CRUCIFIXION - PT. 3

As soon as I get the 911 operator on the line, things start looking up.  She just sounds so calm and lucid - as if plunging a knife clear thru my hand is a perfectly reasonable thing for me to have done on a fine Thursday evening at home.

I’ve already given her my address …

Me:  “… and now I have a dishtowel duct taped around my hand…but I feel kinda dizzy…”

911:  “…Okay, that’s good. (???)  What you need to do now is sit down in a chair and hold your hand up - as high as you comfortably can.”

Me: “Like, up above my head?”

911:  “Above heart level is fine.”

Now why the hell didn’t I think of that?  As soon as I elevate my hand, I can feel that the blood stops gushing almost immediately.   The 911 broad stays on the phone with me until the EMT dudes ring the buzzer.   I thank the nice broad, hang up and buzz  ‘em into the building. 

Two youngish EMT dudes make their way up the stairs.  I’m standing there in my doorway waving my bloody-soaked dish-toweled right hand in the air while struggling with Ellie - who has become a squirming a football - under my left armpit.  

Dude # 1:   “What are you doing?”

Me: “What do you mean, what am I doing?”

Dude #2: “Why are you holding that dog like that?”

Me: “What?  Why can’t I hold my dog?”

Dude # 1: “It just looks strange.”

Me: “She’s just a puppy.  If I don’t hold her, she’ll bolt down the stairs.  YOU wanna chase her down the stairs?  Because I’m pretty busy bleeding to death here.  I don’t really feel up to dealing with that, too.” 

Dude # 2: “Okay, let’s just get you inside…”

So we go into the living room, since the kitchen in that apartment was the size of a storage closet.  I put Ellie down and I sit on the couch.  The one dude starts removing the dishtowel. 

Dude # 1:  “Wow, how’d you DO this?”

Me: “Death by candle holder.”  Meanwhile…

Dude # 2:  “THIS IS YOU?”

Me: “What?”  I look up.  Chris is an artist and our apartment is wall-to-wall oil paintings.  The dude is staring up at one painting in particular – a huge portrait of a voluptuous and utterly naked woman splayed out on a table.  It’s one from his early art school days.

Me: “No, that’s not me.”

Dude #2: (sounding dejected): “Oh.”

These two finally buckle down together, swab and re-wrap my hand.  I have to stay seated throughout, hold it up high or else the blood starts pumping out again.  Then it’s time to hustle me off to the Emergency Room. 

I put a protesting Ellie into her crate and grab a jacket and my keys but as we’re leaving it dawns on me that Chris will be home soon and he’s gonna come into the apartment to find bloody mayhem all over the kitchen and one hysterical, incarcerated puppy. 

Me: “Listen – give me a second, guys.  I have to just leave my husband a note.”  The dudes are waiting for me in the hallway.

Lucky for me, I’m a lefty.  I JUST start scribbling a note when I hear one of the dudes say: “ARE YOU THE HUSBAND?”

And then I hear Chris’ voice: “Uuuhhhh…yeah….?” 

I can tell exactly what he is thinking just by the sound of this interaction:

Oh, god…what has she done now?  Has she actually killed herself in anticipation of failing as a dinner hostess for my parents? 

And I’m sorta right, because in the after-aftermath of all this, he admits to me: “I had no idea what to expect.  Just being called THE HUSBAND in that way sent shivers of pure dread thru me.” 

Which, well it should because ACTUALLY – later on at the hospital, while my hand was being FLUSHED FOR PARTICLES (OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW) , Chris was being relentlessly interrogated by the hospital detectives as to whether in fact it may have been THE HUSBAND who committed THE STABBING. 

We got home from the hospital very late – actually, it was about 2 or 3 in the morning when all was said and done.  I did manage to have one more rather significant melt-down when the x-ray technician went “on break” JUST before it was my turn to get x-rays and I’d already been waiting for over 2 hours.  I was threatening the staff, getting kinda loud.  CAGED HEAT  kinda stuff.  Hey, it was a rough night.  At any rate, by the time I was finished up over there, I don’t think anyone had any more doubts about who had committed their very own stabbing.  Chris was officially off the hook.

Just before I collapse into bed, exhausted from my own hysteria and high as hell on painkillers, I hear my mother's voice floating in from the other room - on my answering machine: "LYNN WHERE ARE YOU.  ME AND YOUR FATHER ARE VERY WORRIED.  CALL US NOW.  We want you to CALL US RIGHT NOW."  And then, mercifully, everything goes BLACK.

The dinner party was postponed exactly one week and it was an unmitigated triumph.  Somewhere there are photos of me raising my wine glass with one hand, beaming and waving cheerfully with my other big, giant, bandaged mitt.

So this was a real fun adventure.  And as always, I’ve enjoyed dragging you all into it with me.  And I came away from it very lucky because while there is some nerve damage, it is extremely minimal and it has not affected my life as a musician or otherwise. 

I do still get that little tingly sensation occasionally, tho’, if I move the hand just right.  And it serves as a useful reminder to always try to keep my wits about me.   Because ANXIETY KILLS.

Or in the very least, it can sure hurt like hell.

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