Pay it Forward

I fell asleep on the couch around midnight one night last week while watching a movie. I woke up around 1:00 when one of my roommates came home from his restaurant job. I was kinda out of it, but I remember him telling me that he cut himself while cleaning up a glass orb that goes around a candle. Remembering a certain slasher story of my own and how friends hung out with me in the emergency room for 7 hours, I offered to drive him to the hospital to get a few stitches placed. I didn't have any patients scheduled for the next day so I told him I wouldn't mind at all. I figured it could make a good story, he would owe me one, and I could possibly run into some of my favorite nurses. Of course he declined the offer.. that's human nature.

I'm gonna get sidetracked for a second, but I'll explain that last statement. I've always noticed that people can be so quick to automatically decline something that's offered to them, but if given the opportunity to take the same item.. people almost always will. Got beef with that? The next time you're making small talk during lunch offer your companion some of your meal (fries would be ideal). They'll decline. Then, go to the restroom and when you come back make note of anything missing from your plate. It's like clockwork. Anywho..

So the next day I get home from my rigorous 50 minute lecture and resume my life on the couch. It's 10 AM. I have 2 pounds of taco bell. Suicide Kings is in the dvd player. Life.. is.. good. Then I hear my roommate yelling for me to come upstairs.

'I'm sleeping.. come down here.'

'I can't.'

That's when I realized it was concerning his recent trauma. So I go upstairs to see his finger still gushing blood. Emergency! Oh no, what should I do? Call for mayday? Order a Prothrombin Time from the lab? Say 'I told you so?' Realize that the combination of running water on that wound and him watching his finger gush blood will probably make him faint any second now?

I went with the 'I told you so' but then offered another trip to the doctor for some stitches.. this time he accepted. As I spent my relaxed Friday afternoon in an doctor's office, I noticed how similar our materials and methods are.

..3.0 chromic gut suture, 1% xylocaine, and a 'script for some cephalosporins..

Anyway, it was an interesting adventure that refilled some good karma and allowed me to pay forward an old debt.