A moment of drama

The other day, I was washing my face after work. Working up a right lather, like I'd been taught as a child. Remembering to go behind the ears and under the chin and round the neck and... when suddenly I realised - wait a minute - my nosering's missing! Now, my nosering, designed with a swooshing looping curl as it is, takes an inhuman amount of persistance and dexterity to remove.

Once, I was at a dental appointment, and the dentist asked me to take my nosering off so he could take a successful x-ray of my teeth. And I pulled and twisted and cursed and wrung my nose, but the darned thing just clung on like a barnacle, until the dentist finally had to ask me to reschedule the appointment. That's how difficult it is to take nosering off.

It's no wonder, therefore, that it didn't at first register with me when I was washing my face, that my nosering could have fallen off. The possibility just didn't exist within my parameters of reality. It took a moment to realise there wasn't a ring on my nose. Then I reached up with my other hand, to confirm the findings of the first. Nope, still no ring. Glanced around the sink, squinting through the soap. Still no ring. And then my eye fell upon the gaping crater of a drainhole at the bottom of the sink. And in that instant, my heart leapt into my mouth.

No.

It took another moment (or two) for ye ol' instincts to kick in, but when they did, I turned off the tap pretty nifty like. Luckily, having lost things in the sink before, I knew about the U-shaped trap under the sink. I called the building Maintenance. "I, uhmm, lost, I mean, my nosering washed down my sink. Is there someone available to come check the drain??"
But I received a stoic "Ma'am, it's after hours, and this doesn't count as a plumbing emergency."
"But it is an emergency for me!!"
"Ma'am, it doesn't count as a plumbing emergency."

My face felt naked without the ring. And I couldn't just let it go. It was a ring.

So I called Delta, "I was washing my face, and my ring fell in, and it washed away, and the Maintenance guy won't come, and - "
Sigh.
So Delta came over, spanner in hand. (Or wrench. Or nutcracker. Or some unidentifiable tool.) And pried apart our plumbing, emptied the trap, and there gushed out my nosering. All safe and sound. "Thank you! thank you!" I couldn't stop gasping as he put the pipes together again.

It was only as I tried to slip the ring back in my nose, after the plumbing had been taken care of, that I realised it wouldn't go in anymore. Try as I might, I just couldn't get the tip of the ring through my nosehole.
"The hole couldn't have closed, could it?!" I asked Ilajna, "in half an hour?"
"Yep," she confirmed.

And so it grew into a full-blown operation. Ice and an earring to re-pierce my nose. ("Yikes, I can't watch this," said the panicking Delta and hid himself in my room.) And I must admit, there was a fair share of groaning. And painful hissing. And frustrated yelping. But finally, two icecubes later, the ring was back in. I came back out into the lounge, still touching my nose gingerly. Yep, ring was back in nose. Yep, nose was still on face.

So there I was, back to original. But golly, what a moment of drama.