An Icy Bloodletting
Several years ago I was not feeling well. I spent most of the day at the doctor's. He ordered blood tests, so I went to the lab across the street. I waited an hour after signing in, and after patiently watching everyone in the room enter and leave, I went to the desk to inquire if perhaps I'd been passed up.
One of the office lady/phlebotomists handed me a clip binder of pages with signed-in names and asked me to look for my name. I paged backwards three pages and pointed out my signature.
"Oh, how did this happen?" She asked innocently.
Then another office lady walked up to the counter where I was standing. All of them are phlebotomists, by the way: people who draw your blood with needles (and not like vampires, which would have been a lot more interesting).
This second lady pointed her finger at the paper: "who put that funny squiggly mark there next to his name?"
The first lady hummed: "That's not my mark. See here? Mine is an X."
The second lady seemed to indicate her mark was different too. Neither of them apologized for making me wait an hour. No one claimed responsibility for letting me sit and wait unnecessarily.
The first lady said, "Why don't you take care of him" to the second lady, like they were back to ignoring me as a person, or worse, even choosing who would like to care of the trash.
The second lady was young and quite pretty--blonde, svelt, curvy--but cold! Frightfully frigid. Like she didn't have a spark of humanity in her. I would have rather warmed up, well, to a vampire.
This second lady, the pretty one, Missy Icicle, I'll call her, said, without looking at me, "I'll meet you in room five. Through that door," she pointed.
I went to room five and took off my coat. I know the routine: sit down, put out your arm and wait to get poked. Missy came in, put the paperwork down, grabbed a rubber tube typically hanging on a hook, and efficiently slipped it around my arm, tightly cutting off the circulation. More than seemed necessary.
She deftly poked a needle into my vein. I didn't flinch and I didn't say anything. I'm usually friendly and strike up a conversation, however short, but I noticed something about Missy that cut off all possible communication: she watched my face, as if to see if there was a reaction to the pain, and when she didn't notice any, she turned away.
She was no longer interested in me.
This is so completely weird to say, but it was like she wanted to see me cringe or wince to satisfy some warped resentment she had from the front desk or because she might simply enjoy watching people who troubled her react to suffering. Now, this is a harsh judgment based on intuition and several years of observing the same ladies who take my blood every four months or so. I may be mistaken because what I am suggesting is quite dark--about what lies hidden in the hearts of people.
My thyroid cancer eventually went into remission. But when I am dead and gone, I want it publicly known that I don't care to have my poor decaying body share a graveyard with Missy Icicle.
One of the office lady/phlebotomists handed me a clip binder of pages with signed-in names and asked me to look for my name. I paged backwards three pages and pointed out my signature.
"Oh, how did this happen?" She asked innocently.
Then another office lady walked up to the counter where I was standing. All of them are phlebotomists, by the way: people who draw your blood with needles (and not like vampires, which would have been a lot more interesting).
This second lady pointed her finger at the paper: "who put that funny squiggly mark there next to his name?"
The first lady hummed: "That's not my mark. See here? Mine is an X."
The second lady seemed to indicate her mark was different too. Neither of them apologized for making me wait an hour. No one claimed responsibility for letting me sit and wait unnecessarily.
The first lady said, "Why don't you take care of him" to the second lady, like they were back to ignoring me as a person, or worse, even choosing who would like to care of the trash.
The second lady was young and quite pretty--blonde, svelt, curvy--but cold! Frightfully frigid. Like she didn't have a spark of humanity in her. I would have rather warmed up, well, to a vampire.
This second lady, the pretty one, Missy Icicle, I'll call her, said, without looking at me, "I'll meet you in room five. Through that door," she pointed.
I went to room five and took off my coat. I know the routine: sit down, put out your arm and wait to get poked. Missy came in, put the paperwork down, grabbed a rubber tube typically hanging on a hook, and efficiently slipped it around my arm, tightly cutting off the circulation. More than seemed necessary.
She deftly poked a needle into my vein. I didn't flinch and I didn't say anything. I'm usually friendly and strike up a conversation, however short, but I noticed something about Missy that cut off all possible communication: she watched my face, as if to see if there was a reaction to the pain, and when she didn't notice any, she turned away.
She was no longer interested in me.
This is so completely weird to say, but it was like she wanted to see me cringe or wince to satisfy some warped resentment she had from the front desk or because she might simply enjoy watching people who troubled her react to suffering. Now, this is a harsh judgment based on intuition and several years of observing the same ladies who take my blood every four months or so. I may be mistaken because what I am suggesting is quite dark--about what lies hidden in the hearts of people.
My thyroid cancer eventually went into remission. But when I am dead and gone, I want it publicly known that I don't care to have my poor decaying body share a graveyard with Missy Icicle.
70-79, MNew
