Out for blood

I was at a nearby medical center very early in the morning, to have blood drawn for some tests my doctor ordered. Before I could hand my paperwork to the bored looking male nurse, who seemed just a little too satisfied leaned back in his creaky office chair, he informed me that he could not accept me just yet. I was required to backtrack across the medical center to another office and “register.” My name on my paperwork matched the name on my driver’s license – not good enough? It was the rule.

Another man, sitting in the waiting area, yelped “do I have to, too?”

“Did you already?” the nurse grunted.

“No,” the man said, like a command, his face already purpling. “Then you gotta.” I and this angry fellow walked together back to the registration office that we’d apparently skipped over in our haste. “That guy really burns me up,” he sputtered. “I sat there a good fifteen minutes and he knew it, before you walked in. I could’a done had this overwith.”

I responded sheepishly, in an attempt not to egg him on.

“Yeah,” I breathed, with a sufficient pause, then committed myself to a complete statement. “He seems pretty comfy in there.” What did THAT mean? I didn’t know, but my big mad buddy found a grain of mysterious wisdom in it.

“Cushy-jobbed, needlepokin’ ... so-and-so!”

When we arrived at the Registrar’s desk, she shuffled us off to another waiting area, larger, more nebulous, easier to become lost and forgotten in. My new pal was just getting warmed up. “I sure don’t appreciate this,” he fumed. “I sat in that other room for fifteen minutes with that guy sittin’ in there, and he knew all the time he was gonna make me walk over here.”

The lady behind the computer terminal nodded, with a sympathetic curl of her scarlet-painted lips. “We’re trying to get a sign made,” she said, “so people will know to come here first. We sincerely apologize.” She’d undoubtable repeated that a hundred times, it sounded so rehearsed. The building looked brand new, spotless and expensive – with no sense that any signage was intended that would lower its real estate value. Without question a recited apology was cheaper than hiring a sign maker.

“He could’a told me right off, but no, he let me sit there fifteen whole minutes.”

Whole minutes, not just any minutes. What could she say? He was right. Slowly he resigned himself to sit across the desk from the kind computer woman, who glanced over his paperwork, asked if the contact information on it was correct, and deemed him freed to go resume his place in the bloodwork office. Just like that. The look on the man’s face was quite obvious now. Words he did not speak were roiling off his reddening brow. He rose like a hungry attack dog who’s just realized his collar is off. I was next.

A minute later I was too retracing my path back to the blood way-station, about fifteen steps behind Mr. Ticked-off. I slowed my pace so as not to become again a human target for his torrential disgust – which I could hear pouring out even at my present distance. Finally he got inside, and I was able to fain blithe disregard, and concentrate on my own need to get past this methodical phase of medical bureaucracy.

By the time I made it into the office, he had already been ushered into the nurse’s realm beyond the front counter. Muffled words were being exchanged. Then a low chuckle bounced through the duct system. And all fell silent. The needle had been brought into play.

A minute later, the nurse returned to his front post. My gawd, how being sat low in that deskchair had distracted from his size. He was huge – a behemoth. Andre the Giant dressed in medical greens intended to routinely endure blood spatter.

The guy you don’t mess with.

Mr. Grumpy eventually waddled out, holding his free hand to the bend of his arm, where a mesh bandage held firm a large swab of cotton. His once fiery countenance had been erased, or perhaps, glazed over. He chuckled at me nervously as he passed. “He’s really pretty good,” he said, as if auditioning for a radio ad for the medical center.

And with that he was gone. Out the door. In a hurry.

Mega- nurse leaned forward, extending his giant hand for my paperwork. I was registered. And I was next.

I attempted to make my facial expression telegraph my thoughts. “All I said was that you looked comfy.”