The difference between a few centimetres

I walk over to triage and rummage through charts that have been assigned a less urgent/non-urgent score and pick one up that says groin laceration. I call the patient (who happened to be an incredibly good looking man) and start to lead him to the suture room and notice he is walking very carefully. I read over the chart but I wanted to get the story myself. Turns out he was playing hockey, tripped and then got a cut in his right groin from another player who tripped over him. It wasn’t a horrible laceration – no profuse bleeding, no signs of hypovolemia and no pain. In fact, most of it was quite superficial except for a 0.5 cm area that was bleeding very very slowly. He ended up getting a souped up bandaid, a tetanus shot and a good luck before being discharged. One of the residents summed the case up very nicely – “a couple centimetres more medial and… ooohhhh” (as he crossed his legs and winced in pain).