Ambulance.
The men who work in maintenance took the machine apart so far as it was necessary to free the kid's hand from it -- ("kid" -- he seems so young --)
I'm filled up with amazement when I see how these people who can Fix Everything
(that's some kind of a God-given talent -- not everyone could do it -- you have to "solve the mystery" AND create the solution, AND physically Do It -- That's what Courage is: doing it; Taking Care Of It) --
...when I see how these people who Fix Things
-- Take Action, with this low-key, casual, self-effacing heroism --
HELP the guy
TAKE the machine apart
GET his hand out with the least amount of pain and damage
MAKE a plan --
Plan A, We get him out of the machine and out the door to the ambulance; Plan B, if ambulance arrives and we haven't got him loose yet, one of our people goes up front to meet the ambulance people and lead them back to the guy.
Instantaneous; highly competent; and with all consideration and focus toward the young man who got hurt.
I said later, "You got him out really fast" -- and all the lead man said was, "I'll bet it didn't seem very fast to him."
All he could think of was how they could have done it better.
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Getting hurt and being in pain is bad, but it's also bad, or challenging in a different way, for people who are seeing the person who is in pain.
The various ramifications ping-pong around in their minds -- will he lose his finger? two fingers? three fingers? his whole hand?
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Outside in the dark, the man who got hurt sat, hand wrapped -- pain. Three or four men who work here, plus two policemen. Waiting -- ambulance.
One employee who is fluent in both Spanish and English talked to the guy, and translated.
One of the policemen told him, "Ask him, on a scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt?"
An odd question -- but then I thought, "Maybe it's a strategy, to keep the guy talking and prevent him from going into shock -- keep him focused, or something..."
Today the translator said he was thinking the same thing.
First -- "That's a dumb question!"
That "scale-of-one-to-ten" thing is such a common expression in English -- but I don't think it translates -- the guy who was hurt seemed perplexed and he asked something. The translator wanted to understand it better, too -- he looked at me, so I said to him the same thing the policeman had said, only added, "with one being small amount of pain and 10 being the most pain" -- translator tried again, and the guy answered emphatically, "Mucho!!"
The rescuers who had been standing, mostly silent, or speaking in low tones, heard "Mucho!" and someone smiled, and somebody else chuckled -- only a little. (In those situations, something has to relieve some of the tension...it isn't that you're laughing at the guy...)
One of them said to another one, "Mucho."
And somebody else -- "Mucho."
"Mucho. Mucho. Mucho." out there in the dark.
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I imagined the supervisors from the contracting company the young man works for were going to, in the very near future, gather their employees together and have an intense Safety Meeting -- (when I worked in politics they used to call that type of caucus, or strategy session, a "Come-to-Jesus meeting"). I imagined -- next week, or something.
Turned out it was in the VERY VERY near future -- an hour after the ambulance arrived, the supervisor and his supervisor came back in with the injured man, who was walking -- and he immediately held up his hand to show me, four fingers all bandaged, but all ON.
He got out of that with -- it sounds like -- no permanent damage. He was lucky.
And they had the intense Safety Meeting ON THE SPOT -- brought everybody out, to see the bandaged fingers and to hear a Sermon on the Mount about Safety.
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Courage. It's -- doing the thing. Taking care of it.
-30-
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