I’ve always been deathly afraid of needles. One of my earliest memories is of being held down at the pediatrician while the nurse came at me with the flu shot. It’s absurd, really. A stupid little tick. A childish antic. Something I was supposed to grow out of. 

“All done,” my nurse whispers, capping the last vial of blood and setting it on her mobile station. I don’t watch as she removes the butterfly needle and tapes a square of gauze to the area. She scans my plastic wrist band and makes to leave. “You can go back to sleep now.”

I nod my head with a wince. “Okay.” 

She shuts the light out as she goes. I sigh into the darkness and try to position my head exactly right on the pillow. If I can just angle it a little more to the left…no, that’s not it. Maybe if I switch sides the pain will be a little more manageable? It isn’t. I don’t know why I expected it to be. 

I give up my dance in the papery thin sheets and take up my game of pretend. I pretend that my head isn’t pounding. I pretend that I haven’t been sick for weeks. I pretend that I am home, that I am healthy, that I—that . . . 

My eyes find the IV stuck into the crook of my elbow under a square of clear tape. 

I’m not afraid anymore. At least, this is what I tell myself as my gaze snags on the thin silver line leading from the plastic tubes to my skin. Not afraid. 

The timestamp on my phone reads 4:13 A.M. 

I can’t sleep. 

I don’t want to be awake anymore.

If I can just make it another two hours, then the nurse will be back with another round of Benadryl. I can make it two hours. I have to. 

I close my eyes and try not to feel. I wait. I don’t know what I think about. I sit there writing and rewriting stories in my mind. I never get past the first few lines. The words start to tangle with each other until they form a strange song. It falls into a sort of rhythm with my brain as it pulses against my skull. “If this was my last breath, I would use it to say I love you. But it’s not my last breath, so I blow it out.” I sing this to myself over and over again. I’m almost convinced the pounding in my head sounds like a heartbeat.

The words match my situation, but they’re not meant for me. Yes, I came up with them while shut in an MRI machine for an extended period of time, but no, they are not mine. In my head, they belong to a young man who is boxing up his things and trying not to look too long at the woman on the other side of the room. They’re breaking up. I’m not exactly sure why, but it’s what the words demand. 

In spite of everything, I smile into the darkness. If my mom was here right now, she’d make fun of me for not knowing why my characters are breaking up, only that they are. I’ve tried to explain it to her, that you don’t have to know, that it’s not the point of the story, that I haven’t had enough time and concentration to figure it out yet. But she’s not here. No. It’s just me and my words, my pathetically unfinished story. 

That’s the worst part. That I’m alone. That even my stories are not enough to fill the void that is time. I can’t write them in any corporeal form, not while my eyes refuse to cooperate. Every shred of light feels like a bullet to the brain and the excess fluid in my head blurs my vision.. So I can’t write and I can’t read. I can’t even concentrate long enough to finish one precious story. All I have is the image of a man packing boxes. Two sentences that mean everything and nothing. “If this was my last breath . . . ” 

The problem is that no one knows which breath will be the last. 

My veins burn from the fluids slithering out of the IV and up my left arm. I almost had a panic attack in the ER when I first felt it, like a fiery snake leaving an angry trail in its wake. I asked the nurse if everyone’s veins burned like this. He frowned at me and said it was fine. He said I was probably just extra sensitive to it. He didn’t answer my question though. 

I cradle my arm at an awkward angle as it is attacked by my worst nightmare. A singular butterfly needle. 

“Deathly afraid.” That’s the phrase I used. “Deathly.” Did I even consider what death was when I so carelessly tacked on that adjective? I was foolish. A child. My annual physical examination was the scariest thing I could conceive of. 

Maybe it isn’t the needles I’m afraid of. Maybe it’s what comes with them, after them.

“Good morning,” the nurse croons. I sigh at the sight of her. It’s 6:03 A.M.

She stops my IV drip and attaches the syringe with the Benadryl. I stiffen as the substance enters my body. It absorbs immediately and I feel the room spinning around me. This too, I am overly sensitive to. It’s like my body knows to reject anything that comes out of that infernal needle. 

I put my head back on the pillow and pretend to be comfortable. In a few minutes, I won’t be pretending anymore. I’ll be asleep. Blissfully and fully asleep. 

“Goodnight,” I whisper and the word works like a prayer. “Goodnight.”