Coffee Helps

I seem to have dislocated my left little finger.

I made this alarming discovery when I was nervously twiddling my fingers (I’ve never fully grasped the concept of only twiddling the thumbs) at my desk earlier on, having uncovered an unfortunate work-related error and fallen into a slight panic about the best way to deal with the consequences. It’s not that I still crave cigarettes at these moments, more that I’ve never been quite sure about what to do instead, as a non-smoker. So I twiddle. And fidget. And jitter. And tap. I’m a good person to have around in a crisis, all things considered. Anyway, the error paled into insignificance next to the discovery of a bone sticking out of my hand.

“Is it sore?” Zed wanted to know, sounding a little impatient (for I had, admittedly, spent the day complaining about additional problems such as a sore foot, a queasy stomach, chapped lips, a sore throat and some cat scratches). “No,” I was forced to confess, “It’s not sore. But look! It’s sticking out. That can’t be good, can it?”

Zed inspected my hand.

“Hmm,” she said thoughtfully. “What does it do?”

It hadn’t occurred to me that my deformed hand could “do” anything worth mentioning. I gingerly touched the protruding fingerbone and was suitably impressed when my finger flew out at a weird angle. Zed drew back in disgust. “Right, you’re a freak.”

I don’t really care. I think it makes me kind of intriguing. A little bit concerned about waking up in the morning to discover that the bone has actually broken through the skin and is jutting out of the palm of my hand, all covered in blood and gore, but Zed seems fairly confident that this is an unlikely scenario. For now, I am just a freak, not an injured freak.

However, if my foot is still this sore by tomorrow, you’ll be hearing about it. Never a dull moment, eh?