This Moment: Davis North Emergency Room - Utah October 1, 2011 7:00 P.M.

Waiting for the doctor to examine my mother. She cut her finger opening a can of frozen spaghetti sauce. She's reclining on the gurney, The thin green fitted sheet is stretched taut to reveal the blue vinyl covered foam mattress. A woman in red shoes, her fists shoved deep in khaki shorts, hesitates at our door as if deciding to enter. The doctor enters, examines my mother's hand, tells her she needs a stitch or two, and pats her foot on the way out. Now waiting for the nurse and her needle. Laughter in the next room. A steady stream of people and their injuries pass by our door. A man in fatigues with a hurt arm, clearly in the military, walks by the room and I sit up in my chair, a clumsy attempt at respect. I think of the suicide statistics of soldiers and returning vets: 17 attempts a day. Seventeen. And also, the staggering fact that more soldiers have committed suicide than died in Vietnam. Can this be true? The nurse deadens and cleans my mother's finger. I type on this phone rather than watch. I look up as the nurse gathers the blood soaked gauze and then prepares the kit for the doctor. She bumps into the cabinet on the way out and says "excuse me", which is oddly funny. Waiting for the doctor and his curved needle. The ER is quiet. And now coughing, voices down the hall, a door closes, and the hum of forced air fill the void. The doctor stitches my mother's flesh together. The talk turns to football and the dilemma of the men of Utah: watch General Conference priesthood session or the Ute football game. I watch the doctor pull his last stitch and think the technique is similar to knotting a string of pearls.