as a blood thinner so they have to follow my coagulation studies to make sure I’m taking the right amount.
You see I had a blood clot. I had a blood clot that went to my lungs. Been on warfarin ever since... Hey, I remember you. I remember you well. You’ve drawn my blood before.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t remember.” He’d finished rolling up the sleeve on his right arm. Heng surveyed his veins for a place to stick the Vacutainer needle.
“Oh, I remember. I recall you well. The other nurses usually have trouble drawing my blood. You hit the vein on the first try. You might not remember, but it’s the sort of thing that a patient remembers, believe me. Nobody likes to get stuck twice.”
“I suppose you’re right.” She took the rubber hose that served as the tourniquet and wrapped it around his frail arm. She sat down on the stool next to his chair and began patting down the hollow of his elbow to get the veins to swell and come up. Gazing at him, seeing the thin, reddish-gray hair over the bald scalp, the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, the creases that spread out radially from his mouth and the few liver spots on his face, she assumed Rosenthal was her father’s age, her father’s age when he had still been alive. “Make a fist,” she told him.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I know the routine.” Smiling, he made a fist. If only half her patients were this enthused when they had to have their blood drawn.
“I guess they would if they had to have this done every two weeks.” She put on latex gloves. With an alcohol swab, she cleansed the small hollow of his elbow, where she’d be drawing the blood. Having sterilized the area, she took out the Vacutainer and placed one of the blood sample tubes in it. “You’re going to feel a little stick,” she said as she drove the vacutainer needle into his skin. When she pushed the Vacutainer tube into the Vacutainer, no blood came out. She had missed the vein. She missed the vein that she apparently had no trouble hitting before when she drew Rosenthal’s blood. Moving the Vacutainer back and forth and in and out, she probed searching for the vein. “You shouldn’t have said anything about me being the only nurse who could draw your blood,” she muttered. “I’ve missed. Hold on.” She plunged the needle in one slightly deeper. Suddenly, blood spurted into the Vacutainer tube. As the blood rushed in, she released the tourniquet. “There we go.” In all, she took two Vacutainer bottles from Rosenthal, one for a blood count and one for coagulation studies. Having drawn the blood, she withdrew the needle setting it next to the two full Vacutainer tubes that she had placed on the phlebotomy tray. Applying pressure to the site where she had drawn the blood, she then placed a bandage over it. Standing up, she gathered the blood tubes, the vacutainer, the gauze and the bandaid wrapper onto the phlebotomy tray.
“That wasn’t that bad,” said Rosenthal. He was still smiling. Was he smiling because he was nervous or was he smiling just because he had such a jovial manner? She wondered. Despite the age on his face, his teeth shone. They were the teeth of a much younger man. She supposed they were capped. “Heng, you seem friendlier than the rest of the nurses. You’re friendlier and you’re definitely gentler. I want you to be the one drawing my blood every two weeks from now on. Can I do that? Can I request you?”
“You can request me. Whether you get me or not is entirely a different matter.”
“What do you mean it might be a different matter?”
“I might be busy with other patients.”
“Oh, I’ll request you, anyway. You can count on it.” He laughed, this time the laugh exploding like the braying of a donkey.
“You married?” he said, the teeth shining, the eyes crinkling.
“I beg your pardon.” Zhang Heng, who wasn’t a girl who blushed easily, suddenly felt her face flush. Levinson continued laughing, but this time he seemed to be giggling, like some adolescent schoolgirl.
“I said, are you married?” She stood up from the stool holding the phlebotomy tray with the two blood-filled tubes. She looked down at the tubes of blood lying on the phlebotomy tray.
“Why do you ask that?” His eyes twinkled like those of a young boy watching the fireworks on the eve of the Chinese New Year.
“I was just curious.” He rose from the phlebotomy chair with a spring in his step. All he needed were out-sized shoes and to go along with a clown’s costume and he would be ready for the big top. She turned and headed for the door. “You never answered my question,” he said. “It’s a harmless question. Are you married?”
She turned and faced him. “No, I’m not.”
“Didn’t think so,” said Rosenthal. “Didn’t think so. I sensed that in you. I sensed you were single. I’m seldom wrong about those things.”
“Telepathy?” This was a man, she thought, who could wear you down with his questions.
“How about having dinner with me some night.” When he wasn’t laughing, he was smiling.
“I don’t think so,” she said. This man – a man old enough to be her father – was making a pass at her and she didn’t quite know how to respond. Not only was he old enough to be her father, he was a foreigner. This was a situation she had never encountered before. Even in the Middle East, no one had approached her quite like this. She had never dated a man this much older than she was. She had never dated a foreigner, not even in Riyadh.
“There some rule about it? Not dating a patient?”
“You have a good day, Mr. Rosenthal,” she said opening the door for him.
“Think about it,” he said as he passed by her going out the door. “Think about it.” He laughed as he passed by her going through the door. “I won’t bite. I’m already house- broken.”
“I bet you are.”
Walking down the clinic corridor to deliver the blood tubes to the lab, she thought about Joshua Rosenthal. She thought about his invitation to dinner. She looked down at the lab sheet that she held in her hand. In the upper right hand corner was Joshua Rosenthal’s name, his clinic number, and his date-of-birth. Rosenthal was almost eight years older than her dad was when the liver cancer overcame him. Something in Rosenthal’s character made him seem much younger.
She deposited the blood tubes in the lab and went back to the nurses’s room. JoAnne Wang and Gao Peng were still sitting where they were when she left them to deposit the blood. “Just who is this Joshua Rosenthal I drew blood on?” she asked Xiao Chen when she returned to the nurses’s room after dropping off the blood tubes in the lab.
“He’s harmless,” she replied looking up from the schedule she was still working on. She licked the lead on her pencil and went back to work on the schedule.
“He’s just another Lao Wei with too much time and money on their hands,” added Gao Peng.
“He’s always smiling and hitting on the nurses,” said JoAnne Wang. “I’m surprised you hadn’t met him before. I think he’s a little bit creepy.”
“You think all of Abrahim’s patients are creepy,” said Heng.
“Well, they are,” replied JoAnne smiling. “Especially Joshua Rosenthal.” Gao Peng laughed. There was a certain truth to what JoAnne was saying. Abrahim had a strange following of patients.
In
