Pink Eye II

If you want to avoid a wait at Patient First you've got to get there early. Not 4 am early, but well before 8 when they actually open. I showed up at five 'til, and was fifth in line at the front door with four strangers in front of me pretending that they and I did not exist. A thirty-ish woman in front of me noticed me smiling at the awkwardness of it and frowned, perceiving my smile to be I-know-not-what.
The silence was broken by stranger number six whose eye was, like my own, swollen and red, only more so. He was feeling down but friendly nevertheless.
"I got cast-iron in my eye," he told me.
"Jesus man, is it still in there?" I asked, instantly won over by the Youellian air of casual intimacy.
"Something's in there. Can you see it?" and he turned so I could get a good look.
He then told me about his long history of eye ailments, beginning when he was in elementary school and was stuck in the eye with a wire hanger (a la Michael Myers), and culminating in a horrific soldering accident two years back. He was laying on his back, soldering, and a piece of solder (that is to say, molten metal alloy used to join other solid metals) fell into his eye. I wondered that he could still see at all.
"Eye's the most resilient organ in the human body," he told me. "My wife had vlasic and she was able to see fine in less than two weeks."
"Holy shit," I said, half wishing to become friends, half worried that this was going to end like Enduring Love.
"Yeah, I guess at some point you'd think I'd learn. Ha."
"Yeah, you'd think." He grimaced when I said that, and I wished I said something more tactful, like, "Oh no, I too frequently injure myself in stupid ways! Oh goodness me!"
I let him in front of me, and we didn't really talk after that. I hope he's ok.