Silver was a nightclub on Hope Street in Glasgow. It is where I spent at least half of my short lived career as a bouncer between 2007 and 2008 and as someone who’d rather have spent his weekends either in bed or in the Cathouse, the best way to describe Silver is a as a horrible bouncy sticky sweat box. If Hell is a real place, Silver was as close as you could get without getting fucked by Satan.
Normally I’d be given a post watching over the dancefloor but sometimes, mainly when I was coming from working a shift from the pub around the corner, I’d be sent out to working in the smoking area instead. I didn’t smoke, so the head doorman, who was also my brother, knew I wouldn’t just be standing out there smoking the night away. Most of the time, truth me told, I’d spend most of the time trying to keep drunks walking up the alley from trying to gain entry through the back door or keep drunk women away from touching my arse and playing with hair which I’d just begun growing out.
All I ever I wanted to do on these shifts was go home to my bed. Often I’d be starting my day waking up at 8am for college, spending the day there before going home for a few hours and something to eat. Then, I’d start my pub shift at 8pm, move to the club and midnight and on occasion, work the door of a takeaway until 5am once everything had closed.
There was one night though, around January time I think , where my night didn’t really go to plan.
I wasn’t working the smoking area itself that night, but rather the stairs leading up to it. Trying to keep traffic flowing, keep drinks inside and ensure not too many people were going up at the one time. Once the smoking area closed off around 2am, I knew it was time to start counting the minutes until I could jump in the car and head home.
For reasons still unknown to me, I decided that once the smoking area was closed that night, I was going to hold the door shut that. I was standing next to the fire door as I always did ensuring nobody tried going for a sneaky smoke but instead of just leaning against the door this time, I decided I was going to hook my hand up inside the door mechanism to prevent anyone from being able to push the door handle down and get out. I was basically being lazy because it meant nobody could open the door no matter how little attention I paid.
I think around the time of last orders, I could the door being pulled from the other side. The club manager was coming out of the office to start getting closing up the bars. I forgot about this little fact. However, he was having some trouble opening the door because the handle wouldn’t release because my finger was in it… and it was stuck. He must have been pulled that door like a mad man trying to get through not knowing that I was on the other side, trying to pull my hand out.
Granted, I was a moron for putting my hand in there in the first place, but this little scenario wasn’t even considered by my sleep deprived brain. Eventually I ripped my finger and hand out of there with as much force as I could manage and the bat manager got through the door, gave me a funny and confused look and carried on.
My hand was throbbing though. I’d never felt pain quite like it. I knew I must have done something. Probably something bad… So, without thinking much of it, I took a wee look at my hand. Thumb was OK. Index finger was good. Middle finger was good… Then there was a lot of red… and then the pinky was OK.
I took another glance at my ring finger trying to figure out how bad the damage was, thinking I could make it to the end of the night and just stick a plaster on it and go home. But between the sheer volume of blood coming out of my finger, the strobe lights and being really fucking tired, I legitimately thought I’d lost part of my finger and I was beginning to panic. At 19 years old am I down a fucking finger?
Typically the strobe lights at this moment in time were red, my blood is red, my once white t-shirt, was also red… and then, in my wisdom I decided to poke the wound with my other hand to see what was happening.
I remember distinctly starting fall backwards but I don’t remember hitting the floor. I wake up surrounded by my brother, another couple of bouncers and some customers who apparently seen me starting to fall and grabbed me before I smashed my face off the floor.
I had been pulled through to the stairs leading back to the smoking area. Dazed, confused and in absolute agony. I’d never felt pain like that before and I haven’t since but on the face of it, it sounds like such a dumb injury. It sounds like I cut my finger and I fainted like a little bitch. Rest assured though, there’s slightly more to it than that.
So, I get up. I’m helped upstairs to the front door and there’s an ambulance there at the door. There almost always an ambulance at the door of Silver, it was that kind of place. The paramedics see me, covered in blood and shove me into the back of the ambulance to take a look.
Turns out the inside of my finger was trying to escape and I was essentially cut right through to the bone. So what had actually happened was with the amount blood I’d lost and the fact that when I poked my finger, I apparently poked an exposed nerve, I went into shock and passed out.
Away to the Royal Infirmary I went and sat for an hour or two while quite possibly being the only sober patient in A&E at the time. A nurse eventually came along, poked my insides by into place best she could and then cleaned and stitched the wound – my finger had been saved. I was then given some pills, not sure what they were to be honest, painkillers and something else. Either way, they pretty great. My brother stayed to take me home while someone else we worked with drove my car down the road for me.
To this day, nearly 20 years later, my finger still isn’t back to normal – it’s never going to be. It healed on the outside as best as you could expect given the circumstances. There’s still a scar there but the tip of my finger is effectively numb on a permanent basis. Sometimes if I catch it on something just right, I’ll feel an odd sensation running through it. It isn’t pain, but it isn’t fun either. I think the best way I could describe it is a sudden attack of pins and needles that comes and goes in a matter of seconds.
The whole time I worked on the doors, I never hit anyone, I never got in a fight, I was punched or pushed… My only incident, my only injury, was from a fucking fire door.