The canal and the thumb

I was on a canal boat trip with my partner. I've always refered to her on line as my SO after someone suggested it as a joke, and it stuck.

This kind of boating is pretty relaxed. You chug along gently, watching the world go by. The gentleness is punctuated by locks, with manual work to do on paddles and gates. We came to Rugby, where there is a flight of locks with only a short stretch between one and the next. On one of these short stretches, we had to wait. The next lock was full of boats going the other way. We chugged over to the side, and my SO steps off with a rope which she winds round a bollard so the boat doesn't drift off.

It was a chilly day, so she was wearing a coat and gloves. We wait for the boats to come out of the next lock. Something about the rope around the bollard looks wrong, so she bends down to adjust it. But at the same time the boat is drifting away from the side and the rope goes taught. The end of her thumb is between the rope and the metal bollard. Ouch.

I get off the boat, take off her glove and see that her thumb is a bloody mess. There's no thumb nail. It's not bleeding that heavily, but it doesn't look good. I think she might react badly to the state it's in, so I clench it in my fist and lift it up. The bleeding lessens. There's a man walking past with a dog, so I guess he's a local. Could he take us to the nearest hospital? Yes, his car's nearby, but he's not local and he doesn't know where the hospital is. I get my SO to put her own fist around the thumb. I tie up and lock the boat and knock on the door of a cottage by the canal side. An elderly woman opens the door. I explain that we've had an accident, and does she know where the hospital is?

"Well... er... I'll get my husband."

"Oh, OK."

While she's gone, I notice that they have a model railway in their front room. Strange detail. Please hurry.

The husband arrives. He starts explaining, but it's complicated. "No, I'll draw you a map." I suppress the desire to tell him to hurry up. He's making a reasonable job of it, but he's very keen to point out where Rugby School is. Well, I realise that it's quite a famous school (where the game of rugby originated) but I rather wish he'd HURRY UP. But still I keep quiet. When the map is finished, I thank him and take it back to the boat.

The man-who-was-not-local seems to be quite pleased to be playing ambulance driver. We get in the back of his large car. For some reason, the seats in the back face towards each other, not forwards. His dog is in the back with us. I have the thumb in my fist again. The dog, a large alsatian, is very interested in us, and specifically in the thumb. I have the thumb in one hand, the map in the other, I'm directing not-a-local, fending off his great big dog, and trying to reassure my SO.

We pass Rugby School.

The map proves accurate, and we arrive at the hospital. I tell the man that he could park in one of the bays marked "ambulance", and he does! We get out, thank him, and rush inside. Luckily, Accident & Emergency isn't busy. We're seen straight away. We explain to the nurse what happened and she tells me to let go of the thumb. But before she looks at it, she says to me "Are you OK?" I'm puzzled. I didn't get hurt. "You look a bit green." And yes, I realise that I really need a sit down after the stress of getting here. "Good, we don't want you keeling over." And the thumb is investigated.

There's a stitch put in it, a dressing applied, reassurance given that the nail will grow back, and super-sized pain killers provided. We get a taxi back. I unlock the boat and find the blood stained glove that I'd thrown inside as we left.

Inside the glove is the thumb nail.

#canal

#thumb

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