The nurse left me sitting in the room after taking my blood pressure and saying the doctor would be in shortly. A few minutes later I heard her talking with another woman outside through the closed door.
That other woman said, “…Well then you just tell Mr. Higgins he better learn how to float and learn fast.”
“What’s going on?” asked a deeper, male voice.
“When I asked Mr. Higgins, room 3, if he had allergies he said he was allergic to gravity, so Melinda just said he better learn how to float because she’s not lifting him because-“
“LIFTING him?”
“-yeah lifting him, because according to Mr. Higgins, he needs to be held up in the air every two hours or so to prevent him from vomiting and explosive diarrhea.”
I called out through the closed door, “It’s just to break the feeling of gravity and give me a sense of weightlessness. (They stopped talking.) You only have to hold me in the air for a few minutes. I know you’re busy, three or four minutes the most, until the nausea goes away. (They were silent.) It’s getting late, you know. My time window is closing.”
The door opened. The Doctor walked in and went to the sink.
“Gravity? Really?” He said washing his hands.
“Yeah, I had to be raised in a hot air balloon. Crazy, right? School was tough. Forget dating…”
He snapped on latex gloves.
“…girls had to be very understanding- and strong.”
He took the cap off the hypodermic needle and gave me my orders: “Roll up your sleeve, Mr. Higgins, say ‘ouch’ when I jab you, then say ‘goodbye.”
“OW…shit.”
He threw out the needle and gloves then scribbled something on a clipboard.
On my way out I saw the nurse and receptionist in the hall still talking. I stopped next to them and held my arms up the way a little kid does to his mom when his legs quit.
They each walked away in a different direction.
It’s a tetanus booster they’ll never forget.