I glanced at the cutting board. There was a tiny pool of blood and lemon juice on the center of the board, spreading out from what looked like half of my ring finger and the top third of my pinkie.
My brain couldn’t reconcile seeing those pieces of my body on the cutting board when they were supposed to be on my hand. I stared at them, flexing, but they didn’t move. I turned back to my hand, blood spilling out of two clean-cut stumps of flesh.
‘Gabe!’ James shouted, still not using nicknames. He was pulling on a pair of food prep gloves. ‘Call nine-one-one!’
‘It’s okay.’ I held up my other hand, but I knew it wasn’t okay. James launched toward me with a thick disposable towel. He shoved it over the two fingers I had cut off.
Oh my God, I hadcut offmy fingers.
I was shaking. I was nauseous. Gabe was speaking quickly into his phone, and Dante ran over with the first aid kit as James helped me sit on the floor. The towel was already red. There was blood on the floor, a trail of fat drops from the kitchen line all the way to me.
Dante shouted for me to hold my hand above my head, but I was starting to feel woozy. James lifted my arm for me.
I looked up for Gabe, but he was gone.
The whole event was so fucking embarrassing.
I had felt so great for telling Gabe off, but then it was like the universe said,Okay, Mr High Horse, let’s take you down a few pegs. Only, in universe-speak, ‘pegs’ translated to ‘fingers’.
As if cutting my fingers off wasn’t enough, my timing was perfect, because everyone had just started to arrive for their shifts. George and Natalie were clearly rattled but trying to pretend to be calm. Doris screamed her earsplitting harpy cry. Morgan freaked out when she saw me and started crying.
But why stop there? The paramedics – one of whom was devastatingly hot, by the way – then had to do a quick dress of my wound before they forced me onto astretcherwhen I got a little wobbly standing up. They put my fingers into two separate ziplock bags – provided by Roni and Dante – then put the bags in a cooler – provided by the EMTs.
And of course, because there were only stairs at the loading dock, I had to be wheeled out through the PDR – like I was the sick trays – past every single resident on their way to dinner.
I even heard one old man I recognized whisper, ‘Hey, look! It’s not one of us this time!’
Thankfully, the nurses and doctors at the hospital made this all seem normal. For them, maybe it was. My mom showed up shortly after I arrived, as they were cleaning the wounds and prepping me for surgery.
The doctor cleaning my severed fingers looked at them closely. ‘We shouldn’t have too much trouble reattaching them. This is a really clean cut. What brand of knife was this?’
I sighed. ‘Wüsthof.’
The doctor muttered the name under his breath like he was saving it to a mental shopping cart in his mind.
‘How did this even happen?’ my mom asked from across the room. She was behind the curtain, too squeamish to look.
‘It was an accident.’ I said it too quickly.
‘Did they not train you how to use a knife?’
‘No, they didn’t,’ I said. ‘Iknowhow to use a knife, Mom. You’ve seen me use them a million times. It was an accident.’
‘Why weren’t you doing the …’ She waved her hands on the other side of the curtain. ‘What did you call it? Claw thingy?’
‘It’s just called the Claw. And I was. That’s why only two fingers are off instead of all of them.’
‘What’s the Claw?’ the doctor asked. I bent my right fingers and put the knuckles against my left arm.
‘You make a claw like this and hold the veggie you’re chopping so you don’t … cut your fingers off. Usually.’
The doctor seemed impressed. ‘I don’t really cook much. I’m usually a hospital cafeteria or delivery kinda guy.’
‘I wanted to go to culinary school.’ I stared at my numbed, severed stumps. ‘Will I be able to use my hand again?’
He nodded. ‘Fifty percent get full use. You’re young, and the cut was clean, so with physical therapy, your odds are good for a full recovery.’ He stood, taking my fingers with him. ‘I’m taking these to the OR. A nurse will be by to bring you up and I’ll see you in a bit.’
My mother thanked him and came to my side of the curtain, looking up so she wouldn’t have to see my hand. Once it was just the two of us, I couldn’t hold it in anymore. Tears started streaming down my face, and I began to sob. My mom’s voice changed.
