A Day In The Life Of A Man With A Nail Stuck In His Hand
by Holly Day
One day, a man was fiddling around with a hammer on a construction site, and he somehow managed to drive a nail through his hand. It went through his hand, all the way through the back and out through the palm. It was a big nail, too, pushing nearly two inches out of his palm with a good couple of inches of the head hovering above the entry point.
The man – let’s call him Phil – screamed like bloody hell when it happened. Being the tough guy that he was, he was used to slamming the hammer down on the ends of his fingers, or smack across the broad plane of his thumb, but this was the first time he’d driven a nail through that much flesh. Even after the red pain subsided to a numb throb, he continued to turn his hand this way and that, trying for the life of him to remember how he had managed to do something so weird and stupid. The only conceivable way a nail could have been driven though his hand like that, with the point emerging smack in the middle of his palm, was if he had placed the point against the back of his hand, held it upright against the flesh with his other hand, and then struck it with the hammer held by, what, a third hand? It just didn’t make sense. But there it was, bright and shiny and dripping blood, a nail half-in and half-out of his hand.
The nail stuck in his hand made it difficult to get any real work done. For the rest of the day, Phil kept dropping boards and bricks and boxes of loose nails he was trying to haul from Point A to Point B. The nail grated against the tiny bones in his hand every time he tried to make a fist or pick something up, and if he accidentally brushed against something with either end of the nail, it would rip the flesh anew and fresh blood would get all over the place. In fact, by the time he decided to wrap it up for the day, the construction site was a disgusting mess of bloody pools and footprints.
“I’ll have to let them know it’s just my blood,” muttered Phil, embarrassed. “Wouldn’t want people to think anything weird was going on here.”
However, as hard as trying to work with a nail in his hand had been, trying to drive home turned out to be nearly impossible. For one thing, he couldn’t hold onto the steering wheel with the hand with the nail in it – his right hand. He ended up having to drive all the way home using just his left hand and the fingertips of his right hand, which was especially difficult as his ancient, rusty pickup truck had no power steering. By the time he got home, his left shoulder ached from the effort, ached in time with the throbbing of his mangled palm.
It got worse. As soon as he opened the door to his house, his children – a son and a daughter, both very sweet, smart, beautiful, and obedient – ran to greet him with their customary hugs and kisses. His daughter somehow managed to run right into the nail in his palm and got a good scratch across her neck. Luckily, she had just gone through an accelerated growth spurt the last couple of months, or she might have gotten poked in the eye.
“Ow, Daddy!” she shrieked, jumping back and holding onto the scrape on her neck. “You hurt me!”
“What’s going on out here?” called his wife, coming out of the kitchen, wiping her dishwater-wet hands on her red-and-white checkered apron. “Is everything okay?”
“Daddy cut me,” sobbed the little girl, a little melodramatically, especially considering that she only had a little scrape on her neck as opposed to a huge nail jammed all the way through her hand. “Like with a knife or something.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” said Phil, holding his hand out for everyone to see. “Somehow, I got this nail stuck in my hand during work, and it’s been getting in the way of everything.”
“Oh, dear,” said his wife (Pam), furrowing her brow, making her look both sympathetic and a little cross. “How on earth did you manage to do that?”
“I just don’t know,” answered Phil, sighing. He pulled off his jacket and work boots as carefully as he could and sat down on his favorite chair. “I can’t for the life of me figure it out.”
“Well, we’ll figure something out later,” said Pam, picking imaginary lint off of her husband’s shoulder. “I made a wonderful meatloaf, if you’re hungry. A good meal might take your mid off of that nasty nail.”
“Dinner sounds wonderful,” agreed Phil. He pushed against the arm of his chair to stand up and put the nail right through the soft black leather arm. “Oh, crap,” he sighed. “I love this chair.”
“It’s okay,” chirped Pam, already in the kitchen. “One more thing to figure out after a nice, hot meal.”
Pam’s meatloaf was a wondrous thing, soaked in hamburger gravy and topped with whipped potatoes. Phil managed to eat most of it without incident, once he mastered shoveling food into his mouth with his left hand. His right hand twitched involuntarily on the table next to his plate, automatically reaching for the napkin and salt and whatever else Phil usually used that hand to grab. But by the end of dinner, it was starting to look like Phil would be able to handle going through life with a nail stuck through his hand.
In fact, the only mishap of the night happened when he was tucking the kids into bed, and he almost put the point of the nail through his daughter’s eye. “Daddy!” she shrieked as he brushed her hair back from her forehead, leaning in to kiss her goodnight. “Daddy! My eye!” Luckily she said it in time, or this might be a story about a man with a nail stuck in his hand and a girl with a nail stuck in her eye.
After the eye incident, Pam and Phil agreed it might be a good idea for Phil to sleep on the couch. “Forever?” asked Phil as Pam loaded his arms up with bed linen and pillows.
“We’ll see,” said Pam, smiling, sympathetic, resolute, a little cross. “Let’s talk about it in the morning.” Which could have meant yes, forever, but Phil just couldn’t tell.
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