I Drank the Toxic Cocktail
By Matthew Gordon
Copyright Matthew Gordon 2012
Fairly looked around the room anxiously. The sterile white walls were no comfort; the spotted plaster of the ceiling was not much better. The beaten linoleum floor shone with a dim glow from the overhead fluorescent lighting, showing a reflection of his jeans where the mop had washed most recently. Fairly exhaled deeply, hoping to quell the trembling that overtook his body whenever he had to take a needle. It’s just a blood test, he told himself unconvincingly. They’re not going to put anything in you, just take a bit of something out, and you have five litres of it anyway. That was what the sources he had read had said. Five litres, and only one needle’s worth will be coming out. Still not how I want to be spending my first Friday afternoon off in weeks.
Fairly contained his anxiety by letting his mind take a stroll around the room. It was his local doctor’s office, which provided a bit of comfort, or rather, as much comfort as any place could at that moment. The sink was there, with its dull, stainless steel-coloured faucet and its pristine basin. There was the receptacle for used syringes, a deceptively depressing bright blue container in the corner of the room. Fairly had looked inside it once, when he was a few years younger, just poked his face right into the top hole where the syringes went. The bin had been almost full then. He swore a syringe had almost poked him in the face, although it had probably been a few inches away. He wondered how full the bin was this time but decided not to check. This isn’t making me feel better at all, he told himself dejectedly.
He thought about his life, or at least the portion of it that was not spent staring at syringes and dreading being poked by them. He was doing well enough for himself – twenty-five, degree and the debt to go with it, decent kind-of-sort-of-it’s-complicated-not-really-a-girlfriend, decent apartment. He got to play a few shows a month at a local dive bar, which was probably his favourite thing in life at the moment. The government office building where he worked was far from glamorous but the pay was good enough. A lot of people don’t have a job. I have a job and a band.
His musings were interrupted by the padding of footsteps outside the door. The nurse had come to give him the needle, Fairly knew. He inhaled as calmly as he could, trembling as he exhaled again, instinctively crossing his arms as if he could somehow back out of this. His parents had been the ones to urge him to get these annual checkups, and he knew they were a good idea but still didn’t like the needle.
The nurse walked into the room confidently with her clipboard under one arm. She was young, barely older than him, with long brown hair and a beaming smile. “Hi,” she said cheerily, “you must be Fairly. I’m Alissa.”
“Hi,” he said back, nervously. You’re nervous because of the blood test, remember. Imagine if she thought you were nervous because of-
“Hello, Fairly,” Alissa laughed, waving her hand in front of his face. “Your report does say you’re anxious about needles… I understand. I was never very good with them either until I got into nursing school.”
One hell of a career choice…
Alissa opened a cupboard on the far side of the room. She put on a pair of nitrile gloves from a medium-sized container and then pulled a syringe out of a smaller container, along with a cotton pad and an alcohol swab from a couple stray boxes in the back. “So,” she said as she walked over toward him, “you seem to be in perfectly good health, so we’ll just take your complete blood cell count and your hemoglobin. Nothing to worry about – we even have some of the really small needles on hand, so you’ll barely feel a thing. Okay?”
Fairly nodded. He felt like only his neck could move.
“You’ll have to uncross your arms for me first,” Alissa chided. She’s clearly having fun with this, Fairly thought.
Fairly did as he was told, and then watched as she swabbed a small portion of his inner forearm, right over where his most prominent vein lay. “Deep breaths,” she reminded him. He needed the reminder – he had not breathed since she had fetched the syringe.
“You may want to look away for this,” Alissa cautioned as she removed the syringe’s cap. Fairly nodded again, at a loss. He looked at the ceiling, focusing on whatever pattern he could find in the haphazard groupings of dots on it. He thought he saw a unicorn at one point but attributed it to his anxiety.
It hurt less than Fairly thought it would. It hurt more than Alissa said it would. A couple quick seconds and it was over.
“That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?” Alissa smiled, sealing the syringe in a clear plastic bag. Before long, Fairly had a cotton ball affixed to his arm with hospital tape. He felt dazed yet relieved. In a few minutes, he was out the door.
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