A What?

Day blends into night. The lights dim in my room, but they don't go out all the way. There is still too much activity. Too many vital signs that need to be monitored every hour or two.

If I'm not already awake, then there is a gentle hand on my shoulder. I struggle to sit up. Propped on one elbow, perhaps. Two fingers at my wrist at my wrist for six seconds. Then there is a thermometer. Then a snug wrap around the upper half of my arm. It gradually tightens, and then there is a cool stethescope at the base of my elbow. Blood beats against the pressure. The wrap loosens, is stowed in a metal and plastic fixture attached to the wall behind me.

"Shh," my nurse says. "It's okay to lean back now, if you want."

The blood draw comes next. Four or five small glass vials are lined up neatly on a metal tray. They rest on top of a clean white towel. Each vial has a different colored cap.

"Lots of blood?" I ask.

"Lots of tests," my nurse says. She finds a vein. It's easy. I've got good veins. She doesn't need to look to long before finding a good spot on my left arm. The vials are vacuum sealed. This means that instead of four or five separate needles, it will only take a single poke to fill all the vials. There's a kind of open-ended attachment at the opposite end of the needle. The sharp end goes in. As soon as one of the vials snaps into place, upside down, the seal on the cap is broken and a tiny jet of blood spurts against the glass inside.

"Cool," I say. They didn't have this in England.

My nurse nods. "Yes," she says, a little distracted. She holds the needle in my arm with one hand, and swaps out vials with the other. When the last vial is returned to the tray, she takes the needle out, wipes my skin again, then tapes over it with a clean gauze.

"We won't be doing this too much longer, though," she says.

"What do you mean? No more tests?"

"No, it's not that. We just don't want to stick you any more than we have to."

"Oh. Well, it's not too bad."

"Well," she says, "it'll get better. Tomorrow we'll be setting you up with a Hickman catheter. No more needles."

"A what?"

"A Hickman catheter," she says. "A way for us to do blood draws, but also to get medicine into your system. Think of it as a kind of a permanent needle. Your doctor will explain it all to you in the morning. Try to get some rest, now."