My days as a concert pianist are over.

Last night Susana and I made freshly squeezed orange juice. Hours later, while we were waiting to go out with Christene and Dave, I was washing the dishes and when scrubbing our big Henckel Five-Star chef’s knife of dried orange juice pulp, my hand slipped and the knive sliced open my right-hand index finger. If there’s one thing I learned about first aid, it’s to apply direct pressure to any bleeding. But this thing was deep.

Susana drove me to Swedish medical center in Ballard where we waited for an hour to be looked at, then another hour to be treated. I asked the nurse how the night was going and he said it was all the usual suspects—people have more time on their hands on the weekend to get into trouble. And later there would be a wave of drunks who tripped over curbs. Last night he had a guy get injured getting into the trunk of his car (so you know he was tanked) and the nurse guessed it was a Ford.. the drunk said “how’d you know?” but it was because the nurse could see the “Fo” from the Ford nameplate imprinted on his forehead.

The doctor came in, diagnosed the sitation and said flatly, “Stitches”.

Then he pulled out a 5 inch needle and said “This is gonna hurt. Are you ready?” Luckily Susana was there to make funny faces at me while he stuck this needle in my hand four separate times causing overwhelming pain as I felt it passing through various tendons and muscles.

After that the hand was asleep and we talked as the doctor used his crochet tools on my finger. He started complaining about the state of healthcare—a rightfully contentious issue among doctors—and how 60% of what my insurance will be paying is going to the uninsured patients in the next room, but by law they must evaluate and stabalize everyone who comes in. He was on a roll.. so we got him off of it when he talked about Brazil.

Meanwhile Christene and Dave were making dinner at our house for us..