Snip

The Jell-O they serve in hospitals isn’t actually that bad. With my mouth dry from the morphine and whatever else they have me on, I find that it’s the only thing that tastes like it should, or at least tastes the way I remember how it tastes.

Ah, my little joy in life currently – little spoon size bites of fruity flavoured jelly that might be served in one of four different colours: the colour of each indicating a different flavour. You can request to be served a specific type of Jell-O if you want, but I don’t. I enjoy the surprise; which colour? Which flavour today?

Sad, I know. But stuck here on this ward, when all you have otherwise is the smell of disinfectant, the coming and going or orderlies, nurses, doctors and the like, being surrounded perpetually by the ill and the dying, you’ll take whatever distraction you can get. Just so happens mine is the Jell-O they serve here. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t plan for it, but fuck it, I’m rolling with it.

            The blue colour means it’s raspberry flavoured.

            Why I’m here – recovering in hospital and eating their Jell-O – that comes down to two incidents which happened to me in a very short period of time; one incident causing the other to happen within a time span of about ten seconds or so, actually.

            The events leading up to my hospitalization are pretty standard, which I suppose is something most people can relate to. Outside of that unsurprising setup though, I don’t know how many other people can relate to what happens next.

            The red colour means it’s strawberry flavoured.

            What happened on the fateful day happened around noon, or near enough anyway. I was getting myself ready – straightening out my hair because I was going out with some friends later. Was being the operative word here. Meanwhile, I was messing around with my clothes: mixtures of shirts with different jeans and so on. I found a combo of clothing that I liked – a My Chemical Romance shirt and some ripped black jeans – and laid them out on the bed, examining them for any stains while continuing to straighten out my hair. Nothing I hadn’t done a million times before.

            The green colour means it’s lime flavoured.

            When I was getting ready to change into the clothes I had spread out on my bed, I made the decision to remove my nipple piercings on account of having worn this shirt without a bra in the past and finding out that the material the shirt’s made out of tends to snag onto the piecing’s.

Again, pretty simple stuff here so far, right? Nothing out of the ordinary except maybe for the threat of some chafed tits? Well, this is where the pretty simple stuff comes to an end, unfortunately.

The orange colour means it’s orange flavoured. I know, who’d of thought?

            I put the straighteners down on my desk and then went about removing the piercings.  The first one I removed fine, but the second one was a little different. When I pulled it out of and away from my tit, I noticed a thin white string stuck to it – I tether connecting nip to metal. I thought it must have been piece of fabric or whatever from a bra or shirt. Kinda funny, I suppose, but also kind of an inconvenience. If anyone else happened to be in the apartment I probably would have called them over and shown them it. Probably would have said something along the line of  “check it out: Spider-titty” or some other piece of comedic genius to them while showing it off.

            Holding the little metallic ball with the string trailing back to my nipple, I used my free hand to pull open a drawer in my desk and retrieve some scissors. I nearly brushed against the straighteners I’d set down when pulling my hand back out of the draw. Yeesh. Close fucking call, I thought with relief.

            I brought the scissors up and then opened them wide. I had them hovering close to my nipple so as to cut the majority of the length of string. Which I did.

            Snip.

            Next thing I know, I’m in the hospital. To be specific, I’m in the burns ward and my upper left leg is wrapped in bandages. Explaining how I actually went from cutting some sting caught in a one of my nipple piercings to being in a burns ward is going be a little more difficult to explain on account of I wasn’t exactly conscious to experience what happened after I cut the string. The rest of this explanation is going to be made up from what my friends and the doctors told me.

            So, the way this thing unfold next is that one of my two friends who I share the apartment with – Sam – came home about half an hour or so after I made the fatal mistake of severing my nipple to piecing tether. She said she called out to me but that I didn’t answer. She said she could smell something like meat cooking so she presumed I was in and was going back and forth between my room and the kitchen.

            Sam went in her room for a little while but then came out to see me and what I was making in the kitchen. Only I wasn’t in the kitchen. The was nothing cooking in the kitchen and that wasn’t where the cooking meat smell was coming from either. The smell was coming from my room.

            Sam knocked on my door but got no answer. Sam said my name but got answer. Sam decided to enter my room and found me lying shirtless and unconscious on the floor. Sam also figured out where the smell of cooking meat was coming from. That was also me; or rather, my left thigh to be precise. My left thigh which had about half the length of my hair straighteners sticking out of what once might have been called flesh but which now might best be described as looking more like well done pork tenderloin.  

            Turns out that when I went unconscious and collapsed it looks like I knocked the straighteners off the desk on my way down to the floor. Looks like they landed on my leg and then spent next half hour or so melting through the fabric of my denim jeans and then though to what I’m told is fairly large amount of skin and muscle.

            Sam turned the straighteners off at the plug and then called an ambulance. I regained consciousness the next day when the surgeons had thankfully removed the hair tool which had been pretty much grafted to my leg.

            This brings us to why I collapsed in the first place. The reason why I collapsed and didn’t feel myself being barbequed  – as I was told later, by a doctor –  is that piece of string,  that thin and stretchy piece of fabric that was stuck to my piecing, turns out to not have been a piece of clothing fabric at all. No. Turns out it was an exposed nerve.

            You can put two and two together and figure out what happened when I severed it with scissors.

            Ouch Indeed.

            The silver lining – if it can be labelled as so – is that because the pain from when I severed the nerve was so overwhelming, my body shut down and I wasn’t able to feel anything from the hair straighteners. Now, thanks to the morphine and whatever else they have me pumped full of, I can’t really feel shit or taste shit either. Excusing for the Jell-O, of course.

            Sam’s coming to visit me later. She’s coming over with some new Jell-O colours on account of me asking her if she wouldn’t mind bringing me some. I wonder what tastes the new colours will be. One thing I definitely don’t wonder while waiting – how many new body piecing’s I’m going to get. I used to wonder that question quite often, but no more. I think I’ll be sticking strictly to tattoos from here on out.