The finger by Jennifer Worgan
Content Warning: This short story contains mild gore, and descriptions of a small infected cut.
The finger
Thomas invited Caroline to have dinner with him and she said maybe even though she didn't want to because she knew he wanted them to bond more as flatmates. She had to sit on one of the hard Ikea stools while he cooked. She tried to breathe through the discomfort using a three step process: noticing it, accepting it, and watching it ebb away.
‘What’s it like being back at work after your break?’ Thomas asked.
‘Really good. We’ve just launched a new line of swimwear.’ The swimwear was cheap and garish. It was something you bought as an act of self-harm, knowing it would never suit you and you would never wear it.
‘Amazing,’ Thomas said. ‘I wish I had that kind of creative brain.’ Thomas was creative, and he knew it.
‘You're very creative,’ Caroline said, and he nodded with satisfaction.
‘So, tell me about the retreat,’ Thomas said.
‘It was quiet, I guess. We weren’t allowed to talk.’
‘Shit. It must have been a relief once it was over.’
‘Definitely.’ But it had also been scary. Her voice had felt too loud.
‘Did you have visions when you meditated?’
‘Not visions. I guess the opposite of visions. I just saw my mind.’
‘Like your subconscious or something?’
‘Maybe. I was with all of these people I never spoke to and I realised that I’d created these crazy personalities for them in my head.’ She’d actually thought some of them were plotting to murder her, and had sobbed in the head monk’s office after dinner on day four, begging to be al-lowed to leave for the sake of her life. ‘But then it turned out they were all completely normal. Just like, accountants and graphic designers and shit.’
This had been an epiphany for Caroline, truly life-changing, but Thomas was too distracted by pulling the big saucepan out of the back of the cupboard to respond. He grunted in acknowledgement.
‘More than anything else, I learned that sometimes you’re the problem. You can blame everyone else in the world but in the end you have to account for your own decisions,’ Caroline said.
‘Wow. What an experience.’ Thomas sounded bored.
Thomas poured olives, capers and a jar of pasta into the saucepan. Then he opened a tin of anchovies and picked out one slimy fish at a time. Caroline wondered if he was being sarcastic when he said she was creative.
‘I hate prepping.’ Thomas sliced up the anchovies, his fingers slick with oil.
‘And your job is very important, even though it's not necessarily creative. Without you, we wouldn’t have fresh water. And water is the most important thing.’ Caroline didn't know exactly what Thomas did for the water department. Even if she did, she knew he would take any positive comments about his job as an insult. He saw himself primarily as a bass guitarist trapped by circumstance. He looked up at Caroline and grimaced.
Then he screamed and held up his hand, which looked normal for two seconds and then started gushing blood. Caroline’s mind had been slow all day. It was either dehydration or long covid. She stared at Thomas and tried to figure out what she was supposed to do.
‘Stay calm,’ she said.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Thomas yelled. ‘Get a bandage! Fuck!’
‘We don’t have any bandages.’ Caroline had technically completed a first aid course a few years ago but she'd been distracted the whole time by the woman next to her, who smelled floral.
Thomas ran past her to the bathroom and started wrapping his finger in toilet paper.
‘Just keep the pressure on. I’ll go to the chemist,’ Caroline said. She grabbed her keys. As she closed the front door she saw a glimpse of him sitting at the tiny kitchen table, his eyes wide and wet, half a roll of bloody toilet paper obscuring his face.
It took Caroline a long time to power walk up the hill to the chemist. Usually she had Thomas available to give her a lift. It was frustrating but she reminded herself of the truth of the universe: life is suffering. When she finally got there she grabbed two rolls of bandages, a box of Panadol and some antiseptic. She considered getting shampoo as well since she’d run out but de-cided it was inappropriate to buy personal items. Thomas was very sensitive to perceived injustic-es, particularly in situations where he thought he deserved attention.
The woman at the counter was gentle and warm. She often chatted to Caroline. Her name was probably Helen but Caroline wasn’t sure.
Helen greeted Caroline with a wide smile.
‘You’re back! How was it?’
In the panic caused by Thomas’s injury Caroline had almost forgotten she’d been away at all. ‘It was incredible. Life changing.’
‘Was the no caffeine okay? I would go crazy.’
‘After a few days you get used to it. I was hungry, though. All we had to eat was brown rice.’
Helen wanted to talk more, but Caroline grabbed her shopping and power walked out of the shop. She’d bought home brand products and as she walked home she started to worry Thomas would judge her for that.
When she arrived back at the flat, red-faced from the effort, she made Thomas show her his finger and tried not to look grossed out while she bandaged it. She focused on her breath to try and detach herself from her surroundings. Half the tip of Thomas’s finger was hanging off but the bleeding had stopped. He was so grateful to her.
Despite Thomas’s many hints that he wanted to go to hospital, Caroline ignored him and wrapped up his finger tightly. He wanted to get stitches and a tetanus shot, but more than anything he wanted an excuse to go to the doctor. He loved medical appointments. But every time Caroline went to a hospital she started to feel a looming sense of dread that could take days to shake off. Besides, it wasn’t like she could drive him.
‘You saved my life,’ Thomas said when she’d finished, but he didn’t offer to pay her back for the bandages. They ordered takeaway for dinner and he ate with one hand while holding the other one up in the air like he wanted to ask a question.
Caroline thought that would be the end of it, and she tried to block the image of Thomas’s mutilated finger from her mind. It was good this had happened after the retreat, now she had meditated enough to see inside her own soul and gain a new level of self awareness. She noticed she wasn’t feeling concerned for Thomas’s wellbeing, which was probably a sign she was learning to accept the universe as it was.
However, over the next few days, Thomas mentioned that the pain in his finger was getting worse. Caroline didn’t pay much attention because Thomas often said he was dying of something to make conversation. He enjoyed convalescing and discussing his symptoms. He’d had the flu five times the past winter, once without sneezing at all.
It wasn’t until Caroline saw Thomas changing the dressing on his finger that she started to feel concerned. It was dribbling blood mixed with other, more sinister fluids and the skin wasn’t knitting together. He looked up and saw Caroline staring at it, but he didn’t say anything. He put his head down again and looked deep into his wound with extreme focus.
Caroline couldn’t help wondering if she’d made a mistake by not calling the ambulance, or buying the name brand antiseptic. Thomas couldn't even tie his shoelaces. He didn't say anything, but the atmosphere became more and more icy. In the afternoons when he came home from work, he would say a quick hello, but he could barely look her in the eyes before he went and locked himself in his room.
Caroline tried to combat the effect of Thomas’s negative energy by meditating harder. She set her alarm for 6am every morning and imagined herself back in the temple, her legs going to sleep beneath her as she sat cross-legged on the ground in the freezing cold. She was already nos-talgic for that time even though she hadn’t enjoyed it.
One thing ten days of deep meditation had taught Caroline, though, was that she could en-dure any kind of suffering, so she decided to breathe through the discomfort and make the most of her situation. Since Thomas wasn’t going to talk to her, it was the perfect time to take things she’d always wanted to take from his flat, like the high quality canvas tote bag he’d bought one day and never used. She snuck in to his room one morning when he’d left for work and put it in her closet.
Two weeks passed. Caroline worked long hours, focusing on selling as many units as possible to distract herself from the tension in the flat, which had become overwhelming. She avoided Thom-as, trying to only see him in passing. His hostility hadn’t subsided, although his finger had eventu-ally healed. He was more morose than ever, oscillating between scathing disregard and self-indulgent sulking. Caroline tried counting while she breathed, and scanning her body while she meditated, and imagining sunlight in her heart growing bigger and bigger and enveloping the whole universe, but nothing helped. She couldn’t find it in her soul to give loving-kindness to Thomas.
Then one Thursday night without warning, Thomas popped his head into her room.
‘Hey, what are you doing for dinner tonight?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘I’m making a curry if you want some. I feel like we never see each other these days.’
Caroline couldn’t say no to this. He’d caught her outright. She’d made sure that they saw each other as little as possible once she’d identified his behaviour as toxic.
So she found herself perched on the stool again, while Thomas poured green curry paste into a wok. It was spicy and made their eyes water. It felt refreshing to blink away tears.
‘I was thinking about it today, and I realised the last time we had dinner together was the night I did this.’ He held up his finger and wiggled it at her.
‘Yes. I’m so sorry about that.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, I just remember that when you did it, you wanted to see a doctor, and I - we didn’t go.’
‘Thank god you didn’t. I hate going to the doctor.’ It was interesting how confident Thom-as was in saying something so blatantly untrue.
But Caroline swallowed her frustration, took a deep breath, counted to four, and breathed out.
Dinner was peaceful that night. They did the dishes together and Thomas told Caroline sto-ries about his time backpacking in Vietnam. When she was putting the cutlery away, she noticed the sharp knife Thomas had cut himself with was still on the counter, half-hidden under the mi-crowave. It had brown bloodstains on the handle. She considered pulling it out and asking Thomas to wash it up, but decided to let it go.
You can find more from Jennifer over on her website!
