Mark was a foreman on a job building a parking structure downtown. A steel beam swung wrong off a crane. He put his hand up to guide it, and it pinned his left hand against a column.
I got the call at work. Dave’s voice, shaking.
“Lena, it’s Mark. He’s okay. He’s okay, but you need to come to the hospital.”
His ring finger was broken in three places. The doctors had to cut his wedding band off with a tiny saw before they could set the bones. I sat beside him in the emergency room while they did it, and he squeezed my other hand so hard I thought he’d break mine too.
When they finally pulled the cut band off, Mark looked at it lying in the little metal tray and he said, “Damn it.”
Not about the finger. About the ring.
“We’ll get it fixed,” I told him. “They can solder it back together. It’ll be good as new.”
