Needles

I felt like a poorly wrapped gift in my hospital gown. It hung loose over my shoulders and the only thing keeping it together was a single plastic string, a piece of floss, that wrapped around my waist. I thought I’d be used to dressing up in a paper bag by now. My last checkup felt like just a few months ago, but it’d really been a year, and it only takes me a year to forget absolutely everything that ever happened.

I was sitting on a hard green bed that was covered in a white paper sheet that crinkled and tore whenever I shifted my weight just the tiniest bit so that by now, it resembled a cracked dirt surface, my ass being the epicenter of such earthquakes.

Dr. Dimel prepping a needle wasn’t making things any less uncomfortable. Although I could take a shot with a calm outward expression, it was always that moment when a doctor began cleaning my arm with a disinfectant that made me wonder if I’d ever actually grown up or if that was something I had just dreamed about. It was similar to how I’d hesitate just before stepping through a metal detector, afraid that I had rushed too fast and forgot I had put a gun in my pocket. But before I could even begin the act of fearing, it’d be over. The alarms would not blare and something unfamiliar would enter my bloodstream. And I would blink and think, “that wasn’t so bad,” but a year would pass just as quickly, and I’d forget that feeling of relief until Dr. Dimel slapped that bandaid on my left arm again.

I began to rub it and thought I could feel a cold liquid spread its tendrils out along my nerves like frostbite. This was 100% scientifically inaccurate, but I could have sworn something inside of me had changed. Dr. Dimel typed on her laptop that rested on top of a wheely cart. She started listing side effects of the meningitis vaccine. I’d have to wait fifteen minutes to see if any symptoms would show. I guess that’s all it took. Fifteen minutes to see if I’d been poisoned.

Then, Dr. Dimel said something far more terrifying.

“I’m going to ask that you take a few last tests before you move out of the children’s hospital.”

I wasn’t an idiot, but I was still shocked, so all that came out of my mouth was “Okay.”

Dr. Dimel left me with a pile of paperwork as she rolled her cluttered cart out of the room and down the hall like the highest paid librarian that she was. The door swung shut and I was left alone with the strange realization that this was my last checkup… at least one in a room where there was always a small cup of starbursts and at least one colorful bead maze.

I thought I had accounted for all my responsibilities as a soon to be eighteen-year-old. Driver’s license. Check. College applications. Check. Cooking something other than ramen. Check. But making my own doctor appointments? It unsettled me more than anything else. It wasn’t the act of calling and filing new paperwork that disturbed me. It was the fact that I was transferring from a hospital where children grow up to one where adults begin to die.

The air between my gown and legs felt wider as I pulled myself closer to the edge of the bed. That’s what those fifteen minutes felt like, that sweet plateau at the top of the cliff I spent my whole life climbing. There was an eerily quiet there besides the thumping of a heart and the skidmarks I made as I tried to stop accelerating. I felt a thin wet layer of alcohol against my left arm. I wondered what the new hospital would be like, what newer way a machine would poke on my torso or see the inside of my brain, who I’d be when I finally answered “yes” to those questions on my paperwork: “Do you take drugs outside of medical use?” and “Are you in a sexual relationship?” I didn’t think I could ever get used to the physicality of being an adult: the touching on the outside and the betrayal on the inside of a body I could no longer control. I wanted to scream and cry like a baby to perhaps delay my shot, but it was already over as Dr. Dimel re-entered the room. However this time, there was no instant relief. This time, there were alarms blaring in my ears and a gun to my head.