Circuit City

Chapter 11

" Deep breaths," I reminded the boy who continued to draw large breaths while he stared out of the window. "You're doing great!"

He only nodded at my encouragement and I watched as the last bit of blood from his cubital vein filled the tube before quickly pulling out the needle and applying pressure with a cotton swab. Another loud exhale was heard next to me as the boy turned his head towards his arm.

"It's over?"

"It is over," I confirmed and replaced the cotton swab with a band- aid. "It went fast didn't it?"

"Yeah," he breathed as he rolled down the sleeve of his arm. The color on his face had returned and he gave me a toothy grin "It wasn't so bad."

"I told you," I smiled back and reached my hand up for him to smack it. "Good job!"

After high-fiving me, he jumped down the chair and ran to the waiting room where his mother was waiting anxiously for him. Her faint voice echoed in the hallways as she asked her son to put on his jacket to leave and it soon turned into a mellow whisper with the secretary nurse as she paid for the consultation.

"Well done," the head nurse said as she passed through the room and handed me a couple of charts. "Take the trolley with the tests to the porter before you leave and fill out these charts for me."

"Will do!" I took the files quickly and gasped out loud as the small, red tube in my hand slipped and fell. Luckily nurse Lane managed to catch the vacutainer just before it hit the ground and gave me a pointed look towards the clipboards.

"Carefully, I hope."

The charts were instantly on the desk and I nodded with burning cheeks "Of course."

The nurse eyed me skeptically and proceeded to put on the labeled tube in its holder on top of the tray on the trolley. Then, with a loud smack of the lips and another pointy look she waltzed out of the room with another intern following her suit. Having witnessed my latest mishap from the doorstep to the waiting room, he sent me a sympathetic smile as he stalked after our stout mentor.

"Way to go, Suri, you just made a fool out of yourself in front of your supervisor."

Ignoring the annoying voice in my head, I walked over to the trolley to make sure that all the blood samples in the blue box in front of me were labeled and in order of color. After putting an empty box of the same color on the table, I grabbed the charts and began my journey down towards the storage room where all the samples waiting to be transported to the laboratory rested.

"Look at you," a melodic voice rang behind me and I swirled around to find Dawnett standing behind me, holding a small pile of charts in her arms and pointing at the box of blood samples on my cart, "being all productive and stuff."

"What are you doing here?" I gasped and lowered my voice to not disturb the patients waiting in the room next to us, "I thought you were going to be in the emergency unit!"

"I am," she nodded and then rolled her eyes. "I just had to drop these off to Jim, who forgot them in the women's locker room. Don't ask what he was doing there," she continued quickly as she saw my questioning look. I didn't even know who Jim was.

A small ringing sound echoed in the quiet hall the same time that the elevator doors swung open, revealing a man in a doctor's coat leaning against the wall with closed eyes. As we entered, he opened one eye and then shut it with disinterest.

"Your supervisor isn't going to notice your absence when you're going all the way to..." I threw a glance at the button Dawnett had pressed on the operating panel, "...the 19th floor in an entirely different building?"