Just a little scar

On the 1st of October of a year in the mid of the 90s I was cutting down a tree in Italy. It was really warm and I wore just a t-shirt. I wore a safety harness but no protective clothing while I was cutting the tree down from the top. The harness I had purchased wasn't the right one for this kind of job, so I wasn't able to fix it properly and I was too far from the trunk of the tree to work properly. I made it up holding myself with the left hand to the trunk itself, wielding the (small) chainsaw with one hand only. When I pulled the trigger, the chainsaw " bit the wood", instead of cutting. I wasn't able to hold it and it landed on my left forearm. My first thought was: "Farewell my dear arm...". When I saw my hand still attached to the arm I thought: "Let me see if I'm still able to move my fingers..." All of them responded, so I told to myself: "Go down of the tree before you faint", for I was bleeding "as a slaughtered pig". I opened the harness, climbed down the step ladder and as soon as I reached the ground I stopped to bleed. 

With my brother and another man who was there to help in the job I checked the wound and realized that the chainsaw had cut just the skin. It had landed on my arm with the side of the blade, cutting many times the skin slightly and just once deeply. After the first aid, my brother drove me to the "Pronto Soccorso" (A&E), where at the nurse's question: "What's the problem?" I shown my arm wrapped in bandage. The nurse smiled, nodded and gave me a first treatment, then assigned me the green colour code, which means "state of severe sufferance" but no danger of complications. So I sat in the waiting room, resigned to wait, surrounded by people who could have staid at home (not a surprise, is it?). I remember a man, a typical Italian lefty (I mean no offence): more scrawny than slim, pale, a masculine beard as in use during the 70s on a not masculine at all face. He was holding his right index finger up, wrapped in a dressing, staring straight in front of himself with a stoic look. Probably he had pierced his finger with a staple in the office. What people is able to do to avoid working!

After a Bangladeshi man with an aching belly (who was charged for the service since he didn't need to use the A&E) was my turn. The doctor checked my wound, asked how had happened, made a bit of conversation about my job to relax me, then he got needle and thread and started to stitch my arm up. Eight stitches in all, but it took a long time. Why? Because as soon as he started to suture me, he picked a mobile phone up to call another department and started an argument about someone who wanted to take one of his nurses away. Soon the argument heated up, with shouts and angry words, and often the doctor stopped stitching me. Any time he stopped, I painfully remember, he did it when the needle was inside my flesh, holding together the two sides of the wound. I have to say, at this point, that since childhood I suffer of a slight phobia of any type of needles. To remember the needle piercing my flesh gives me more distress than remembering the chainsaw plunging on my arm.

Anyway, slowly slowly my arm was whole again. A little bit too tight, as I would have found out the very next day, when the skin broke apart close to the stitches giving me a multiple scar broader than it should be. To be honest, my wound needed one stitch more, but apparently the doctor didn't wish to open a new thread just for one stitch and waste the rest: to skimp is a virtue, so he decided to leave my wound "just a little bit open". Doesn't matter, it healed. 
The all process had been quite painful, particularly because any time the doctor started shouting he couldn't avoid to move the needle, which was well plunged in my arm. At the end of it I dared to ask to him: "Why did I feel more pain while you were stitching me than when I cut myself with the chainsaw?" Missing the irony in my words the doctor answered pure and sure: "Because the chainsaw is sharper that the needle!" Yes, sure. Mannagghia chi t'e' muerto... Dialectical expression meaning "Damned your dead". Not a really nice expression. Especially towards someone who just finished to treat your wound. But still...
In the following years I cut myself two times more, once in a foot with the chainsaw, and once the tip of a finger with a tool similar to a machete. Both times I just put the flapping piece of flesh back to its original position and fixed it in my own. I didn't wish to waste doctors' time. 

Well, this is the story. Nothing really deep or important, if not for what happened something like 15 years later, after I had moved to London and started a relationship with a girl (now an ex) haunted by nightmares. Often she woke up crying in the middle of the night due to the nightmares. I used to hug her in these cases, and she used to stroke my scar. Normally she was just half awake, and as she explained to me, touching my scar was a way to recognize me, to know I was close to her, and so she was able to relax and sleep again. It's when I learned to love the scars, on the flesh and on the soul, marks which make the bearer unique and recognisable.

This is the story of my scar.

Have a good night.

PS If you're thinking that I cut myself too often... Well, gardening can be a dangerous job, you know? And who do nothing doesn't make mistakes. At least I've never cut anyone else. Till now. So, don't irritate me, okay?