Wow, that’s a lot of blood, but oddly it didn’t hurt. At first. I panicked when they left to get my parents. I saw the bone! That’s not right at all. By the time my friends and mom came back, I was in agonizing pain. Washing it off I realized my finger had been smashed almost in half—the inside of my finger was the darkest red you could imagine, aside from the bone.

The eighth grade graduation class trip was to Colorado, we decided to go to Chicago. Up until then it had been great. We got back from Navy Pier and screwed around in the Embassy Suites hotel, my friends locked me out. Then cracked the door open. I stuck my finger in it to move the lock. Big mistake.

Once inside the hospital they immediately took me to the emergency room. They gave me some pain killers and stitched my finger up. This grumpy old doctor who was doing the stitching hadn’t given me enough morphine. I still hate him today for that. Sitting there for the next five hours, in excruciating pain, I could feel every stitch go into my finger. And every time that happened my heart rate spiked up to 160bpm. Those are five hours I wish never happened. My friends felt terrible, but a mangled finger couldn’t ruin the rest of our trip.