Stitches

Okay about the accident.

Yea, let's cut the crap because I've made my preambules on my previous post eh.

So this, is a tale very unlikely to happen in real life.

Why, because, it could really get superstitious the more I think about it. And this is Bali. An island full of spiritual air and unseen prowess. I'm not practicing Hinduism, but this kind of thing, for me, will still happen anyway regardless any religions.

Wait! This has nothing to do with ghosts or goblins or any horror shit, no. This is more about karma. About getting punishments from things you're not supposed to do but you do, about getting what you deserve from things you're not supposed to say but you say.

Now.

It was on October 30th. Halloween Night...

A friend of mine was apparently also in Bali. With his newlywed wife. I knew he was coming, but we hadn't made any appointments yet so that day, I still explored by myself. It was not until I finished swimming in southern Bali when I got a text from him.

Now this guy, is one of my best friends from high school. A guy I talked a lot of shit with and joked around with, even until today. So our texts back then was just like that. Full of foolish returns, and somehow inappropriate. But in summary, all we wanted to arrange was to meet at a bar later that night.

Then I went back to my hotel to get myself ready. With sheer excitement of going to a Halloween party -which by the way, is always an occasion frowned upon by my Dad- alongside some friends, I jumped to the shower, cleansed the sea salt off my body, grabbed my towel, swung my arms to wrap the cloth around my back and bang—

I elbowed the glass rack. Which fell instantly off the wall.

On it were super heavy, made-of-stone toiletries containers.

All those flew down to the ground, not on the floor...

But on my foot instead.

The shower water then turned red. At first I thought it was just a scratch, but for seconds after, it turned to be a small pond of blood. I tried to check my foot which was covered by the debris of the glass, and there it was, opened like Sauron's eye, the wound from the incident.

I've never had an open wound that wide. In fact, as far as I remembered, I never had an open wound at all. I'm a very careful, calm person. As a kid, I tend to just stay at home reading comics, watching cartoons, playing consoles as opposed to my little brother who were outside all the time, playing soccer, swimming through the drainages, got scratches and stitches and broken ankles.

So seeing this kind of shocked me, to the point that I didn't quiet believe it. I was rather in denial, to be honest, thinking that it would eventually close if I dab cottons and apply Minyak Tawon on it—the usual way I treat scratches from my cats. But it was really wide, and so I called my Mom just to make sure that it was just an okay wound, but her respond was not the type I expected. She -and my aunt who was just near her by that time- urged me to go to nearest hospital. But a hospital is not an option. The nearest one is quiet far, and the blood wouldn't stop coming out of the wound.

But I know God already planned this way ahead so He prepared everything for me just so neatly. Just across my hotel, there was a clinic. With 24-hour emergency. I was sure this was an emergency so there I went, with my right leg walking so weirdly thanks to my over-exposed foot wound.

The nurse on call was just like my Mom. She didn't see it as something that can be treated the usual way. A fucking stitch operation needed to be done, she said -without word 'fucking' of course. I really didn't fancy that suggestion. I always hated the idea of getting stitches. Out of all my family members, I was the only one clean and free from stitches -except that one from my circumcised weewee. And I didn't plan to lose my stitch-virginity, and lose my world record, here, in this small clinic somewhere in Bali.

She wasn't fully sure though, as she needed to wait for the doctor on call to examined my wound first and made the decision. He was on the other clinic by that time, on his way to the one I was, after receiving the call from the nurse. So I had to wait in vain, still hanging on to the small and somehow false hope of being able to walk out of that clinic stitchlessly.

The doctor arrived, and with no further ado, repeated what the nurse said. Again, I was speechless. I asked if there were any other ways to avoid stitches, but no, there were no other ways. I asked if it was okay if I just got regular treatments regardless doctor's suggestions, and yes, apparently I could, but then I had to sign this fucking contract to which I stated that I refused to get doctor's treatment so I wouldn't sue him, nor the clinic, if anything were to happen to me in the future as the effect of my refusal.

FUCK IT OF COURSE IT SCARED THE HELL OUT OF ME!?

How could there be such fuckable contract in this world, it was beyond me.

Okay. Long story short.

They started operating my foot.

That experience was beyond any imagination of mine. The worst part was when the doctor injected anesthesia into the circumference of my open wound. Several times. And it killed me each time. Metaphorically of course. But seriously, the pain was nasty I wish I never had to experience that again.

Once the chemical worked, my foot started feeling numb. And that's when the stitches came in. My God. So that was how it felt like to be stitched. To have needles pierced through my skin, out of the other side,  then got pulled and the whole thread was like sliding smoothly following the movement of the needle. FUCK! Even now my stitch tingles if I remembered those moments! I could feel the whole process, as the needles and threads were dancing. It's as if I was Woody when he was being sewn on that reparation scene in Toy Story 2. Thank God it was painless.

During the whole surgery -is it too much if I called that a 'surgery'?- I video-called my Mom. You know, just to keep me sane. The doctor and the nurse kept entertaining me though, while they're digging through my skin and get the wound closed off. But theirs were just formality, and I need somebody who would actually entertain me. Gosh I still can't believe I had to go through that all alone.

The not-even-an-hour surgery felt like a lifetime. You know the typical sayings in books or movies where a dying man sees his whole life flashing before him? Yes I had the exact same experience. I was practically semi-dying. Because my whole trip had now been ruined. No, not just because now I had to temporarily walk like a crippled, but more because, this stitched foot, can NOT get wet during recovery.

I mean.

How could you NOT GET WET, in freaking BALI?

It was as if I could do nothing. And that's true! Because my plan for this long trip was to discover hidden beaches, explore further off coastal villages, ride up north to visit as many waterfalls as possible, AND IT ALL INVOLVES GETTING WET!

So yea all those ideas of me swimming, skinny dipping, sitting under the harsh waterfalls, snorkeling like the first time I had my WFB, all just flashed before my eyes. And practically everything else I did before, including the Green Bowl beach I just visited right before I went home and took shower, and everything else I should be doing after, including that Halloween party I should be doing with my friends, all just flashed before my eyes.

The fact that my trip semi-ended and all my plans crumbled hurt even more than the stitches itself. Even hurt more than when the anesthesia wore off.

But yea, I think that's the karma I deserved.

I couldn't think of anything else but those words I exchanged with my friends right before the incident, but I'm pretty sure there were more than that.

Maybe because I planned for that Halloween Party which my Dad forbid. And as a gift from karma, I got the literal cosplay of being Frankenstein. On my foot.

Or maybe it's the playlist I set for the trip. It had song "Crash Into Me" in it, and there you go, the heavy ass shampoo bottle and the glass rack really crashed into me foot.

Or maybe, this was simply just God's reminder that I couldn't be too excited about anything I planned, because anything could be flipped in just a sec by Him.

The artists.

The art.
Of course I have the photo of the open-wound version and the unveiled,
un-bandaged stitched version but even I could faint from looking at those lol.
Let me know if you're curious though :)

The canceled Halloween Party gang.
Okay you know what's creepy? My friend got his own portion of karma.
He was driving a bike in Nusa Penida and his wife got stung by the exhaust pipe.
It was quiet a terrible experience from what I heard. Messy.
This karma game is really not a joke.

Well I couldn't be mad about this.

I know karma exists and I know how it works.

Although...

What happened not so long after this incident, though it was still a part of this karma saga, really drove me to the verge of my sanity. But I'm not gonna tell you in this post because otherwise it'll be a novel.

So this karma-vibe story,

Is stitched to the next post