TIME AFTER TIME
Short and unsmiling. I hadn't seen this doctor before and yet he was preparing to insert a monstrous needle into my arm.
I needed a blood transfusion.
I was anaemic.
It must have been his last task before clocking off, because at nine o'clock in the evening he was not interested in small talk, whereas I was ready to tell him all about my first stint in hospital.
I looked in bewilderment at this stocky man, still bearing the scars of adolescent acne. He was going to use a steel needle that seemed to be about five centimetres in length. I had never seen anything like it, and I told him so.
Its diameter was frightening.
Unperturbed, he searched my forearm for a suitable vein, and applied an antiseptic wash. He had chosen a vein in the side of my wrist, that I did not know even existed. Perhaps it was of suitable size.
In silence he forced the instrument through the skin, into the vein which had stood to attention, and right through the other side. It was not my night.
"Ah. I'm having a little trouble with this one."
I couldn't bring myself to answer. I knew that the pain now would be replaced by a nasty bruise by the morning. What can you say anyway?
I tried to relax my arm and keep it perfectly still.
The feeling of cold metal easing deep into the vessel was weird.
He ended by strapping my wrist with endless tape, and releasing the blood to drip slowly down the tube throughout the night. I was to try to sleep.
Not that I'm untrusting, but as soon as he left I sat upright in bed, and checked the label on the packet of blood, to ensure that it read A+. Then I fiddled with the drip regulator.
How could I sleep with that constant dripping, and the fear that it may stop? Later the nurse reassured me.
faffajane
Pro 
Hugs x