Finally remembered not to eat or drink coffee first thing in the morning so that I could go for a blood test where fasting was required. It’s just a checkup to see if the drugs are working, but it’s three weeks past the date I was supposed to go in. After fielding many calls from the cardiologist’s office, I dug up some courage and went in very early this morning. Notes plastered all over the kitchen–Susan-no coffee!–particularly on the coffeemaker were honored. It is, remember, only quarter after five a.m. (If I didn’t put my own name on the notes, dear husband who faithfully does most of what I tell him to do, would go coffeeless without ever questioning why.)
Why courage for a simple blood test? Because there’s this thing I have about veins. No one, not even me, touches veins in certain areas: inside the arm, the wrist, behind the knee, or (and this one is decidedly strange) behind the ankle. I can’t even think about these places. Do not laugh. This whole thing has been with me since I was a kid and since I have no clue what started it, has been a backup argument for reincarnation. Yes, if I slit my wrists, it was in another lifetime.
The wait wasn’t bad, only about ten people there when I walked in. Registered, pulled out Atwood, and started reading the steamless sex scene this whole book has been building up towards. There are two vampires today, and I’m hoping I get the nice grey-haired smiling lady instead of the grumpy young man who wasn’t real pleased with my antics last time.
"Susan." Good, I get the nice lady.
Weather chat, pleasantries while I roll up my sleeve and she ties the rubber strap as expertly as an addict around my upper arm. Then I drop the bomb.
"We have one little problem here," I say. "You can’t take it from the usual spot." I smile apologetically.
"No problem," she says, and proceeds to twist my arm face up.
"Uh, no…uh, sorry…not anywhere from the underside of my arm." I’m squirming in the seat.
"Are you afraid of needles?" she asks kindly.
"No, not needles."
"Don’t worry, it won’t hurt." She’s physically twisting my arm, trying to break my resistance.
"I don’t care about hurt. I care about the veins." I show her the lovely deep blue veins on the top of my hand, pulsing with blood.
"Can’t do those," she says. She’s not as nice now as she was. She taps the inside of my arm, at the elbow. I fairly jump out of the chair, but find myself barricaded in. I’m sweating. I want to punch her and run.
I feel her fingertips on the side of my forearm. "That’s okay, you’re on the side."
"No, I’ll be right in the middle. Think of something else."
I jump away.
"You have to stay still," she warns. "I haven’t even gotten the needle ready yet."
"Give me my book," I gasp. The nervous laugh has been replaced by a very real fear. Or maybe not fear, but a skeevitz feeling that crumples me.
"Here." She hands me Atwood out of my coatpocket. I open it and start to read. Twitch. Read. Twitch. Her grip is one of steel on my arm, holding it straight out and vulnerable. The rest of my limbs are writhing like pipecleaners jerked in and out of playful shapes by a sugar-high three year-old.
"I won’t tell you when I do it, okay?" she says, "But you must stay still."
"I hear the step, quiet as MINE, the creakING of the SAME floorboard. The door CLOSES BEhind me, with a little click, cutting the light. I freeze; white was a MISTAKE. I’m snow in moonlight, even in the dark." (The Handmaid’s Tale, p. 98) I’m shouting the words, breaking the stillness of the sterile room.
"There. I’m done." she says, and asks me to hold the cottonball over the pinprick hole in my vein. I do, but don’t look. "Have a good day," she says cheerfully.
I stumble out the door as fast as jelly legs can carry me.
And who, I wonder, and how, will I ever get the little band-aid off that spot?
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Susan, and Edgar Allan Poe thought he could strike terror in the heart of man/woman. My God, that was terrible, you were so brave. But superceding all that is the bravery of starting the day without coffee! That requires a Herculean effort. And how distracting is “steamless” sex — not much.
I can relate to your terror. With you, it’s veins, with me, it’s my belly button. Thank goodness, health checks do not involve my belly button.
Hah! The belly button thing! It’s funny, Roberta, but there are things that we all have a weirdness about that only need be revealed in all our trembling in times of trauma. A friend just mentioned this morning about the word “intestines” bugging him. In my effort to allay his fears about an upcoming operation, and in tune with my reincarnation theory, I suggested perhaps that he’d been disemboweled back in the early days of Rome. Your belly button thing? I hate to even think what might’ve caused this.
susan, I have a keen and weird imagination so I best not think of it either. Might be another ‘Poe’ terror.
Excuse me, ma’am. But You Are A Writer.
It’s all in here, in this post.
That’s writing.
Great writing.
And don’t forget it.
You’re a sweetheart, Loretta. Funny thing is, after I wrote it out and reread it, it came to me that it sounded like your writing style on Pomegranates!