Oh, It’ll Fester

June 10th, 2005 Posted in 2005

Due to events entirely beyond my control — I dropped a glass last week, swept it up half-assedly, and ended up missing several sizable shards — I recently managed to get a largeish sliver of glass lodged in my heel. In retrospect (the most accusing of spects), I probably should have tried to extract it right then and there. In this case, though, I’d managed to step on it around three in the morning. I’d only even stepped on the damn glass while heading to the bathroom, eager to take care of the sort of pressing enterprise people usually head to the bathroom to take care of at three in the morning. (You guessed it: putting a garbage bag over my head while masturbating on a picture of Bob Costas. Come on, tell me you’ve never done this.)

I was tired, it was late. I didn’t have any tweezers. I ended up limping back to bed, hopeful the glass business might do me a solid and sort itself out.

The next morning I sat on the end of my bed and tried to examine my heel for any large glass-shaped protrusions. This proved exceedingly difficult, since the shard had imbedded itself in an awkward part of my foot that was impossible to view straight-ahead. Lacking the flexibility of a Czechoslovakian gymnast, trying to find the tender area was akin to trying to look at the back of one’s own head to find a cut.

Several sexy contortions later, I could sort of kind of almost see my entire heel, and was unable to find anything sufficiently wound-like. “Hey, bitchin’,” I thought. “Jay Pinkerton’s bulletproof heel, one; glass shard, fuck you.” Pleased that my body’s superhuman restorative powers had gotten me out of another jam — thanks, lads! — I stood up victoriously, then immediately fell back onto the bed as a result of an acute shooting pain in my heel.

Hmm. Late for work as always, I opted on the only option time allowed: walking gingerly on the injured heel. This meant adopting kind of a loping gait throughout the day usually reserved for lispy hunchbacks.

When I got home that night my dad called. After chatting for a bit, I offhandedly mentioned the stupid shard.

“Really?” he said. “Why don’t you just take it out?”

“I’ve been trying,” I admitted. “But it’s in a really awkward spot. It’s hard to bring my heel around to where I can get a good angle to take it out.”

“You should go to the emergency room,” he advised. “If you keep walking on it, it could get lodged in your foot, a layer of skin will grow over it, and you’ll limp for life.”

This is how my parents talk, honestly. Wonder no longer why I’m such a sober, pessimistic person.

“P’shaw, it’s just a piece of glass,” I brush-off uncertainly. “I’m sure the wound’ll just fester for a bit and the shard’ll fall out.”

“Oh, it’ll fester, all right,” he agreed. “It’ll fester. But the glass might not come out. Trust me. I KNOW.” He chuckled knowingly in the tones of a soldier who’s survived years dodging flak in the front lines of the war against splinters, shards and other assorted foot wounds.

“So we’re agreed at least that it will fester,” I said.

“Oh, it’ll fester,” he agreed.

This is actually how Pinkertons converse to one another.

After hanging up the phone, I ran the options through in my head. I’d already been walking on the wound for a day now. If it was in there, it’d be IN there by now. I didn’t have any tweezers. It would probably take care of itself. Hadn’t this happened before once and it’d worked out all right? It had probably worked out all right.

Hmm. Yeah, it’d definitely happened to me once, probably, and it’d probably worked out fine.

Hmm.

“No, sir,” said the drugstore pharmacist ten minutes later. “There aren’t any balms that can bring out splinters.”

“Just tweezers, then?” I asked.

“Just tweezers.”

“What if it’s been in there for a day?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, what if I walked on the shard for a day?”

She gave me a look. “You’ve been walking on a glass shard all day?”
she asked.

“Um. Well, gingerly,” I clarified, hoping to save face.

“Is it festering?” she asked.

“Er. No. I don’t think so.” I looked down at my foot. “Should it?” I added uncertainly.

“After a while, yes,” she said.

“Will that help get the splinter out?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” she agreed.

“Oh, good.”

“Most of the times not, though,” she backtracked.

I sighed. “We’re agreed at least that it will fester, though?”

“Oh, it will fester,” she said.

“Just the tweezers, then.”

Flash forward another ten minutes, with me in the most yet another sexsational contortion, my foot wedged up behind me, me leant far back to examine the heel, a pair of tweezers in one hand, a wad of paper towel to bite down on in the other.

“Alrighty.”

I rubbed the tweezers around the heel a little, still uncertain where the shard of glass might be. The skin had, as per my father’s prophetic words, healed up around the wound already.

“Alrighty.”

I tried moving the tweezers along the heel, trolling for any sharp pains. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Noth—”OW OW OW OW OW OW OW fuck shit cunt piss fuck cocking Jesus shit fuck.”

Okay then. I’d isolated the location. Now it was just a matter of:

-opening up the closed wound with my tweezers;
-inserting the pointed steel tips into the wound; and
-digging around for a shard of glass — delicately, of course, so it wouldn’t get driven deeper in or, worse, become several smaller glass shards to remove.

Not a problem. You’re a Real Man, I thought, inserting the capital letters to the title as I inserted the wad of paper towel into my mouth. A Real. Goddamn. Man. Not a problem. Get in. Get the glass. Get out, soldier! That’s an order! Now! Now! Now!

“Ngg. Muffermugher. Nggg. NG! Fugh fugh fugh fugh! I fughingh… HNGGGGHHHH! Mghhghghghghh! Mgghghghh! MGGHGHGGHH!”

Ten minutes later the tweezers rested on the bedstand on the table. The glass was, as far as I could tell, still in my heel. Five minutes into what had turned out to be an excruciatingly painful ordeal, it occurred to me that all the Real Manliness in the world couldn’t help one extract a piece of glass from the heel of one’s foot when you couldn’t actually SEE your heel properly. As mortally embarrassing as it would be, I would have to go down to the emergency room the next day to get a simple splinter removed from my foot. And, seeing as how splinters tend to take a bit of a back seat in an emergency room, it would most likely mean a good five hour wait.

“Yeah, probably about five hours,” said a co-worker the next day.

“It’s so pathetic,” I said. “And it’s been in there two and a half days now.”

“Has it started to fester yet?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. God. Five hour wait.”

“You know,” he said, thinking. “There’s a walk-in clinic about a block up from here. You snuck out around three, you could be in and out in an hour.”

“Hey,” I said. “That’s not a bad idea.”

“Please lie down on your stomach, Mr. Pinkerton,” said the doctor forty minutes later.

“Okay. Can you see the hole, or…? I couldn’t see the hole last night.”

“Oh, I can see the hole, yes. God. What, um… did you do anything to this last night?”

“I. Er. I tried to get it out last night.”

“I see.” He took another look. “And how did that go?” he added innocently.

“Yes, very funny.” Internally, I was worried about the time. I still had work I needed to do, I hadn’t told anyone I’d be leaving the office, and I’d already spent forty minutes in the waiting room. The point of the matter was, I shouldn’t have been there. It was by this time around 4:00. I had to get back in order to put in two more hours work, then Fedex some documents out by 6:00.

“Okay,” he said. “Well, this shouldn’t be too hard. Did you want some freezing for that?”

“Oh,” I said. “Um, how’s that work?”

“We just slather it on the heel. It’ll take about twenty minutes to take effect.”

“Oh. What time is it now?”

He checked his watch. “4:05.”

Shit, I thought, remembering the same doctor’s assertion some time ago that he’d be “back in five minutes” before disappearing for fifteen. Clearly his conception of time was different from mine. “No, no time for freezing, I guess. I have to get back to the office.”

“Alright, but — this might be in pretty deep,” he warned.

“Yeah. I .. yeah, just do it.”

“Okay. Ready?”

“Yeah.”

4:05

Fuck fuck fuck FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK SHIT FUCK SHUT FUCK SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! Og holygodfuckshitfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck! AGH! MOTHER! FUCKING! GOD! THIS IS! SO! FUCKING PAINFULAGGHHHHHGGHGHGHGHGHGHGH!

“How you doing back there?”

“Oh. Pretty good.”

“Great. I think I’ve almost got it.”

4:07

GNGNGNGNGGNGH! AGH! GOD GOD GOD GOD PAIN PAIN RED SEARING BURNING HOT FUCK PAIN ENTRAILS BLOOD DEATH PAIN FUCK GOD SHIT OVER OVER OVER OVER GOD PLEASE FUCK OW OW OW OWOW OASFOASD FOASDFO ASDO

“Got it!”

“Oh. Great. Hey, great.”

“You want me to check around to see if there’re any more shards in there?”

pause.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess you’d better.”

4:08

OW FUCK OW FUCK OW MOTHER FUCK SHITTY PISSFUCK HURT PAIN BLOOD OH MY GOD THIS FUCKING AH FUCK I GOD FUCK FUCK FUCKFCUFUCKFUCFJFHRUCASUD

“Nope, nothing else. We’re done!”

I expelled a long, long breath. Wow. That really.

Fucking.

Hurt.

You can prepare yourself mentally for pain as much as you want. The truth is, you’re never really reminded, until the point when it actually happens, how much a lot of pain really fucking HURTS.

The doctor bandaged up the foot. “I think you’re good,” he said. “Just keep it in antiseptic for a bit. A warm salt water bath every night wouldn’t hurt either.”

“Okay.” I stood on the foot experimentally. It hurt still. But a different hurt. A good, time-to-heal hurt. “So you’re sure there weren’t any other shards in there?”

“Probably not,” he said. “Even if there were… well, there’s a pretty big hole there now. They’d probably just fall out.”

“I see,” I said, shifting my weight from heel to heel. Good times. “Anything else I should know?”

“Well, just make sure it’s cleaned out, or it’ll fester.”

“Ah,” I said, back in familiar territory. “So we’re agreed about the festering.”

He nodded and wrote something on his clipboard. “Oh, it’ll fester.”