His wife drove him to Beaumont that evening, six and a half hours after the injury.

He lost three fingers.

Two of them, according to the hand surgeon’s later opinion, were probably salvageable at hour two.

The reason he was driven home is called a recordable.

Under OSHA rules, an injury requiring medical treatment beyond first aid must be entered on a log, and that log drives a company’s incident rate, and the incident rate drives workers’ compensation experience modifiers, and those drive premiums, and they also drive whether you can bid certain contracts.

A serious injury that never gets medical treatment never becomes a recordable.