Is there an EMT in the house?

Friday evening was typical at our house. We were enjoying the fall weather sitting in our backyard with some friends. Margaret was across the street playing with neighborhood friends. At one point, I was on the phone in another room when I heard Margaret come in the door. She was crying. I assumed that she was pissed off that we made her come home. I was wrong. I came into the kitchen to find our three of our friends and Bill surrounding Margaret at the sink. She was screaming and crying hysterically. When I finally got a look at what was going on, I could see the bottom of her palm on her left hand was bleeding. Below the cut was a big, unnatural bulge — the kind of bulge that immediately strikes fear in the heart of a mama. On her way home, she and the neighbor girls were horsing around and Margaret fell hard on her hands forcing a giant something under her skin. Lucky for us, our tattooed, custom-motorcycle-fabricator friend, Serg, had just shown up. He's also an EMT. Serg jumped into action as soon as he realized Mar's injury. He asked for tweezers and alcohol. Remarkably Serg got Margaret settled down. He talked to her calmly about how he was going to remove whatever it was that was in her hand and called her "dude" a lot. He was so poised, Margaret asked, "Are you a doctor?" He said no that he was an EMT. Once I got the right tweezers for the job (apparently the ones I use to tweeze my eyebrows aren't good enough for minor kitchen surgery), Serg gently pulled out the giant something embedded in my little girl's hand. Here it is: It was a giant splinter or a small chunk of wood — whichever you think is more dramatic. Serg got Mar's hand cleaned up and she thanked him profusely. So did we. There was no way Margaret would have let either of Bill or I remove that wood chunk from her hand. If Serg hadn't been there, I would be writing about our trip to the emergency room. After it was all over, Margaret said, "Serg saved my life." While that is a bit of an exaggeration, he did save us a boatload of money and the trauma of an ER visit. As for the offending chunk of wood, per Margaret's request, we saved it in a plastic bag and it accompanied her to school today. She couldn't wait to tell all her little buddies about how she got a giant splinter and how her hero saved the day.