A bunch of people came and helped the screaming guy and a woman from the local market puts her huge thumb on his artery at the biceps and I was just left there on the platform because I did not know field medicine or whatsoever. Then there were like seven hours to the next train and I had nothing to do so I went and looked for the finger.

I looked where you would expect like at the tail end of the blood drops and it was not there and I thought did someone get it already? But then I thought maybe the wind blew and it had and there in the hard by the rail was this finger and I picked it up.

This was the first time I ever picked up a severed human appendage by the way and yeah the first time stays with you.

I went over to the concession stand to get some ice because I had this idea which is true that you got to put a severed appendage in a cold place. Concession guy would not give me ice unless I paid for a drink and also too I was not to put my gnarly severed appendage on his countertop at any time that was a code violation.

So I put the finger in my breast pocket and THAT is what those fucking things are for and I put it nail down so that it would not drip gore on me and I bought a soda and a paper towel at like a one thousand percent markup and I left the soda on the countertop and fuck you very much and I went off to the hospital to do my good thing.

When I got to the hospital with the finger wrapped in ice in a blue towel I went to the main desk and I explained the situation and the nurse practitioner said okay and she called another nurse and he called someone and la la la la and then the cops who were present arrested the shit living shit out of me.

Because it was not the right finger.

I do not know why or how and I do not want to.

But this is the moment that I understood the depth of the world I guess for the first time. I sat in a green triage room on a gray office chair with worn patches on the lumbar support and a tiny wiry cop motherfucker told me that I was holding some other fucking finger and please to give it to him now and I saw the walls disappear and time unravel all the way back to the moment when I picked up.

The wrong.

Finger.

An old cold murder finger.

And I felt the whole world come back together exactly the same as it always was but I was new.