I grew up with a father that worked for the government. We had solar collectors, that he built himself, on our garage, that he also built himself. I grew up with the "If you want it done, do it." attitude. Yeah, that's great and all, and I'm one of the most resourceful people you'll ever meet (although I could never do all he does) but there are consequences.
Used to inventions on a monthly basis, it was not surprising to come home to three boys playing with a homemade rocket. They used a 2L, water, and an air compressor. They put fins on the rocket-another duct tape wonder-and did multiple test flights measuring the amount of water to air ratio. They had a string that pulled the trigger back. This trigger was a wire with two sharpened ends that went over the lip of the bottle, holding it in place until launch. We shot that sucker over 3 acres, and found it in the woods some weeks/months later. That was the big mistake.
Naturally, I call home from work during a break one night to hear, "I've got some bad news." This is a usual statement for him, but I continued to listen to his story. "The metal piece shot into my arm and I had to jerk real hard to get it out. It hurts real bad, and I think it's broken." That's great.
I had to close that night, and I had to open the next morning. If the worst damage done was a broken arm, he would be fine until the next day. I looked at it, and decided to take him in tomorrow after work. There seemed little point in going to a doctor or clinic as I doubt they had the facilities needed for this. So, after working two shifts pretty close together, I drove all the way to Cookeville Regional, about an hour, to have his arm evaluated. We got in pretty fast, where they have this new weird thermometer that swivels your face instead of actually going in anywhere, and the escorting nurse found my statement, "We don't have insurance, so please do not do 100 tests when three will suffice." absolutely hilarious. She actually laughed a great deal and said it made her day.
Then another nurse came in (maybe I should have said 5 nurses when 1 will suffice), a tall, grey haired lady with a thick German accent that thought herself to be a comedian. She did make us laugh a little, and got on real well with Marcus. Poor Arlis had to endure a tetanus shot, and a "horse shot" (as he called it) of antibiotics in the rump. That nurse left laughing as we were told we could go back in. I later found out Arlis decided to tell her all about vaccinating cattle and how the two compare. I would have laughed too if we weren't still waiting for them to take him down to x-ray. I'm sure the idiot with the rocket injury story will last a while there. They all seemed pretty surprised with it all, even though I would have thought they'd seen it all by now.
They take him down and take lots of different pictures. It wasn't broken, in fact we were told it never touched the bone. It must have gotten stuck in a tendon which made it hard to pull out or something. They gave him a steel rod enforced brace and prescriptions for "kill you or cure you" antibiotics with a pain med. He spent the next several days in swollen pain that gradually reduced daily, and was finally able to take the brace off.
Poor Marcus has had to do his jobs, and I've helped when I could. Naturally, I had to work the next several days, but everyone survived. The garden is full of weeds, and we're behind in our work even more, not to mention the financial set back to show its face in the mail at some point. But he's fine. The scary part was, while he was describing the event to the doctors/nurses, he told them something he didn't tell me. He had him arm across his chest at the time. If he hadn't it would have gone straight into his heart. That was scary.
