A buddy (whom I knew, not well when we departed but realized he was possibly head-injured as the trip unfolded) and I were on the westbound comeback of a lengthy road trip on our Harleys, riding since sunup, when we stopped to eat lunch at a restaurant. Afterward we were at our scooters in the parking lot, rigging for another stretch of road, when he decided he wanted to cut the sleeves off his T-shirt using his Leatherman blade).
I looked over and he was stabbing at the limp sleeves of the T-shirt while holding it--this guy looked like you had given a three-year-old girl a butcher knife and said, "Here, cut this." It was pathetic; looked like he'd NEVER handled a knife before (I'd noticed his odd use of a knife when he ate, too, but just put it down to probably being head-injured).
I walked over, told him he was gonna kill the shirt if he kept doing that, drew my 4" leuku and showed him how to hold the sleeve taught and SLICE it down the seam. Handing the shirt back to him, he started stabbing again, nearly got me and I backed off and went back to my bike in disgust, leaving him to his own methods.
Next thing I know I hear, "Help me!....Help me!" and I turn around and the guy's holding his arm high in the air where he'd just put the whole blade into the center of his underside forearm and got an artery or two.
Trying to keep this short, I grabbed him and convinced him he wasn't going to die...he's going into shock now...and walked him back into the restaurant which was full of lunchtime crowd and a waiting line. The guy is spewing blood even though I had him keeping pressure on it. I sat him in a chair and told him again he was going to live.
Now, some of the elderly ladies were fainting in the doorway and the wait staff, mostly young girls, were panicking and dropping stuff...I've no idea where the manager was. I know some of the people at tables and booths dropped but I was so busy I don't know how many. So I started trying to direct the waitresses...one calling an ambulance, one to get some ice and towels, one to find the manager, one to assist me with stopping his bleeding, etc, etc...
He finally passed and fell on the floor before the Fire-paras got there but they arrived pretty quickly and took him to their ambulance. He revived in there, they got it under control and I followed them to the hospital.
After 4 hours in the ER and this guy using every ploy he knew to get hard drugs from every nurse, doctor and candy striper who walked by, he was sutured up, given his painkillers and all was well with him again.
He couldn't ride his scooter until at least morning, so one of the firemen who'd evidently been assigned to aid us that day drove it back to a motel where they had secured two rooms for us.
My buddy crashed til morning the instant he got into the room--toast. Meantime, the firefighters we'd been with that day, who had helped us out TREMENDOUSLY, were riders and showed up at my room about 6:00 that afternoon on their Harleys. I'll just say we had a hell of a time that night.
A day and a half later as we neared home, the last I ever SAW of my buddy he took his exit in a bad lightning storm and waved as I went on down the road home. Last I ever HEARD of my buddy he'd been busted in a meth sting. Several years ago now.
I'm still thankful to the Firefighters of Guymon, Oklahoma. You guys are amazing.
I nearly s**t myself. Took it off her and tucked the thing away in my sporran.:grumpy:
