Still grieving over the loss of my blood. Yea, right! My adventure to a blood draw proved to be a little humorous.
After stepping into an empty, mundane process, of a tiny moving room, called an elevator, at an unearthly, for me hour, with a grumbling, complaining stomach, it deposited me on the third floor of a medical building.
I had just been musing on the fact, if there had ever been elevator behavior research. I had been anticipating one of those elevator surprise parties where no one knows each other, however, It was an uneventful ride. I was the only passenger.
I rounded the corner and faced a very long familiar deserted, carpeted hallway, a familiar ritual that seems much to frequent for comfort.
I walked up to a door with a metal, locked standard box for specimen courier pick-ups with the lab logo, the hanging model.
I reached for the door handle and slowly opened the door. It gave a slight creak.
I entered a large room filled with mostly empty chairs. Yes! I thought, this is a good day, after all it is Monday. Being in a neighborhood, at the lab, after the sixteenth day of September, independence day for Mexico has it’s advantages.
There were about five us. You sign in, hand in your lab request, they ask for your insurance card, and the first question they ask is your birth date and by the time you have followed that ritual, everyone knows how old you are and you know all theirs. As soon as I sat down, a woman followed the same routine route as I, followed the same instructions, entered into the same room as I.
What set her apart from the others was not because of her age which was two years younger than I, but her body was rocking her ink. The last thing you expect to see, is a grandma sporting tattoos on an unusually cool morning.
Well, if that wasn’t enough, her unusually tight leggings with an unusual pattern appeared to be stuffed with pencil thin legs and running shoes on her feet.
I watched her fill a couple of inches of water into an empty gallon size plastic bottle from the water cooler in the corner.
I sat there somewhat amused, when a perky lady emerged after her blood draw, walked past me, sporting her cotton ball with red Coban tape, giving me the biggest cheshire grin ever, then disappeared out the door into her world.
My turn came. The lab technician asked how my day was going? Really? It was only 7:45 am. I answered her as politely as I could that it was to early to be out and about. She nodded, gave me a smile and continued silently. She finished and just like that, I walked out sporting my own cotton ball and red Coban.
My husband’s and my tradition is cause for celebration on such occasions, a breakfast date at Denny’s.
He always refers to these as a “the vampire” day.
I ride, he drops me off, I call, he picks me up (parking is not validated and we are to cheap to pay for such a short amount of time), we then go out for breakfast.
As I was sharing my few moments of fame at the lab with him, he blurts out that famous quote from Edgar Allen Poe’s famous poem, The Raven, “Quoth the raven, nevermore.” We have a brief chat and a good laugh because these vampire moments have become more frequent, will continue to quoth evermore.
The classic poem, “The Raven”, has never been so fitting of this mornings adventure. Earlier in route, a raven or a crow, I observed had just flitted to sit a top the telephone pole as it appeared we were hitting mostly red lights in route.
I have never appreciated Poe’s poetry and his words, often repeated memory, emphasizing the continuous loss of his beloved, his continuous grieving of someone without hope is never ending.
There’s always another blood draw around the corner, an endless cycle of reminders of our mortality.
Eternity is a long time to be wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment