This’ll sting, she says to me, and slaps a vein below the tourniquet. It does; she slips the needle in bevel up, jabbing when it fails to yield. The vein is full and waiting; it does not collapse. Blood squirts out into the back ends of little tubes she puts on one after another. Such a nice vein, she murmurs. Such a nice girl, I mumble. Some of me gets up-ended, the rest shaken, all placed in a row of multicolored tops. There is tape everywhere; on my arm, holding up notes on the desk, around instructions in the bathroom saying how to urinate properly into stainless steel cans. I have become a part of this laboratory. I am their storefront. The real business goes on in a larger room behind me, where glass and tubes and machines with lights are, and sinks with faucets arching like necks of horses nibbling grain. She grazes my arm with a tube; I am surprised how warm it is. You’d think you could feel your own blood running inside you. You forget how warm you are inside when you try to act warm or pretend to be cold to save yourself. She holds the tubes in a rack on her way to give them to someone who will see if they all have the same name. As I roll down my shirtsleeve, the bandage tightens in front of my elbow. I put my jacket on and become a visitor, here where you bleed to a plan.

In: Group Practice Journal ©1987 American Medical Group Association (AMGA).