The Broken Finger

	My legs pumped painfully on the ground. Beside me, my dog, Sebastian, 
galloped happily. He loved to go on walks, whether I walked along with him, 
or ran, or whether we walked around the neighborhood or just down the 
street.

	As my Golden Retriever and I entered our house, Sebastian pushed passed me 
through the front door. I tossed his brown leather leash on the hall table 
and-glancing at a magazine that was lying open-slammed the front door 
closed. The middle finger on my right hand got caught between the glossy 
wood of the door and the entryway.

	I screamed.

	My mother came walking in from the kitchen, clutching an old faded pink 
dishtowel in one hand and a spoon in the other. She must have been finishing 
the breakfast dishes, because her hands were soapy and wet.

	When she saw me, clutching my hand that was oozing blood, she literally 
jumped.

	"What happened?" asked Mom urgently.

	"I-I-I-I" I said, gasping, and unable to finish my sentence.

	By this time, my father and my brother had come into the hallway. My dad 
took one look at my hand, with blood pouring out of my dangling finger and 
seeping onto the rest of my hand, and turned away. He can’t stand the sight 
of blood, ever since I banged my head on the coffee table in the living room 
when I was maybe one or two and required some hefty stitches and constant 
band-aid-changing.

	Quickly and swiftly, my mother ushered me out to her green minivan and 
helped me get in. Then she wrapped the dishtowel around my bleeding finger. 
"Hospital," she called to my dad, who was hovering in the doorway with my 
brother. He understood.

	Mom closed the door for me, and seeing that my trembling fingers weren’t 
going to be much help in terms of fastening my seatbelt, she leaned over and 
pushed the reflective metal clasp into its safe home.

	During the long drive to the hospital, Mom murmured, "You’ll be all right" 
and "Don’t worry" so many times that I actually believed her. Aside from 
that, however, the drive was pretty much quiet. She hadn’t even turned on 
the radio.

	Time seemed to have stopped. We were driving on an endless highway, and all 
our turns took us nowhere.

	I thought about my neighbor, John, who is a friend of my dad. He was mowing 
his lawn a few years ago, barefoot, and suddenly one of his big toes got 
caught in the lawnmower and sliced it to pieces. They weren’t able to save 
the remains of the toe, and he now had to live with nine toes instead of 
ten.

	Would I have to live with nine fingers?

	When we were almost at the hospital, I asked in a whisper, "Will my finger 
fall off?"

	My mother laughed nervously. "No, sweetheart. I mean, I don’t think so . 
. ."

	We pulled into the parking lot of the emergency wing. As we walked up the 
walkway, a woman about my mother’s age came out of the swinging glass doors; 
a white cast around her arm. I gulped.

	Mom talked to the receptionist while I waited anxiously in a hard plastic 
gray chair. Minutes ticked by and soon Mom joined me. We watched a TV show 
about Ronald McDonald and some boring car commercials, and after what seemed 
like hours, I was finally called into the doctor’s office, where my finger 
had x-rays taken of it. Then, after my doctor presumed it broken (and I 
thought, "Duh, of course it’s broken, it practically fell off!"), I had to 
wait for the doctor to get ready to sew my finger back on.

	So while the doctor saved my poor little finger, my mom and I played 
numerous games of hangman and twenty questions.

	Over the next few weeks I mastered (well, not really) becoming 
ampedextrous, since my whole right arm down to my elbow was covered with a 
cast. And it wasn’t even the good kind of cast, where people can sign it and 
decorate it. It was this beige plastic bumpy material that washed away pens.

	During this phase in which I was constantly asked, "Did you break you hand, 
wrist, or elbow, and how?" and I had to stupidly reply, "I broke my finger 
by slamming it in the door," I learned that I need to move more slowly in 
order to get through life in one piece. I shouldn’t have closed the front 
door to quickly and abruptly, and I can honestly say that from now on I 
always close the door quietly, so that it gently clicks into place.