One on the right leg, one on the left. Both are from medical procedures. The right one is from a less-interesting muscle biopsy, while the left combined the twin rotten, engorged fruits of poisonous infections and electric needles. I will explain!
When I was eight I would sleep all the time. A nice passtime, one I engage in to great success even now, but one that challenged my mother's image of the happy childlike running, jumping and self-mutilation I should be doing at that age, so off to the hospital I went. The swollen joints and ungainly rash probably didn't help either. The doctors jabbed me with several instruments, made tetchy diagnoses of everything from poison ivy to lupus, and then finally admitted that they were just damn well baffled and locked me in the hospital. Every day I was subjected to ever more uncomfortable and esoteric medical procedures (and free stuff donated by terrified relatives). They took stuff out, they put stuff in, they drained approximately twice my body weight of blood. I got to play video games all day and get wheeled about emergency-style on a nice comfy gurney. It was pretty neat, except for the minor condition of being sick and the increasingly more dire predictions as to what was wrong with me.
At about the tail end of my little stay I was told that I would be going in for a test. This was no problem, I was used to how things were at this point. A nurse set me in a wheelchair and wheeled me down into the deepest stygian sub-basement of the hospital, carting me past increasingly more ancient and terrifying medical equipment and the occasional rushed resident or nightgown-clad stumbling inmate. Eventually I was left in a waiting room in the care of my mother while the nurse puttered into an adjacent room to prepare the machinery or summon the demons or whatnot. Doctors gathered. I was informed that this would probably hurt a little, and due to the nature of the test, I couldn't be sedated.
It was when they brought out the straps that I got worried. I quitted the wheelchair and was guided into the other room where I was faced with an entirely unassuming medical table and neutral glob of machinery. I did not figure the bundles at the end of the bed for restraints until the nurse started actually strapping me down. Here's a tip: if a doctor says it "might" hurt "a little" and then proceeds to strap you the fuck in like you're about to be launched down a rollercoaster, just pass out. Bite your tongue until you choke on the blood. Go to your happy place. Trust me, it's better there.
I got poked once or twice in the legs and arms, marked indelibly, and then stuck with needles. Needles attached to wires. Which went into the now charmingly beeping and glowing machine. Which began to pump my muscles full of searing electricity. The pain was like nothing I've felt before or since - it went everywhere and there was nothing I could do. My entire body jerked and spasmed; I felt my muscles expand like the Hulk and contract again. They had strapped my legs in but not my arms, and drugged as I was by pain I saw absolutely nothing wrong with taking that opportunity to claw the fuck out of everyone nearby. There weren't enough doctors to man the machine and hold me down. They had to enlist my mother.
Eventually it was over. As a reward for my pain I was given... three small dinosaur-shaped erasers. And, as it turns out, an infection in one of the needle-wounds that ate away at the skin surrounding it and resulted in a permanent dent in my flesh. Oh, and the hate. The hate for everything that wants to love or help me. The hate that burns like lightning in my muscles, weeping and whispering and waiting for the opportunity to claw and gouge and kill.
I want my goddamn lollipop.
