Devil Monkey Boy

Today a drawer sheared the skin off the knuckle of my middle finger. There was a lot of blood for such a small wound.

As I walked away from Shanna's desk, bandage in hand, she stopped me. She said something about the men from Argentina and their videoconference. I didn't really hear her until I walked away. I just nodded my head as I stared at my finger. Red flowed into the tiny wrinkles of my finger. "Shanna, I'm going to come back when I'm not bleeding," I said.

The blood soaked the generic Eckart bandage. I watched as tiny pink dots appeared through the translucent material. These combined into an amorphous pink blob. Eventually clotting set in and dispelled my fears of hemophilia.

By the time I got home and washed my hands, the bandage was done for. When she moved out, my ex left behind some Blue's Clues Band-Aids. Six months of nicks, cuts, abrasions, and blisters brought me down to two, then one after today's injury. Blue was made of sterner stuff than the cheap work bandage. He was opaque, inscrutable. He gave no hint of what might be happening beneath the surface. No clue, no matter.

Tomorrow morning I will shower. The Band-Aid will become unpleasantly damp, if it doesn't fall off altogether. I will dress the cut in the last of Blue's Clues.

I am prone to the sort of superficial injury that a Band-Aid can treat. I guess I'm lucky like that. I could be prone to the type that sends you to the hospital. But my hurts have usually been of the minor sort. Wash it, wrap it, and let time do the rest.

There really was a lot of blood for such a small wound, but nothing Blue and I couldn't handle.