bloody hell

For the past few months, I’d been seeing references to some sort of chocolate dessert thing that was rising to stardom courtesy of the blogosphere. My interest was piqued, of course – I mean, I like sugar. Nuff said. And then, purely by accident, I happened upon the recipe.

So when I found myself home alone last night, I decided to give it a try.

Before I continue, I should get something out of the way: the dessert, probably because it is 1) chocolate and 2) tasty, is called “Chocolate Yummies”. Not to be contrary, but there will be none of that here. I already hate the word “yummy”. It suffers from the same overwrought, repulsive cutesy-ness that has given rise to emetic characters like Snuggles the Cooing Laundry Bear. And seeing it pluralized – as though it were some kind of fucking noun – well, I just can’t take it.

So with that point in mind, I made the Chocolate Thing. It was actually pretty easy, and everything was going swimmingly, until I went to take it out of the fridge and discovered that the casserole dish I’d used to bake it in had cracked and shattered into several pieces.

I realize now that I could have predicted this. I mean, I’ve seen Alien 3 – I know what happens when something super-heated is suddenly exposed to extreme cold. The only difference between the alien and my casserole dish is that my casserole dish didn’t lay eggs in my chest before it died.

Fuck, I thought. I really liked that casserole dish.

And then, in what can only be described as a moment of suicidal idealism: Maybe it can be saved!

Which is how, after cutting the Chocolate Thing into bars and popping them all into tupperware, I found myself brushing its crumbs from the casserole dish in the hopes that I’d be able to glue the clean pieces back together.

Also, how I found myself spraying blood all over the kitchen after making too generous a sweep over a jagged piece of dish.

I immediately screamed and commenced leaping around the kitchen in pain. My finger was spouting an unholy amount of blood. I buried the wound in a dishtowel and applied pressure – just like they teach you in boy scouts – swearing violently the whole time and cursing my stupid inclinations to bake in the first place.

After awhile I peeled the dishtowel off my finger to look at the cut, figuring that five minutes of hard pressure would have stopped the bleeding.

It hadn’t.

More to the point, there was no cut. I squinted at my gushing finger, trying to find the wound, before I realized that I wasn’t looking at a cut. Instead, I was staring into the hole where a significant portion of my finger should have been but, somehow, wasn’t.

“AAAAAAAAGH!”

I ran screaming into the bedroom, clutching the towel to my finger again, flipped open my cellphone with my teeth, and used a toe to call my parents.

My dad answered.

“Hello?”

“Daaaaaad!” I yelled.

“Hi,” he said.

My mother, who had picked up the extension and whose power of intuition is slightly more advanced than my father’s, simultaneously said, “What’s wrong?”

“I cut off a piece of my finger!”

“Oh, no!” said my mom.

“Gross!” said my dad, who – lest anyone has forgotten – is a doctor. “How’d you do that?”

I rambled incoherently for a few minutes about chocolate desserts, blogs, and Alien 3.

“I see,” said my dad. I don’t think he was really taking the journey with me.

“It won’t stop bleeding,” I sniffed. “What do I do?”

“Are you putting pressure on it?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a band-aid?”

I looked down at my hand. Rivulets of blood were rolling down my finger, pooling around my knuckles and clogging around the band of my engagement ring. The whole thing looked uncomfortably like the cover art from a V.C. Andrews novel.

“I don’t think a band-aid is going to do the trick right now,” I said.

“Did you say that you cut off a piece of your finger?” my dad asked, suddenly.

“Yes.”

“Do you still have it?”

“What?!”

“Do you still have the piece of your finger?”

“What the… why? What good will it do?”

“Oh,” he said, with total sincerity, “If you can find it, you should try to stick it back on.”

I sat dumbfounded for a minute. Stick it back on? Would my finger regenerate, starfish-like?

Then I panicked.

“Wait. You mean it won’t grow back on its own?”

“Well, I mean, it’ll heal over…” my dad said.

“But it won’t grow back?”

“Well—“

“What about my fingerprints, will they look the same? Will my fingerprint grow back?”

“Well, I mean—“

“What if I can’t find the piece?!” I cried. I had a sudden vision of the dog, who had been sniffing around the various bloodstains on the floor of the kitchen with great interest, finding the tip of my finger on the floor and promptly eating it.

There was a pause.

“I don’t really know about the fingerprint thing,” said my dad.

“What kind of doctor are you?” I shrieked.

My mother started cackling.

My dad said, “Whatever, I’m not a forensic pathologist.”

“Jesus Christ!!!"

There was another pause.

“This sucks,” I said, finally. “It’s my left-hand ring finger, too. I mean… this is a very significant finger.”

My mother stopped laughing.

“Well,” she said, “if your fingerprint doesn’t grow back, maybe you could use that finger to commit crimes.”

* * *

All told, I’m pleased to report that I actually did find and reattach (sort of) the piece of my finger, wrapped the whole thing in a few-hundred band-aids, and went to sleep after sending Brad a text message in an attempt to forewarn him about what he’d be coming home to. (It said, “I had an accident. Don’t be freaked out by all the blood.”)

And it doesn’t even really hurt that much.

But I am never baking again.

Update for all those who asked and/or expressed concern: I'm fine, really. And the chocolate Thing (which was already out of the pan and into tupperware containers by the time I mangled myself) was really freakin' good -- I highly recommend that you make your own.

Just not in a glass dish.