Relieve the pressure

As we trudged through those last two weeks until our big day, we just kept thinking, If we can just push on until the wedding... Just a few more errands to run.  We had finished cleaning the house from floor to ceiling.  We'd pulled up old, smelly carpet from around the perimeter of the dining and bedrooms.  Rob had pried up nails and gone under the house to cut a stump that was protruding through the floor in the front hall. Someone who hadn't seen the house before our hours of work would have had a tough time believing we'd cleaned at all, but at least the smell of dog urine was beginning to air out.  Either that, or we were starting to get used to it.

One important purchase of new homeowners that can't wait is that of a refrigerator. We went to a discount store and found a huge fridge that was marked down due to a dent that we figured no one would ever notice anyway.

To save 50 bucks on delivery (have I mentioned yet that Rob is really good at saving 50 bucks?), we figured we could have the guy at the store help us hoist the enormous thing into the back of Rob's pick-up truck. "This is why we need a pick-up, babe," Rob would say to me on our cautious drive home.  What we hadn't figured out was how we'd get the massive purchase out of the pick-up once arriving to our new abode.

But, what are neighbors for?  Luckily for us, Mark saw us staring at the fridge, contemplating a plan of action.  He might have also noticed Rob rigging a wooden plank ramp from the bed of the truck two feet down to the ground.  "Need some help?" he offered, leaning out the window of his car.  Need he ask?  We could hardly believe our luck.  It wasn't an easy job, but our new favorite neighbor and Rob managed to get the refrigerator up the stairs of the porch to the front door.

Once there, we faced a new challenge: getting it through the too-narrow frame.  As he helped Rob to take the doors off, a sharp piece of metal cut Mark's finger open. He was bleeding quite a bit.  As I rummaged through boxes looking for a band-aid or gauze, Mark managed to help Rob to lift the refrigerator into the house.  Unable to find any bandage to offer Mark, I insisted that we could take it from here.  We thanked him and relieved our injured new friend from further neighborliness.

How the next accident happened, exactly, is tough to say.  Somehow, while putting the doors back on the fridge, one door slipped (was I supposed to be holding that?) and smashed down onto the nail of Rob's index finger. Having a high threshold for pain, Rob didn't complain much. However, the nail's purple color and fingertip's pulsating rhythm seemed to yelp out, "Holy $#¡+!"

For the next few hours, Rob took close looks at his injury, pressing it and inspecting it pensively.  "I can feel the pressure building," he said.  "It's so tender and it hurts to even type."

I did everything that I would have wanted him to do for me in a moment of pain. I held his hand.  I got him some ice. I may have even kissed that increasingly nasty looking pointer.  But Rob paid me no attention.  He was planning. He was plotting.

"You know," he began. "I saw a doctor do something on a show once."  This was never a good start to a thought of Rob's.  He paused and I leaned in, afraid to hear what he was going to say.  If Rob's past adventures playing 'doctor' were any indicator, this idea was not going to sit well with me.

Not long after Rob and I had met, he had proudly shown me the scar on his shin where he had given himself stitches with fishing line and a sewing needle. His favorite part of that story is that the needle was so dull that he had to grab it with pliers to yank it through his skin. 

Rob continued, "The doctor on the show just drilled a hole into a nail that was pulsating with blood."  I began to shake my head.  He continued.  "The blood just spurted out and relieved the pressure."

I knew the Dewalt was in the other room.  I spoke quickly.  "Rob, the wedding is in a week. Please don't do this."  Rob just smiled as he left the room.

I covered my ears and hummed at a volume that wasn't quite loud enough to drown out the sound of my fiance in the next room, drilling a hole into his own fingernail.

A minute later he ran back into the bedroom clutching his index finger with his other hand.  "It worked!" he exclaimed. "It worked!  There's no more pressure!"  Blood dripped out of the hole in the center of his nail. I sighed as he convinced me to take a closer look at his work.  He wore that hole in his nail as proudly as he wears that scar on his shin.  It grew out eventually and was much less noticeable than the alternative would have been on our wedding day.  As we said our vows, though, the remaining impact of the drill bit on his nail was proof that my life married to Rob would be anything but dull.