DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

“I’ve always wanted to be a doctor,” said my doctor as she continued with the procedure involving sharp-bladed instruments. “When I was 17, Dr. Leibenkind used to let me practice installing stitches for patients whenever the scar would be hidden.”

(She didn’t say “installing,” but I like the sound of that better. Also I enjoy the hardware connotation. Certainly you can imagine how stitched-up human flesh takes on the appearance of an obscure cable connector, like something out of the Belkin catalog.)

I grimaced again, as I tend to do when I’m being burned, cut, sewn, etc. “17?” I grunted. “Was Dr. Leibenkind a friend of the family?” I wasn’t sure how else a 17-yr-old would get her hands on a set of sutures, much less a live patient and an open wound.

“No,” she explained, “I was his file clerk.”

I had to laugh, but I stifled it so as not to impale myself on a scalpel. “Did the patients know they were being stitched up by the file clerk?” Something about that just had a funny ring to it. The doctor laughed, too; I can tell because of the little jog in my scar.

She explained that the patients didn’t know, but that Dr. Leibenkind had supervised every stitch, mitigating the risk that my then-only-a-file-clerk doctor would accidentally sew someone’s earlobe onto their scapula, or something. I took this as good news, because if the file clerk was doing surgery, it follows that the surgeon might be out in the office putting correspondence into folders.