This is an overly long saga about my broken finger. I’m calling it a saga because it began at Saga-Man’s house. Mark Queijo can drive to the local drugstore to buy dental floss and return with a publishable memoir. In fact, he can’t drive to the drugstore without coming back with some kind of this-could-only-happen-to-me tale.

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Logging day at Mark Queijo’s country estate follows a well-established routine. Every family member and every friend with an arm to twist arrives after dawn and chooses a specific task. Topple trees, tumble cut logs to the log splitter, split those logs, burn brush – anything but stand around and supervise.

Mark’s wife, Jan, and I manned the log splitter. Though a frighteningly powerful machine, the splitter is a safe tool because it minds its own business. Circular saws have a habit of snuggling up against their owners but this thing is like a one-command genie out of the bottle. Issue an order, stand back, and watch its piston driven wedge effortlessly cleave logs that would dull Paul Bunyan’s axe. As Jan says, “I feel so powerful.”

For a while there, we were quite a team. Our voices smothered by engine noise; Jan and I communicated at first by hand signals. I’d drop a log in front of the iron wedge, she’d engage the lever that would send the wedge forward, and I’d signal when to release and retract it. We’d both grab the oak sections and together we’d heave the halves at Mark’s feet where he’d stack it as cordwood. Soon Jan no longer needed hand signals and the wood it-was-a-flying off the splitter. We were a flawless team until I reached to rotate a knotted log as she engaged the lever. My left ring finger snapped like a sun-ripened pea pod.

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I arrived home with my left hand in a bag of ice and Diane insisted she drive me to the emergency room. I shrugged her off (like she needed another afternoon in a hospital?), slipped into a warm bath, then dressed in decent clothes and packed Ed’s most recent book loan – “Ice: Stories Of Survival From Polar Expeditions” – and two New Yorkers. I hoped to be home by dinner.

But this was my lucky day. My competition for the medical staff’s attention was an eleven year old hockey player with a head injury. I thought surely my bent finger would take precedence over his vomiting and even if it didn’t, I’d be home in an hour. Sure enough, moments later I sat talking to the pretty, Eau de Something Erotic-smelling x-ray tech, lead apron still on my lap.

“You’re all done.” She said. The x-ray’s readable. I’ll walk you back to your room.”

“How about my finger? Is it broken?”

“You know I can’t answer that.”

“Doesn’t hurt to ask.”

“No it doesn’t,” she smiled. As we neared my room she said, “You know I’ve got a friend who’s going to split logs this weekend. She thinks nothing bad can happen. I might show her your x-ray.”

I read Ed’s book until the emergency room physician, reserved, Germanic Margaret entered. She ordered a finger splint, explained why she thought I’d need a pin or two (“The way it flopped over.”), and quizzed me intently on how the injury occurred. You see, she too intended to use a log splitter over the weekend. Suddenly log splitters are as common as vacuum cleaners. She also referred me to Dr. Jeffrey Brown, a plastic surgeon. Dr. Brown, I remembered, saved Adam’s routed finger. Whereas others would have lopped the tip off, Dr. Brown shaped the mushy flesh like wet clay, and today Adam has a fully functional middle finger.

****************

Jeff’s a handsome guy at six feet tall, with traces of gray in his brown hair, and a solid frame that suggests daily workouts. We quickly developed a good-old down-home rapport. We talked about the mellow Midwest – he’s from Michigan – his family, his Christmas plans, the book I brought with me ( “Ice”), hardy folk of yore, the weather on the Great Lakes, college football, and what to do about my finger.

“You pin it or you plate it. A plate will allow you to bend your finger and use it right away. However, I don’t have experience with plates that small. I’m not sure they are even appropriate in this case, but I could refer you to an orthopedic surgeon.”

I mulled that one over for about three seconds. Not only had Adam raved about him, but the ER nurse had hollered, “He’s good,” as I turned to leave.

“A referral would mean I’d have to start all over, which means waiting around for another appointment, all with no guarantees. I’ll stick with you and the pins.”

****************

The pinning process was a rather casual event. The day surgical suite required only that I remove my shirt. A Johnny covered my pants and booties my work boots. And like my knee scope, I was fully awake, but without the cozy Valium blanket. Jeffrey numbed my hand by injecting it with Lidocaine in four different places. As I lay on my back, arm outstretched, the surgical nurse bathed my hand in Betadine, Jeff responded to my earlier statement, “We could do this at my house.” “See, this is why your kitchen wouldn’t work. The procedure’s messy and we need an x-ray machine””

With a numb hand (And believe me, this is just like dentistry. Until they drill into you and there is no feeling, you’re never really sure you won’t leap out of the chair or in this case, off the table), Jeffrey pulled the end of my finger back in place – I felt the tugging on my arm – drilled into my finger – I heard the whirring – and inserted two pins.

“Okay, maybe not my kitchen but how about my shop? It sounds like I’m at work.”

Jeffrey and his assistant chattered throughout the procedure. I heard constant updates about how things were going and believe me, it didn’t sound good until the very end, when Jeff said, “That’s perfect.”

“Aaah, Dr. Brown, I hate to tell you this, but if the homeowner’s around I say the exact same thing. I don’t care if I’ve hung cabinet doors upside down. Half the job is how you sell it.”

His assistant offered, “You’re a woodworker right?”

“Yep.”

“How does within a thirty-second of an inch sound?”

“Like it’s time for me to go home.”

****************

In spite of the perfect x-ray and the proclamations from all, when I returned the next week for my first office visit, and the splint was removed, my ring finger looked like it was in love with my pinky. It had turned around to face it’s new friend and bent over as if to give it a hug. By my description, you’d a thought there would be no discussion about repair. Break it and re-pin it. However, we debated for so long, I finally said, “Okay, Dr. Brown, in my line of work if there’s a question about the quality of a material, or the design of a project, I’ll say to the homeowner, “If it were my house… .” How about if it were your finger?”

“Let’s get a second opinion.”

****************

Dr. Feldman, an orthopedic surgeon, saw me later that same day. In sharp contrast, he is thinner and darker than Dr. Brown, without the Brad Pitt short hair look, but he’s equally personable. We talked about frivolous lawsuits, malpractice insurance, comparisons between carpentry and orthopedic surgery, how different his practice in Lowell is from his wife’s in Concord, growing up in Newton, living in Carlisle and my finger.

“It has to be re-done, but you know, we don’t get too many shots at this.”

I laughed – two plain-speaking regular-guy surgeons in a row. How could I be so fortunate?

“I wouldn’t be worried about this finger if I hadn’t already done this.” (I held up my right hand showing him the missing top of my index finger and the thumb that bends only with help).

“Who would you like to do it?”

I wavered. I hoped to retackle this project with Dr. Brown, but Dr. Feldman reminded me of the basketball player who demands the ball in crucial situations.

“Dr. Feldman, I should know the answer to this, but why was I referred to a plastic surgeon in the first place?”

“Jeff works on hands too, but I do more of them. I only do hands.”

“Then when can you do mine?”

He put his head in his hands and hesitated, “ I think I can do it tomorrow.”

“I hate to keep making comparisons between your profession and mine, but when pushed, I always promise more than I can give. Deep inside I know I’ve shoved out of my mind the six other reasons why it would be impossible.”

“Give me your number and if I can’t I’ll call you tomorrow.”

****************

My second pining in two weeks took place the next day as promised. So close in time leaves room for nothing but comparisons. Lowell General’s approach is crisper than Emerson’s – similar operating rooms, but the staff felt more caffeinated. After Staci, the OR nurse, swaddled me in that fresh-out-of-the-oven warm blanket, I drifted off. As I do in the dentist chair. It’s something about the prone position that puts me to sleep.

“Mr Miller … Mr. Miller.”

I opened my eyes to see Dr. Feldman hovering over me.

“What?”

“Were you up all night?”

“No (Actually I had been but I couldn’t think fast enough to simply say yes.) but how often does someone tuck you into bed? With a warm blanket no less?”

“You mean your wife doesn’t do that.?” It was a rhetorical question which didn’t need answer. He was laughing too hard to hear me anyway.

Dr. Feldman removed the two pins Dr. Brown had inserted and drilled one right down the center of my finger, through both joints to where the tip of the pin just kissed the knuckle joint. I’d been peacefully zoning in and out, but he snapped me back to the present.

“Raise your right hand.”

“You talking to me?” Remember they also tent your head so there’s a certain feeling of remove.

“Who else would I be talking to?”

He wanted to compare my two hands. I opened and closed my right hand and he looked to see how my fingers lined up. Dr. Feldman then tore a hole in the blue blanket and raised my left hand so I could see it. He twisted my wrist this way and that, asked me to straighten my fingers and then make a fist.

“How does your finger look to you?, ” he asked

“Straight,” I answered.

Behind Dr. Feldman hung a screen with my latest x-ray. The pin almost perfectly bisected the first two digits in my ring finger.

“How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Place that pin so perfectly? My friend, Adam, is the best woodworker I know and he couldn’t have done that with a clamp, a drill press and nothing at stake.”

“What can I say, I’m good, but there’s one more thing I could try.”

“No, let’s call it a day.”
****************

I’m not dragging this on much longer. The night before my office visit after the second pinning, I removed my splint to see my ring and middle finger lining up like pickets in a fence. Rather than write about that visit, I’m ending with an email from Bill Lewis, longtime friend, sometime camping partner, and the missing character in “Cheers.” Bill could have occupied the bar stool between Norm and Cliff. Anyway, he’s on our email distro list, so he gets sporadic updates to which, curiously, he rarely replies.

Mike,

I sometimes feel out of the loop with a lot of what you guys are doing, but let me see if I get this straight. You were out chopping wood‚ with Q’s wife, and when she pulled the trigger, you got a broken finger. This has started an on-line dialog between Mark and Jan, presumably because they no longer talk face to face. You get an x-ray showing chopsticks protruding from the afore-mentioned digit, looking more like an apprentice carpenter gone wild with the nail gun than something done in a Boston hospital.

The worry in the whole situation centers around your ability to play the dealer in some sort of low rent ESPN Texas Hold tourney, with no one mentioning the obvious fact that a more clean cut would have given you a pair of halves.

Meanwhile, the banter continues in a syrupy cyber exchange that sounds about as sincere as a Shoe Box Get-Well-Soon card. Even if I got a few facts jumbled, be sure you know that even Bill Lewis cares.

Bill