Several years ago, I was doing the night shift in a gasoline service convenience store. I was working with another clerk. It was that sleepy time of the morning between 4:30 and 5:30. This is the time of the night shift where you are most likely to fall asleep or micro nap on your feet. It was also a quiet time for customers when the produce and cold drink cooler could be restocked. The temperature inside was usually just above forty degrees. I hoped that the cold inside would help me wake up.

The cooler was divided into a milk section on the far right. Then came juice to the left. In the middle was a small meat and cheese section. Left of the produce was a sports drink section. Last of all on the far left was the soft drink section. First, I started filling up the milk section which had various sizes to be filled. The plastic crates holding four of the large size of milk are quite heavy to move. After filling the milk section up the remaining crates were restacked and the empty crates were removed.

Moving on to the juice section was faster. I could grab glass juice containers from a storage shelf and restock the display. Sometimes condensation that formed on the glass bottles of juice. That must have happened again. While lifting a small bottle of juice up to place it on an upper shelf the bottle slipped from my hand. In a split second, I knew that cleaning up the juice and broken glass on the floor under the shelves would take too long. I made an instant decision to grab the bottle as it fell in mid air to stop it breaking when it hit the floor. As I grabbed the glass bottle, it hit one of the shelves on the way down. The glass bottle broke in my hand as I clutched it. Right away, I felt the warm wet feeling of blood on my hand and the bite of the glass inside my thumb. I was pouring out blood. Quickly I pulled out the piece of glass from my thumb. Somewhere I found some paper towel and covered my bleeding thumb. I clamped my good hand around the paper towel and thumb. Applying pressure helped slow the loss of blood.

Leaving the cooler, I found the other clerk. I told her about being cut badly. Just by chance, there was a taxicab at the store then. The cabby was kind enough to drive me over the bridge one street away to the nearby hospital.

I was going to need stitches in my thumb. The doctor was called at home to come to the hospital. It took twenty minutes to half an hour for him to arrive. While waiting I started to feel a bit light headed so laid down on an examining table. When the doctor arrived, he had a look at my cut and confirmed my suspicion that it needed stitches. The soft fleshy pad of my thumb where the finger print usually is was hanging by a small piece of skin.

The doctor injected my thumb in several places to freeze it before starting the sewing. I think he put in about ten to fifteen stitches. I did feel the needle going in and out of the skin. That was nothing compared to when the freezing wore off. The wound screamed at me, releasing pain for hours that day. After the doctor finished sewing me up he said to go home and rest. He suggested not going to work for a couple of days.

There were nerves that were cut in the thumb. It took years before they grew back in place and started working. Until then the thumb pad had no feeling. It was completely numb.

From that I learned not to catch falling bottles. It is much easier to clean up a little glass and juice.