Photo by Ken Thorne

A True Horror Story as told by “The Captain”

What a day for fly fishing! Coho jumping and finning in front of us. A beach fisherman’s dream. But how quickly things can change. Here I was, loading my fly rod back into the truck to return to town without even wetting a line.

I had set up my friend, Brad, for fly fishing; even giving him one of my hot, specially tied blue-green streamer flies to guarantee his success. But I hadn’t counted on his lack of technique. With beginner’s luck, he was into a finning coho right away, but within seconds, the lightning fish spit the hook. In his eagerness to hook another fish, Brad’s backcast became an errant sidecast. The fly whipped by my head and on its return stung me on the nose like a mad hornet.

And there it stayed.

I tried to work the hook out of my nose, thinking of the coho slime now embedded in my face. It wouldn’t budge.

“You won’t get it out without help,” Brad said. “It’s stuck right in the cartilage.”

On the way back to town, Brad stole frequent glances at my nose and sporadic snorts of laughter escaped him. “Sorry,” he wheezed.

I glared at him, but moments later his shoulders bounced again.

It was a relief to drop off Brad at home. I continued on to the hospital with the truck’s sun visor down in case I passed anyone I knew. I parked close to the Emergency entrance. Head down and hand cupped over my nose, I strode up to the reception desk. A bubbly young nurse looked up at me. “Can I help you, sir?”

Uncovering my nose for her eyes only, I said, “Can you get this off me?”

“Ooh! Oh, my goodness,” she blurted out. “We’ll put you behind this curtain. I’ll get the doctor right away.”

Quick, light footsteps approached. A short, slight woman stood by my bed. “Been fishing, have we? I’m Doctor Payne.”

“Hi. Can you get this thing off my nose? Have you ever dealt with this kind of thing before?”

“Don’t worry. We do it a-a-all the time,” she assured me. She brought a needle up to my nose. “This may sting a little, but it will freeze the tissue so we can pull the hook out.”

“I don’t think so,” I hurried to inform her. “There’s a barb on the end. I crimped it, but apparently not enough. Believe me, I tried to pull it out and it won’t budge. Hurt like hell, too.”

“In that case I’ll push it through to the other side and cut the barb off. Then I can pull it back out.” I was thankful for the freezing as she pushed the hook through.

Dr. Payne left to find a tool. I was puzzled and disappointed when she came back with a pair of worn, old wire cutters. I had envisioned something more sterile and surgical. With much squeezing of wire cutters and accidental twisting of my nose, the tiny woman worried the tempered steel of the fly hook, all to no avail. At this point, I offered to go find my gear pliers and do the job myself, but she insisted, “We do it a-a-all the time.”

When she left the cubicle, I touched my nose gingerly. It was swollen and probably bright red. Add the decoration of blue-green feathers and I was thankful for the curtain surrounding the bed.

The intercom paged Dr. Birley and momentarily he and Dr. Payne appeared at my bedside. The man dwarfed the little woman. He took the wire cutters and, with an outward flip of his elbows, and a shuffling of his feet to find the most comfortable stance, he prodded the hook to find a good grip.

Dr. Payne’s face was almost as close to mine as Dr. Birley’s. “NO, Doctor, NO!” she exclaimed. “You’ve got tissue. Doctor Birley! You’ve got tissue!”

Dr. Birley straightened up, raised his head, and looked down his long nose at Dr. Payne. He tossed the wire cutters onto the tray by my bed. The last I saw of him was his wide back passing between the cubicle curtains.

Dr. Payne hurried after him. A moment later, the intercom announced, “Maintenance … call Emergency. Maintenance … call Emergency.”

All was quiet and I was drifting off to sleep, but my eyes flashed open when I heard the receptionist’s shrill voice. “Oh, my goodness! I wouldn’t let anyone go near my face with those things.”

Alarm bells clanged in my mind. My eyes must have been huge when Dr. Payne walked in carrying a pair of red-handled bolt cutters that were almost half as big as she was. I wondered what grungy task Maintenance had last used them for. The tool’s great iron beak settled on my nose like a turkey vulture, but seconds later, the hook was out.

I thanked the doctor and as I left the hospital, free of my feathery affliction at last, Dr. Payne’s words still echoed in my ears. “We do it a-a-all the time.”