Today’s Writing 101 Prompt: We all have anxieties, worries, and fears. What are you scared of? Address one of your worst fears.
Today’s Twist: Write this post in a style distinct from your own.
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When people see needles, they may imagine why they trigger anxiety and uneasiness in someone else. But they don’t know the whole story.
I was twelve going on thirteen. A lonely lil’ boy in a big city. A newcomer to a strange land. It was imperative and customary for the authorities to conduct health checkups for every new batch taken in.
The Raffles Medical Clinic was a great brown building with grand, ceiling-high glass doors that betrayed the acrid odor of disinfectants and pervasive chemicals within. I belonged to a group that was scheduled to the ten o’ clock inspection, but I was unfortunately acquainted with none.
The waiting time seemed to stretch from morning to noon, noon to night. I had witnessed the medical campaigns replay itself for an eternity and I exhausted every form of reading material: the plaques, the pamphlets, the directories. Thus, I looked to the nurse with scorn as she finally approached me.
“Tan Chuan Ming,” she confirmed. I nodded in response.
“Follow me. I need to take a blood sample,” she instructed. I followed silently.
I remember neither the room, nor its contents, but the memory of what transpired within haunts me til this day. At the age of twelve, I had naught fear of a foreign shaft of steel entering my skin. It could be attributed to the ineptitude of that female sadist in white, or the pale sallow quality of my skin, or even technical faults, but I never had the same courage to face a needle after that day.
She pierced the skin. I daren’t look, for I was not interested in matter pertaining to blood. But she announced a result, warning me of an upcoming prick, for the blood drawn was meager and insufficient. Thus, I was punctured once more. Alas, the halfwit excuse for a nurse has managed the impossible! She missed the vein! My memory may have become unreliable over the years, but it was to my horror that she drew a oily, yellow liquid that had suspiciously resembled blubber.
(The vein in my neck is pulsing as I write. This is my equivalent of shivering in fear: I pulse in fear. *laughs*)
The process became unbearable, my emotions were a turmoil of fear, anger, hatred and panic, and my cognitive faculties were in no state to keep track of the numbers. The instruments of torture alternated its host, it begun on my right hand, then my left, and right again..
I left that room and that medical center literally unscathed, but I pulse with fear whenever the horrific anamnesis resurfaces.
fredtotherick 