So my phone rang just before 9 last night. I was surprised to see that it was Solomon, since we'd already talked for the better part of an hour yesterday.

He was looking for advice. What should he do if he cut himself while washing a knife and it's bleeding and not stopping? He added that it had spurted when first cut. I, of course, told him to apply pressure (which he was already doing) and hold it up in the air to cut down blood flow (which he wasn't).

I said that if it didn't stop in 5 or 10 minutes, he should go to the ER. He pointed out that it would be tough to drive there under the circumstances. When it developed that he doesn't know any of his neighbors well enough to ask them to drive him, we agreed that he'd call a friend who lives 10 minutes away and ask her to come over, in case he needed to go. (He's about 2.5 hours away from us, so we couldn't do anything.) We left it that he should let me know whether or not he was going to the ER.

He called again just before 10 to say that he was in the waiting room at the ER and they'd replaced the paper towel he'd wrapped it with with gauze. He promised to let us know what happened, but we agreed he shouldn't call in the middle of the night unless it was much worse than we thought.

So, of course, I slept very badly and he might as well have called during the night.

I talked to him this morning. Three stitches and he didn't get home from the ER until 2:30 AM. As of 11, two fingers were still numb from the anesthetic that was supposed to last only 4 hours.

But he's okay and now that I've spoken to him, so am I.

The hardest part was not being able to just jump in the car and take care of him, even if he is 25.

Tamar