I had watched as his limbs twisted this way and that
on the doctor’s table as he saw the doctor expertly draw out the
needle, as doctors do. He was afraid to touch Isaac; it took two
thin-lipped nurses to hold him down, their white uniforms wrinkling
over their pale skin, their fingers pink and sprawled out like lily petals.
At one point, one of them had turned over and asked my brother and I where our father was. “He was unavailable today”, Mama jumped in,
bright as the lightbulb picking up the doctor’s grey hairs. For a moment
we all believed her. Isaac stopped squirming and his skin was pricked. A few drops of blood came out expectedly and with little affair.
I held his hand as we three walked out of the doctor’s office, a little jealous as Isaac turned the cherry DumDum in his mouth with the other, so that you could see the Power Rangers Band-Aid sticking out from under his shirt sleeve. He was peaceful.
Mama, said that he was just a little boy who afraid of the needle, that was all. But a few hours later, while we sat in front of the television, Isaac pulled back the Band-Aid half-way so that you could see the dried, red splotch and it scared me. There was something about the blood being trapped on the white part of it, no longer cruising his veins, but held down only to be discarded.
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