When a bone breaks, it doesn’t really sound anything like what you would expect it to. I always thought of it as a loud, booming noise, like a gunshot. That’s what it had sounded like to me the only time I broke a bone, my arm when I was a kid. But when you view it from the outside, as an observer, it’s different.

It isn’t especially pronounced or extraordinary, but you know what it is right away. It’s kind of like a branch snapping, which makes sense, I guess. And there’s that unmistakable tone of finality, that sudden silence afterwards that says well, that’s the end of that.

When it happened to Ray, he sat there and stared too, for a second. All five of us did, as if we couldn’t believe what was in front of our eyes. Then he fell to the floor and the screaming started.

His foot was, in the best way I can put it, fucked up. He had been stumbling around a corner in the kitchen and put his right foot right into the side of the wall at a terrible speed. Right where the wood was unfinished and splintered because we had to patch it the other week. Bad luck.

So Ray basically stubbed his toe. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but you had to see this one to believe it. His rightmost three toes were bent outward at a sickening angle, the nails all but shattered. The other two toes seemed fine, but everything right of them was bloody from a ragged gash he must have received from a chunk of unruly wood.

Ray wouldn’t stop screaming. He was freaking out to the point of thinking it was a good idea to get out of the kitchen. So he rose, took one feeble step, and fell straight into four dozen empty bottles of Jack Daniel’s on the counter.

The Jack had started as merely a harmless autumn ritual to both pass the time and warm the body. In the fall the cold wasn’t so bad, but when the snow came and it was time to turn on the heat we quickly realized the furnace, which was so old it should have been running on coal, wasn’t going to cooperate. The landlord? Three weeks for the fix.

That’s when we began discussing the therapeutic benefits of Jack Daniel’s. If you’ve never drank Jack Daniel’s Old Time Quality Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey, then there is a gaping hole in your life. The middle-shelf wonder guarantees a pleasurable rush, followed by a pleasant afterglow for every shot. I think it adds at least ten degrees to the room.

And that was the plan. We figured out that if we bought it by the case we would actually save money over the heating bill. It was a brilliant idea, and we all endorsed it.

The only problem is the true nature of Jack Daniel’s. It’s easy to take a lot of Jack and stay cool, feeling just slightly lubricated. But there is a threshold, and with Jack it comes up on you faster than a bullet train. It’s easy to go from buzzed to tanked within a few drinks. Ray did just that, and got clumsy.

And that’s where we found ourselves, standing in a wobbly circle and looking down at Ray, who was still moaning. The thermostat read a chilly 42, so we were naturally blitzed on whiskey to keep the cold off.

I turned to my housemate Quid (at least that’s what we called him) and asked, “You know we’re going to have to take him to a hospital?” Actually, it sounded more like “Ya know hos-petal? Goin’.”

He nodded. And then we piled into Lando’s car (at least that’s what we called him) for the ride. We stuck Ray, who was practically in shock by this time, with “bitch.” We figured having people on either side of him would hold him up.

The tiny digital clock on Lando’s dash read 10:03 when we pulled out from the curb, and when we pulled up to the hospital (a fifteen minute drive), it read 10:58. The forty extra minutes could no doubt be attributed to the darkened streets, the poor weather, and the horrific drunkenness of everyone in the car.

It gave us time to discuss procedure, however. Bud (at least that’s what we called him) thought we should drop Ray at the door and get the hell out of there. There’s no way the staff at the hospital wouldn’t notice our carload of lushes, and we weren’t excited about explaining the situation to authority figures.

We managed to get off that rail of thought, though, when Quid mentioned that Ray (who was a mean drunk to begin with) might hold offense to being left for dead in front of a hospital, piss drunk, with half a foot gone, in the falling snow. So, fine. We parked and went in.

There’s a reason they don’t put fluorescent lighting in bars. That was the only thought I could piece together while I leaned against the wall of the hospital with Bud and Lando while Quid, the clearest mind among us, talked to the doctors.

“It’s fucking freezing in here,” Lando complained.

“Yea, man. Almost as cold as back at the house,” I said. And it was. I could almost see my damn breath. “What do you think, Bud?”

Bud ran to the bathroom, and I immediately wrote him off for at least ten minutes. So Lando and I smoked a cigarette outside the door, watching the snow fall in slow motion past our glazed eyes.

It’s amazing how many nurses were smoking out there. You’d think they would know better. They were talking about the cold, too. “…yea, administration says the heat won’t be back on until the weekend…” I heard one say. They seemed to be taking it in stride, though.

When we went back inside Quid was waiting for us. It was going to have to be surgery. He fucking shattered three toes. Ray the drunk, in fine form.

Quid introduced us to the doctor who was standing there (Dr. Johnson or some such name), who was still wearing his coat due to the cold indoors. He gave me a clumsy handshake and a hurried hello, and then turned down the hall. As his arm swung, though, I caught a glimpse into his bag and saw a familiar sight. Old No. 7. Jack Daniel’s. Half empty.

I made it to the bathroom as Bud was leaving.