Five AM, the door flies open
and she bursts into my room,
her lab coat flapping like a cape.
She mutters gleefully, I’ve come
to take your blood, tightens
a tourniquet around my arm,
glides her pointy finger over
engorged veins. Finding what
she wants, she whispers Oh! This
one will do! Her Bela Lugosi cackle
coaxes a needle into my flesh,
blood shoots up the tube. I lie
in helpless surrender while she
gazes into my eyes. She smiles,
snaps the rubber tourniquet
off my arm, flies from the room—
a bat rushing back to her cave
before sunlight arrives. I’m left
beneath the morphine drip,
listening to her laughter fade.
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