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Show 197 He put the folder back down and began to fool with her plastic bag and tubing. His smile would not go away. He hung an empty blood bag from a hook at the side of her cot and it immediately fell halfway to the floor in its tubing, out of her view. The rest of the tubing he uncoiled and spread on the cot beside her. "We don't get many couples," he said. The loose tubing was in the shape of a "Y". One terminal he connected to the empty bag. Another he connected to the bottle of clear fluid which hung from a metal stand above the cot. The third length of tubing he laid across her arm. "This end is for you," he said. She made an ugly face. "For that matter," he said, "we don't get many women." There was a faded pink stain on his lab jacket, near the pocket. "Especially pretty ones." Like his smile, the stain appeared to be permanent. "What's in the bottle?" she asked. "Saline," he said. "That's for later." He began to scrub down the inside of her arm with alcohol. "The winos like this part," he said. "Are you a doctor?" she asked. "Would I be working here if I were?" he said. "A nurse then? A male nurse?" "No," he said, "but I took a course." Now he swabbed down her vein with something yellow which smelled sickly sweet and dried slowly. |
