The bad news was

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Phlebotomist (flu-bot´u-mist) – noun - A health care worker trained in the art of drawing venous blood for testing or donation. 

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The bad news was the Phlebotomist had called in sick. 

Sorry, no good news. 

For the last couple of weeks, I've been on night relief. At 8pm all the medical teams sign their patients out to me and I'm left covering two floors of patients until 8am the next morning. It's OK. A little hectic at times but in general not so bad. 

At about 2am one of the nurses said to me, "Oh, by the way, Mr. Smith has a fever." 

Fever means that blood cultures have to be drawn. No phlebotomist means that I have to draw the blood.

I looked up on the census and Mr. Smiths was in room D1024. 

I got the blood draw materials together and went to his room. When I got there I found him sleeping. It was 2am after all. 

"MR. SMITH, MR. SMITH." I called out, "I need to draw some blood." I gently shook him. "Is that alright?" 

Mr. Smith had been sound asleep but he said, "Yah, OK." and started to wake up. 

I got the equipment all set up and asked him to sit on the edge of his bed. I put the tourniquet on and assessed his arm.  He had pretty good veins which didn't mean all that much because I'm just not that good at drawing blood. I wiped a vein clean with an alcohol swab and went at it with a butterfly needle.

Mr. Smith was the type of patient who watched intently while the needle went in. 

I missed. 

The needle went in deep but no blood came. I pulled back a bit and still no blood. 

Mr. Smith said, "Oh man, I could hit that easy." 

Just what I needed at 2am.. a kibitzer. 

"Mmmm," I said, "Do you have experience putting needles in your veins?" 

"I was in the army for seven years, what the fuck do you think?" he said. 

I wasn't really certain what that meant so I went ahead and tried again and I missed again. 

"Shit man! I could hit that with my eyes closed!" 

Maybe I shouldn't have said what I said next but what I said was, "OK, you do it." 

We looked at each other for a moment. 

"OK." He said. 

I handed him the butterfly needle. He held it in his free hand and looked down at his vein. I got the sample bottle ready. Then he said, "Damn, I don't have my glasses on. I can't see." 

I took a moment to analyze the situation. 

"Here," I said, "try my glasses." I took off my glasses and put them on his head. "Is that better?" 

"Yeah," He said and looked back down. We huddled around his arm. Him, with my glasses on, holding the butterfly needle, and me, poised with the bottle waiting in anticipation. 

And he went for it! 

He stabbed himself with the needle and ZING! he got a flash of blood. 

I pushed the bottle onto the line and we got a flow. But the blood came slow. Just a trickle. 

"OK," I said, "You got it, but it's not coming good." 

"Let me move the needle around." He said. 

We barely filled the bottle and then the blood flow stopped. That was a problem because blood cultures need to be done in duplicate. I told him we needed more and he nodded and looked back down at his arm. 

Did I mention that he was bleeding? 

He had been bleeding since I first stuck him. I had hit the vein both times and when I had pulled the needle out the blood flowed down to his elbow and had been dripping. By now his bed was getting covered with blood. 

He stabbed himself again and missed. Then he stabbed himself again in a different vein. 

"Fuck, I gotta be in that damn thing!" He was becoming obsessed. 

Then for some reason I looked at him and suddenly I remembered him from a few nights before. 

"Wait a second." I said, "What's your name?" 

"Mr. Jones." he said.

I stood up and stuck my head out the door and looked at the room number. 

It was C1024 not D1024!

Now look, I'm fairly new in this hospital and at 2am all the corridors look the same. And I cover 50 patients. And… I fucked up. 

"Who'd you think I was?" He asked. 

He suddenly didn't look too happy. 

"Well..."  I started.

"Shit man, you'd better not send in that blood cuz who ever it's for is going to be awfully surprised when it comes back positive for Hepatitis C." 

You know, there are times in life when things just start to spin out of control. 

Suddenly Mr. Jones was up and pulling all the sheets and blankets off his bed. 

He said, "Help me get rid of this shit. We're going to get busted." 

"Huh?" I asked. 

"If the nurse comes in here and sees all this blood everywhere she's going to fucking freak out." 

By this time he had the blankets wadded up and he was stuffing them in the biohazard bag. 

"You're just going to throw everything away?" I asked. 

"Yah, you should have seen it last night. I was vomiting and the nurses chucked everything." 

I started helping him. 

We got all the linen in the biohazard bag and I went around picking up all the paper and plastic. He got a towel and moistened it and cleaned his arm up. Pretty soon the room was lookin' pretty nice. 

"I'm going to go out and have a smoke." He said. 

"Yah, OK." I replied. 

By then I wasn't arguing. 

About an hour later I was standing at the nurses' station trying to look like I knew what's going on. 

Presently I looked up and saw that Mr. Jones. had come back from his smoke.

He walked up to me and handed me a piece of paper. It had his name and phone number on it. 

"That's my number." He said. "I live in the Keys. If you're ever down there look me up. I'll give you the tour." 

I looked back down at the paper and then I looked up at him. 

"Thanks." I said.

I'm going to do it too. That's one tour I don't want to miss.

Miami 2006