One Ring to Piss Them All Off

I wake up with my right ring finger swollen, red and looking a little bit like a sausage wearing a ring. The previous night, I had tried in vain to get this ring off with every possible ring removal trick known to man. Baby oil, ice, water, soap, a hammer, I had tried it all. With visions of getting gangrene in my finger and having it amputated, I realize it is time to seek professional advice. I walk straight to the desk at the clinic.

“Hi, I’m an idiot and have a ring stuck on my finger! Any advice?”

“Right this way,” she says as I am bumped in front of 6 people with actual health problems. I wonder if they will give me a cure for idiocy, too. Instantly, I am surrounded by nurses and doctors and interrogated like some sort of freak. It’s just a ring. I’m gonna live, right? Everyone throws their knowledgeable theories of ring removal at me and I shoot them all down.

“Tried that, did that. Yeah, tried that, too. Didn’t work either”

Things were looking bleak. Damn, I’m gonna miss this little piggy.

Looks of confusion fill their faces and like any other group of confused people, they point me elsewhere. The nurse makes 50 calls. I assume she’s calling all the finest medical institutes in America trying to get a helicopter for me to take somewhere. Johns Hopkins, maybe?

“MEDAC on Oleander has a ring cutter. Do you know how to get there?

Guess no helicopter ride for me.

I exchange pleasantries with the girl at the front desk of MEDAC, an old friend.

“What are you doing here?!”

My brain scans for the most badass excuse to have a ring stuck on my finger. It finds nothing.

How embarrassing.

I spend 20 minutes filling out paper work and answering questions. My mother’s year of birth? Jesus Christ, this is some higher level mathematics. “Bring in the ring cutter,” yells the nurse. My imagination lets loose, picturing a snarling beast of a saw ready to ravage steel rings. The doctor whips out something reminiscent of a tool used to eat crabs with or make cute paper cutouts with. My heart drops.

“This ring is too thick for our ring cutter. You’ll have to go to the emergency room for the heavy duty ring cutter.”

Just my luck.

Through the double sliding doors, I enter Cape Fear Hospital’s emergency room. I spend even more time filling out paper work. I sit in the waiting room among people with actual injuries and ailments. A mother locks eyes with mine as her daughter cries in the chair next to her. I can’t read this woman’s mind, I don’t need to. Her face says it all. A cold, inquisitive stare that says, “My daughter is in pain and discomfort and you have the nerve to come to the E.R. with a freakin’ ring on your finger, how dare you?” I feel terrible, out of place, and undeserving.

“I don’t want any of these people to have to wait after me, I want to go last no matter what.”

The receptionist grants my wish. I have been waiting for an hour. The waiting room is empty save me and my ring.

“Alexander Clark!”

“That’s me”

Phew.

“Here’s your room, the doctor will be here in just a moment.”

I think I’ll lie down. Twenty minutes pass as I sleep, sprawled out on the cold, hard chair. I wake up to the gawks of three female nurses. They tease me about my stuck ring and my fat finger. I bashfully take it all in. Must be a slow night, if I’m there excitement for the night. In comes another nurse with a saw that would make Tim Allen proud. With my right hand being painfully manhandled in some metal contraption by several nurses, I left handedly text my friends about the plans for the evening thinking this would be a short procedure, after all, it was a mean lil’ saw. Sweet, 8:30 now, I’ll be outta here in 20, home in 30, ready to go out in an hour, sounds right.

Wrong! It is now 9:30. I sit here as these nurses mangle my hand with a metal guard that is to prevent the saw from sawing into my flesh meanwhile; the saw is heating the ring to extreme temperatures burning my finger. Unbeknownst to the nurses, I am dying here. More people come in and check on the progress. I had become the boy trapped in the well, the boy with his head stuck where heads don’t fit, the boy with his hand stuck in the drain. We work at a snail’s pace like some determined prisoner chiseling through concrete walls with a fork.

“I think you have the wrong blade on there, did you put the blade for steel on?” one nurse says to another.

“There are different blades?” she replies.

You’ve gotta be kidding me. Am I on Punk’d? Where’s Ashton?

With the new blade attached, we finally break through the ring. I thought that when we completely cut through the ring, it would just pop off, easy as that. Wrong again! The damn thing was so thick that it wouldn’t bend to expand open. Sure, it was completely cut through but it was only hair-widths wider. This was out of the hands of the nurses; I would have to finish this battle myself. In a tug-of-war between me and my finger, I lubed up, bit my lip, and ripped the ring off along with several layers of skin, leaving a slice along my finger, two burn marks, and no hair on my knuckle. I had chiseled through the concrete wall with my fork. I was free.