,” I said plucking at the fabric in a particularly sensitive area. “Are they hot to work in?” I asked as innocently as I could manage.
          Just then Daddy crushed the splinter in the jaws of the pliers and pulled so hard he lifted Alma onto her tiptoes. Jason sucked in a huge breath and his feet came off the table. Then, in the space of two seconds, it was over. Daddy brandished a seven inch long piece of bloody wood, still clamped between the jagged, slightly rusted, jaws of the pliers.
          Jason’s dilated gaze fixed on the gigantic splinter and then rolled to the pliers. It was obvious he was having to work hard to focus his eyes.
          “Damn, Doc, that looks like a pair of pliers you used on me!”
          “It is,” Daddy said as he dropped the stick into a plastic bag and laid it on Jason’s chest for a souvenir. Then he handed me the pliers. “You can put these back in the toolbox now.”
          “Doc,” Jason said, “them’s cheap Chinese! I had some Craftsmans out in the truck!”
His voice was starting to slur. Now that his adrenaline rush was over, the large dose of pain medicine was kicking in. Wormey would probably have to carry him home.
***
          The next day Jason came in to have his wound looked at and have the dressing changed. On his way out, his hand swathed in a bulky white bandage cradled against his chest, he dipped his head to whisper, “You tricked me!”
          “What?” I said, trying to act innocent again.
          “I went home yesterday wondering if maybe you liked me, but when that dope wore off I realized you were just trying to keep me from seeing them pliers coming.” His expression was a mixture of embarrassment and amusement.
          “I was trying to help you,” I said, smiling.
          “It was a dirty trick.”
          “Worked though, didn’t it?” I said.
          “Yeah,” he said. “It sure did. You’re getting to be a hell of a nurse, Carolyn.”
          After Jason had driven away I sat on the hard wooden stool my mother had occupied for thirty-six years before me and realized that my new skills weren’t much by some standards. They certainly weren’t going to get me on the six o-clock news or even on C-Span. But it was a start that felt pretty good.