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Phlebotomy

Bill Tope

I sat on a cold plastic chair with a little
arm rest on either side, awaiting my
med tech. Into the small white room
stepped a twenty-something woman
in burgundy scrubs and with a long
brown ponytail. On her arm was a
plastic tote containing filled and
unfilled test tubes, labels, markers
and the like.

“Mr. Raines,” she said, not looking at me,
“I’m Sam, and I’m here to draw blood for
your lab work. Do you faint at the sight of
blood?” I blinked.
“Not yet,” I replied. Next she fished
around in her tote and turned up a large
plastic syringe topped with the biggest
needle I have ever seen. My eyes grew
wide.

“Wh....what size needle do you use?”
I asked. Still not looking at me, she
replied, “It’s only a 21-gauge. Don’t
worry, it won’t hurt.” I saw her smile,
or was it a smirk? “Did you used to
work at a veterinary?” I asked next.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Who
told you that?” she demanded. “That
was supposed to kept secret.” I must
have blanched, because at last she
smiled, said, “gotcha!”

Sam couldn’t seem to find a viable
blood vessel; every time she plunged
that huge needle into my right forearm,
it turned up dry. “You’ve got teensy
little veins,” she remarked after the
fourth attempt. “Let’s try your other
arm,” she said, moving around to the
left side.

When I asked pompously whether she
had ever done this before, she slowly
shook her head no, her ponytail flicking
back and forth. “No,” she said. “I didn’t
even finish my training. The hospitals
were so in need of staff that they hired
me ahead of graduation.” I closed my
and sighed, but she smiled again, at my
expense. Another gotcha.

While she drilled holes in my left arm, I
glanced at my other arm and saw that my
right forearm had assumed the color
of red wine spilled on a white table cloth.
She paused the torture for a moment to
remark off-handedly that I had maybe
experienced “a little bruising.” When I
made a face she added, “You’re not a
fashion model or anything, are you? I
mean, this won’t put you out of work,
will it?” I shook my head in resignation.

Finally she succeeded in getting her ccs
of blood and wiped my arm with alcohol
and began getting her things together.
I shook my misused arms and asked,
rather unkindly, “Was it good for you?”
Her lips formed a tight pink line, but she
said nothing.

As I rolled down my sleeves and
prepared to depart, she turned back
and said, “I don’t know anything about
your personal habits, Mr. Raines, but if
you have marijuana in your system it will
throw off the blood tests and I’ll have to
take more blood. When I blanched a
second time, she pointed at finger at my
chest and said again, “Gotcha!” and
walked out.

 

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