Injection

A sign on the lab door said "Dragons Be Behind These Doors". Or something like that. I checked in at the main office desk and was directed down the hall to the lab. There was an open door and a woman walking around inside the lab room. I asked some people sitting there on the benches outside the lab door, too "Do they just call you, when they're ready, or should I knock on the wall or something?"

The woman and her daughter, both will deep blue cell phones that kept ringing, said "She'll come get you." So I waited. And I waited and waited and waited.

Finally, a labcoated woman who had been by several times asked me how long I'd been there. I said "Awhile." She said "Does the lab lady know you are here?" I said "I think so." The labcoat lady said "Go wiggle those chimes hanging from the door jam."

There were some small windchimes hanging off the top of the door. Just as I was about to give them a good swat, the lab woman came into view inside the room and asks "What are you doing?"

"Um, ringing the chimes?"

"I've been waiting and..." She cut me off and told me to come in. She asked for my lab orders. "Um, I don't have any. I am here for a tetanus shot."

She said she doesn't have any orders and I should have gotten them at my appointment. I said "Um, I didn't have an appointment with a doctor."

She scowled. I was fidgety, not knowing how to make this woman happy about giving me a shot of whatever she chose to draw up, into my arm. My mind began to flick, like a movie projector slows down to the point where you can see individual frames, just before the film melts, beginning with a small creamy gray spot in the center of the frame that rapidly expands to destroy the film.

So I asked about the shot itself, was it just for tetanus. I'd read up on the vaccines online and knew there were various variations. She turned and looked at me, without cracking an expression, although it was there, implied, the simmering rage wanting to explode like an atom bomb, if only some event, some perhaps dangerous person, something, would let her let loose, release it, righteously, so she could still retain her job in the fiery bloody aftermath.

I knew this was not about me. Except, in that she was going to inject something in my arm.

"You came for a tetanus shot. It's a tetanus shot then," she barked. I stupidly persisted.."Well, does it also contain diptheria vaccine," I harped on, when my mouth should have been sealed tightly shut.

I don't recall her answer. I was trying to see around her body, as she filled the syringe, to see what she might really be putting in it, but she kept moving so her body blocked my view. I was getting nervous now, boy. Maybe I've seen too many crime shows on TV.

She was coming at me, with the syringe and needle. I was looking at the door, thinking "I could run for it now. I could make it. I'm not going to get tetanus anyway. I mean, what are the chances. Run for it, Jody, while you still can." My legs didn't move.

I barely felt the needle plunged into my upper left arm. She's damn good at giving shots.

Did you ever see Little Shop of Horrors? If so, I guess the most memorable scene was the dental event--a sadist and masochist paired up, in the right positions, too! I guess I was thinking of that movie too, as I left, in awe of this woman's talent to both evoke fear, mystery and give a painfree injection. Very cool. What talent! I'm not kidding.