Read Travels for Free Online

are you doing?” It was six-thirty in the morning.
    “Hey. Suit yourself.”
    “You mean you guys are
stoned on rounds?
”
    “Why not? Nobody can tell.”
    “Sure they can.”
    “You couldn’t tell, yesterday. And you think Pinhead can tell?” Pinhead was what Levine called Rogers.
    “Hey, relax,” Levine said, taking a deep drag. “Nobody cares. Half the nurses are loaded, too. Come on. This is great stuff. You know where we get it? Bennie.”
    “Bennie?”
    “Bennie. You know, in the elevator.”
    It was the medical student’s job to draw bloods from the patients daily. Every morning I would show up at 6:00 a.m. and go to the nursing station, and the night resident would read off the list of bloods to be drawn forthe day. So many red tops from Mr. Roberti, a red and a blue from Mr. Jackson, a pink and a blue from Mrs. Harrelson, and so on. I had to draw about twenty tubes of blood in half an hour, to be ready for morning rounds at six-thirty.
    The only trouble was, this was my first clinical rotation and I hadn’t ever really drawn blood before. And I tended to pass out at the sight of blood.
    In practice, I’d go to my first patient, put on the tourniquet, get the vein to puff up, and try to get the needle in without passing out. Then, when the blood gushed, I’d stick on the vacutainer tubes and get the required number of tubes, breathing deeply. By this time I would be very dizzy. I would quickly finish up, pull out the needle, slap a cotton ball on the elbow, dash to the nearest window, throw it open, and hang my head out in the January air while the patients yelled and shouted at me about the cold.
    When I felt okay again, I’d go on to the next patient.
    I couldn’t do twenty patients in half an hour. I was lucky to do three patients in half an hour.
    Fortunately, I got help. The first day, I went up to a huge black man named Steve Jackson. He could tell I was nervous.
    “Hey, man, what’re you doing?”
    “Drawing blood, Mr. Jackson.”
    “You know what you’re doing, man?”
    “Sure, I know what I’m doing.”
    “Then how come your hands are shaking?”
    “Oh, that … I don’t know.”
    “You ever draw blood before?”
    “Sure, no problem.”
    “ ’Cause I don’t want nobody fucking with my veins, man.” And with that, he snatched the needle out of my hands. “What you want, man?” he said to me.
    “Some blood.”
    “I mean, what? What tubes?”
    “Oh. Red top and a blue top.”
    “Gimme the tubes, come back later, you got it.”
    And he put the tourniquet in his teeth, tied off his arm, and proceeded to draw the blood from himself. Now I understood: Jackson was an addict and didn’t want anybody poking around in his veins. So from then on, every morning I’d just drop the stuff off at his bed. “Yellow and a blue top today, Steve.”
    “You got it, Mike.”
    And I’d go on to the next patient.
    The patient alongside Steve was unconscious most of the time. Steve watched me fumble to get the blood, and I guess it offended his sense of finesse. So he said he’d draw blood from himself and from Hennessey, too.
    The nurses took pity on me, and they helped out and drew a couple of tubes for me. And Levine, if he had been on call the night before, would draw a couple of tubes for me. And as the days passed, I didn’t have to hang my head out the window quite so long each time. So, with everybody’s help, I was eventually able to get the job finished by the start of rounds.
    “Nice to see you on time for once,
Mr
. Crichton. Seems you make a major production out of drawing a little blood.”
    I started to hate Rogers, too.
    In this way, the weeks dragged on—the medical student passing out whenever he drew blood, the residents stoned on rounds, and Rogers sticking pins in everybody while we looked away. And always the patients drooling and writhing in the corners, the alcoholics brushing off invisible ants and spiders. It was a kind of loony nightmare, and it took its