Death (almost) and the bloody hand!

The Bloody Hand.
I have an impressive semi-lunar scar on my right hand. It curves from the base of my right thumb toward the middle of my palm. I can feel it with my right middle finger. It has been quite a helpful scar because by running my right middle finger over it, it has always enabled me to distinguish my right from my left hand. I can do this in less than a second and in my profession this is sometimes very important. So let me tell you how I got it.
After the 'Sinking of the Titanic' as someone in the family used to refer to the Trike in the Canal incident, the site of interaction between my cousin and I seemed to shift for a time to my neighbourhood. In retrospect this was probably because there was no canal nearby for us to drown in. On the day on which the event in question occurred, for some unusual reason CB and I were left alone for a couple of hours while my mother attended something which I cannot recollect. My grandparents and their adult and as yet unmarried offspring lived five doors away, at number seven, My father, their youngest son lived in number two. He dropped in to see his parents at least a couple of times a week, usually at about eleven pm when most people were thinking of going to bed. It had been well drummed into me that number seven was as much our home as number two.
My mother had barely gone out when CB suggested we go into the back yard to play ‘Cowboys and Indians’. Since there was no TV to babysit kids in those days we often had use our bodies and minds to amuse ourselves, with the resultant development of physical and mental faculties and a lot of other things besides, including occasional injuries.
“Okay,” CB said, “Lets play cowboys and Indians. The backyard can be the Fort and I’ll be the cowboy defending it against a tribe of wild Indians. You’ll be the Indian chief trying to climb the wall and break into the fort.”
“Why can’t I be the cowboy defending the fort and you the Indian chief?” I demanded.
“Because I’m three years older.” He said aggressively and then relented. “After I defend the fort and kill you, then I’ll let you be the cowboy and defend the fort. Okay?”
“Okay” Accepted.
We went out into the back yard into one of those rare Irish days when the warm sun was shining in a clear cloudless sky. The yard was rectangular with a tall limestone wall at the end of it. The wall had a solid brown wooden gate that egressed to a lane that was wide enough to accommodate our dust bins which the city collected on a daily basis. Although that may sound a little far-fetched, bear in mind that were three mail deliveries daily and that a letter mailed in London England usually arrived in Dublin the next day. (We didn't need email! If you were seven years old and standing in that lane scaling a wall that was about three times your height was a pretty formidable task. Furthermore, the arcane activities that went on in that lane after dark was more that enough to keep any seven year old away.
“Okay” said CB
,, escorting me out the backyard door into the lane, “Now you have to climb the wall and try to invade the fort.” He slammed the gate shut.

I stood there, looking up at the huge fort wall I had to climb. Could I ever scale that wall and capture the fort? I could see a few scallops in the wall that might serve as footholds, so I gripped one with my hand and found a foothold for my foot, and before I knew it I was on my way! As I approached the top of the wall, I loosened my bow and arrow for immediate action. I approached the top of the wall for my coup de grace. It looked as though I was going to take the fort after all. Suddenly, out of the blue a six-gun appeared from nowhere. “Bang!!” it said, “bang, bang!!” it repeated, The poor Indian was so taken aback that in his attempt to defend himself he relinquished his precarious grasp and fell to the ground. The thenar area at the base of the right thumb managed to land on a broken shard of glass that was the remains of a small whisky bottle that some young would-be lover probably threw against the wall when he found it wasn’t enough to make his girl friend drunk enough to fornicate with him. It was, unfortunately sufficient to carve a deep semi-lunar cut in my right hand.
“I’m cut,” I yelled. “I’m bleeding, there’s blood everywhere.”
CB, to give him credit, immediately relinquished his role as heroic fort defender, and opened the yard door to see what I was screaming about. I held my bleeding hand up for his inspection. He remained cool, calm and collected in the face of the spurting blood from my hand. He cupped my right hand in both of his and coolly separated the wound edges and looked in.
“This looks serious,” he said, “I can see cut arteries. I think that means you are going to bleed to death.”
“Bring me to number seven, (my grandparents home a few doors away)”
I cried, “Auntie Doris knows First Aid, She’ll know how to save me,”
We raced the five houses up to my grandparents’ home, me holding my upturned wounded right hand with my left one, while my life’s blood drained away. CB banged loudly at the door, he himself getting a little anxious at the amount of blood that by now seemed to be everywhere.
My elderly (to me!) grandmother answered the door and quickly grasped what was going on.
“Doris, come quickly, Stanley’s cut his hand.” She sounded concerned but not panicked. After a quick assessment of the bloody mess, Doris blanched slightly and then remembered her First Aid.
“CB said I’m going to bleed to death because the artery is cut,” I wailed.
“Don’t be silly, we’ll just have to bring you down to Dr. Fitzpatrick around the corner and he’ll stitch you up and you’ll be fine.”
I don’t know which horrified me more, the thought being stitched up or the thought of it being done by someone other than Dr. Alec McKaye, who, even at the tender age of seven, I knew to be a miracle-worker. My mother and my grandmother had told me that.
Auntie Doris had learnt her First Aid well. She applied a laundry clean handkerchief to the wound and bandaged it tightly into place forming an effective pressure dressing, as we would call it today.
“Okay, let’s go,” she said so authoritatively that I could see resistance would be futile.
Mrs Fitzpatrick opened the door and quickly appraised the situation.
“ Ah you poor little fellah,” she said, “Let’s take off the bandage and have a look.”
“No, no,” I yelled, but the bandage was off before I knew it.
“Oh yes, that’ll need a few stitches alright, I’ll call the Dr.”
“No, no,” I yelled, but she called him anyway.
“Ah don’t worry, laddie,” he said, swiftly grasping my hand while I buried my head in my Auntie Doris’ bosom. “You’ll hardly feel a thing and it will be over in a minute.”
“Aren’t you going to freeze it, doctor?” asked Auntie Doris in a tremulous voice, feeling my agonized gyrations against her.
“Sure, aren’t I finished already,” he smiled, “and it barely hurt you at all young man, did it?”
He didn’t wait for an answer and just proceeded to give me an anti-tetanus shot while I was trying to think of answer.
Auntie Doris tenderly wafted me out of the door, past the waiting CB who’s usual insouciance was ebbing under the pressure of anticipating having to explain a cousin killed in action.
When we got into number seven Auntie Doris said “I think after this we both need a little drink, and poured herself a couple of ounces of Scotch, and about a teaspoonful for me. Even though I am sure it was no single malt, I wonder if that was the beginning of my appreciation for the taste of, as well as the medicinal powers of Scotch .

As my father used to say: Whisky when you're sick makes you well:
Whisky makes you sick when you're well! How true!!