Barely a whisper of thunder slipped through the barrier of walls and windows of the house. A glance at the windows revealed a slight dimming of daylight, perhaps warning of a coming thundershower. Previous days had been dry despite the sound of distant thunder many miles away. The whisper became louder and the sky darker until the whisper was replaced by a shout.

“I believe I’ll go sit on the front porch,” I said. I enjoyed watching a thunderstorm from a sheltered spot. 

“I’ll get a chair and join you,” said Cat as I pulled open the front door and stepped out. Before I got the door closed behind me Cat opened the back door to retrieve a folding chair to bring out front. At that instant a powerful gust of wind zipped through the house and closed the front door with a slam that jarred the front of the house. I was not quite ready for the closure. My attempt at holding the door from slamming shut was an exercise in futility. When I pulled my left hand from the door the end of the third finger was left behind.

The palm of my hand became a reservoir of blood as I made my way to the kitchen sink. Cat got an empty cottage cheese bucket and half filled it with ice and water.

“Put your hand in here. Don’t look at it. It looks like raw hamburger,” Cat said, as if the sight of it would make me retch.

After much excitement and a few more ice cubes we were off on a Sunday afternoon ride to a hospital emergency room; my hand in the bucket, while its contents took on a deeper red hue. The woman at the admitting desk inquired of my problem and asked to see it. I removed my hand from the bucket and thrust it toward her. She looked and dropped her doughnut. She had indicated a long line, but after her view of my finger and the bucket, I was put into the express line. There seemed to be some question of how to dispose of my bloody bucket.

The doctor on duty looked at the damage and said, “When did you have your last tetanus shot.

“1944,” I said. “I remember it well. I was in a line of Army privates headed toward a pair of medics, one on each side of the line. They both hit an arm at the same time. The typhoid shot stung immediately but I barely felt the tetanus shot – for a minute, that is. Before I could put my shirt back on it hit me like a Joe Louis knockout punch. The arm ached for the next two days and any movement only exacerbated the ache.” 

I declined the kind doctor’s recommended shot. She suggested a plastic surgeon and we left with a new bulky bandage.

The next day the plastic surgeon looked at the wound showing little sympathy for a casualty of the thunderstorm.

“Where’s the skin that’s missing?” he asked.

“Don’t know. Stuck to the door frame, I suppose,” I said.

“Gross,” he grimaced. “I’ll have to take a piece of skin from your wrist to graft on the end of the finger.”

Before we left we had to make three more stops to answer the same set of questions as we had to do before seeing the doctor. One would think that in this age of instant worldwide communications a copy of the first set of answers could be sent to the other departments in the same building. Wonder why medical service is so expensive?

Back the next day, it seemed as if major surgery were about to take place. Someone ushered me to a room and bade me undress, don a hospital gown and get into bed. For the next hour a nurse was very kind to me despite sticking me with a needle attached to a bag of something or other. She spread a cover over me and installed something like leg warmers. She made me very comfortable.

The next thing I knew the nurse asked me how I felt. I noticed that the needle was gone. I sat up and she helped me out of bed. She instructed me to get dressed and then I could go. When I looked at my hand I saw a new big, bulky bandage on my finger. To add insult to injury, another bandage was taped across my wrist, as if to cover a suicide wound.

When, a day later, the doctor inspected his work he seemed satisfied, but when I saw it I was less so. It was the ugliest finger I could remember seeing. It had grown a ring of black whiskers, or maybe they were stitches.

Soak in soapy water, add ointment and change the bandage three times a day; that was the routine for the next two weeks. Then the stitches were removed. It’s still ugly but it looks better without the black whiskers. I do have something to be thankful for. It didn’t happen sixty years ago.