Carlos hadn’t been to a circus in years – not since he was little. But there had been a raffle at work and Carlos had won a coupon for a free ticket. He kinda hoped that his brother and/or his dad were in town so he could invite them to go with him.
Carlos made his way to the ticket office that was set up, standing in the line with his coupon as he looked at everything around him. Some things were different than what he remembered or imagined a circus to be like, but not everything could be a dated cliche trope he supposed.
Once at the ticket office he smiled and offered the coupon. “Hey… this any good?” he asked in a joking manner.
Quickly,
his head jerked up and he shook his body of anything anxious or stress
enduring. Simply sighing and stuffing the ideas of pain into a dark
space in his mind, “Yeah.. I’m alright, sorry about that..”“It’s okay to be nervous,” Carlos said. “Let me know if you get light-headed. I wanna make sure you’re going to be well and not have any avoidable issues, okay?”
Was this what children felt like?
Anxious and tense? Poor children. “Uh-huh- gotcha..” He murmured under his breath as he glanced over at the needle, Skip had done things like this many times a week for sure, but he was never at the receiving end of it.
Carlos looked at Skip. “Wanna look at that poster over there?” Carlos asked, pointing to a poster depicting Nikola Tesla standing on top of a cartoonishly beaten Thomas Edison with his arms up in triumph.
His eyes glanced over to it but they closed only soon after, a sigh leaving his stiffened chest as he eased himself into the rubbery faux leather chair and whispered through the sigh. “You can just get in there.. I’m an adult I guess, if kids can do it so can I..”
“I’m not going to think any less of you if you can’t,” Carlos said as he pulled on his gloves. He took a strip of rubber and reached for Skip’s arm. “Hold your arm out like this with the inside of the elbow facing up.” He went to work tying the rubber strip around Skip’s bicep to help his vein bulge.
But it didn’t? There wasn’t any prominent veins that Carlos could see in fact, his skin may have just been a bit darker but that shouldn’t have stopped the veins from being seen. “Get anything yet?” Skip pressed urgently, peeking back at the scientist. “Did you do it?”
Carlos frowned at the skin. “No, I haven’t yet,” he said. He cleaned the area with an alcohol pad and felt around, but it was very nearly impossible to find a good vein. “Can you clench your fist for me? I’m trying to locate the vein – I’m not going to stick you until I’m sure of where it is.”
Though even as the acrobat stiffened his hand and clenched it with his fingers curling up, there was simply nothing. It was scientifically impossible not to even have a slight bulge in his veins, it was like he had no veins at all- or blood. “Any better? Can you take the blood another way?”
Carlos poked in the joint, but felt nothing. “Well, I can look somewhere else. There’s a vein on top of your hand that I can look at. Go ahead and turn it over for me.”
Normally he shouldn’t draw blood from the top of someone’s hand, but if he couldn’t find a vein then it was probably his best shot.
The Perfect Scientist 