Butterfly Needles

Butterfly needles in a hive-like box, golden brown and neat little face. It’s the only hint of colour the room betrays, the rest all syringe grey and stainless steel knife. She perches on the treatment table, hands clasped, eyes wide. No one’s coming yet.

She’s not a girl who’s afraid of needles, no, not at all. She skipped through the cervical cancer trio at thirteen, she breezed the tetanus and diphtheria ordeal at fifteen. Perfect excuse to get out of lessons really, back in high school with your navy blue jumpers and prefect ties, when it’s all dictated to you, all clean and confident. Today’s different though. Today she sits here alone, no gaggle of girls swooning in the queue behind her, squeezing her hand and wishing her luck.

It’s no big deal though. She’s got used to getting by on her own, waking up in an empty bed, thought-filled head. Today’s just a simple procedure, taking out that final little piece of him from under the muscle of her upper left arm. She rolls her fingers over the matchstick pensively, she’ll be glad to see it gone. Instead of making her better, it’s just making her ill, and it hasn’t seen much use, he kicked up and left a couple of weeks after she’d suffered its insertion. Not a nice guy in many ways.

But she doesn’t want to be the girl who talks sadly about the way things were, she won’t sit on the floor of the ferry on the way back from France and be the unhappy girl who shrugs and remembers it as a waste. And god knows she won’t cry into her cheesy chips at the end of her nights this summer, she’s marching now, to the beat of a drum that’ll see her through. He’s gone.

And so this is the final goodbye, a knife in her arm as she lies on the treatment table, poly pocket pillow sticky with blood, head turned away resolutely. She can’t feel the blade against her skin, but the squeezing’s painful, the way the doctor is pushing and pulling on her arm, muttering as the matchstick slips back beneath the surface. It hurts, it drags out, heaving away, the doctor cursing, the nurse arguing, a tiny brave face turning away and flickering with pain, this was never what she had signed up to. She’d always been a girl so trusting in medicine, so confident in progress. But now she wants this to end, wants free from chemicals and hormones, wants to go back to a natural rhythm, where no nurse can tell her she doesn’t understand the way her own body works.

She doesn’t look until they’ve put the butterfly stitch on, and still then it’s only a tentative glance. Blood stained clouds of cotton wool pile lazily on the tea tray next to the bed. Her arms streaked scarlet too, they say they can’t wash it off because otherwise the plasters won’t stick. They ask her to raise her arm so they can bandage it, one final touch, like the wrapping of a present. It’s an effort to move, like hoisting a flag, her butchered arm not ever quite the same after today. They never told her it’d leave such a scar. No one ever does though, and she’s walked around these last three months scarred from him, left like a sunburn, and nobody’s said a word, nobody’s noticed. A small scratch choking on the inside of her upper arm is hardly going to gain much attention.

She’ll know it’s there though, she’ll always remember the hurt it represents. Like an involuntary tattoo. But it’s okay, it’s gone. She’s standing up and putting on her jacket, thanking the nurse, thanking the doctor. She supposes they couldn’t have done any better, it couldn’t have been easy for them. But she still resents them a little as she walks away, shooting out of the health centre and out into the open air. Butterfly needles in a hive-like box, golden brown and neat little face. She hopes she’ll be tanned this summer, Miss Busy Bee, gal pal queen, not that girl tearing at the seams like the last time he saw her. No, this time she’ll be able to face him with a pert nod of the head, bored eyes and wandering gaze, marching to the beat of a drum. The matchstick is gone. The fire won’t relight a third time.