The man sitting behind the desk is old, and when he grins at me and my mother, I see that he is missing his lower incisors. His skin is wrinkled and I doubt if his hands are steady enough to complete the procedure without giving me some permanent damage to take home. He tells us that he'll do the blood test now and we can come for the X-ray after having breakfast, "Like my own son! I wouldn't expose him to those rays on an empty stomach!", "No sir, you aren't that young.", is my quiet mental response before I tell him it's okay and we can do both right now itself. He gives me a disapproving look, but then my mother comes to the rescue and tells him that it would be a little difficult for us to go back and come again. He says it's fine and gives us a wide grin flashing his missing teeth. Then he opens up his register notebook and writes down my name and age, as my mother and I spell my name out for him.
Shriyank Mulgund 17/F
I curse as his pen makes the 'F' on the paper. I decide not to protest against this clerical error. I give up. I don't want to argue with this man. Not for my manhood, there will be other opportunities to prove it in the future, I tell myself.
I have been coughing my lungs out for the last month. A self-prescribed antibiotics course, another prescribed by a doctor and two bottles of cough syrup have done nothing to cure my ailment, and after I finished my last course of tablets, I finally relented to the doctor's suggestion of expensive blood tests and an X-ray this morning.
There, as I sat looking at the old man behind the desk, the owner of the lab, writing a long list of tests under my name, age, wrongly stated gender, I thought about the 8-Ball Pool tournament from the day before. I'd lost in the qualifier round itself. I'd been distracted. And I was distracted as the old man, filled out a receipt form, wrote '720/-' beside 'Total:' and handed it to my mother. Then he disappeared into a room behind us and returned with small glass collecting tubes and a Dispo-Van disposable syringe. I'd been prescribed a special IgE Serum test that would check for levels of IgE in my blood, levels that skyrocket if you have an internal allergic reaction to pollen or animal dander or if you have a parasitic infection. I didn't remember being around a lot of animals recently neither did I remember visiting a garden. Well, these tests couldn't be done in 'small town' Durgapur and so, samples of my blood would have to be sent to Calcutta, meaning that the reports would take 2 Days to arrive. I was fascinating about a sample of my blood being smuggled away to some remote corner of the world for illegal genetic research(courtesy Michael Crichton's 'Next'), as the old man reached out for my right hand, held it out straight with the crook of my elbow facing the ceiling and gestured for me to make a fist. I obeyed and watched intently as he tied a rubber tube around my upper arm. "He's looking for a vein, oh great, this is just like the movies, the part where they shoot themselves full of drugs, except this guy is going to take something out.", I thought, as he frowned, he thumbed the crook of my elbow once, twice, but no vein appeared. "Hah, Beat that!", I thought. He sighed, and calmly untied the rubber tube and asked me to hold out my left hand the same way. He tied the tube around my left arm, thumbed the crook, and Bingo, there it was, the vein. A contented smile spread across the old face and I looked at him with an expression that said "Well you got me this time, old boy.". He proceeded to prepare the syringe while I looked on disinterestedly. "Look the other way.", he said as he inserted the needle into the vein, and slowly pulled the plunger back. The barrel filled with my dark blood as I told him that the sight of blood didn't bother me(No person who has watched at least 2 slasher flicks in their lifetime should be bothered by the sight of this dark red fluid that is claimed to be 'thicker than water' and is sometimes called 'blue'). He went on to withdraw the needle from the vein and smothered the spot with an antiseptic soaked piece of cotton wool. I held the piece down and watched him distribute what was inside my body seconds ago among three different containers while he talked to my mother about this 'fear of the sight of blood' that most people have. My mother told him about how my father feels uneasy at the sight of blood and he chuckled. Then he motioned for me to go to the other room, inside. I walked in as he followed. He asked me to take my shirt off as he fired up the X-ray machine. My mother asked me to hand over my wristwatch and spectacles. The old man shut the door and showed me how to stand with my back facing the machine and my chest facing some sort of plate, with my hands behind my back. "Hold your breath on my mark. Now!"
I saw or heard or felt absolutely nothing as he sent the rays at me, as they entered my body and left it, so I was mildly surprised when he said "It's done".
I put on my shirt, wore my spectacles and my wristwatch as my mother payed the old man. A coughing fit overcame me as I stepped out of the doors of the lab.
"Well, there's always a first time.", I thought.
No comments:
Post a Comment