The ones who say, "Expect a sharp scratch," are the ones who don't care how much they hurt you.
This one said nothing as she wound the blue tape around the lower bicep of my left arm and waited for the vein to show in the pale triangle of the cubital fossa on the inside of my elbow where the needle would go.
Her mouth and nose were covered by a blue hospital-issue mask. The name-tag pinned to her blue and white nurse's uniform above her left breast said, "Kaori".
Underneath the soft brown waterfall of the fringe there was an oriental slant to her liquid eyes.
I said, "Kaori? Is that how you say it?"
"Yes," she said. "It means smell."
"Smell?"
"Yes. I mean a nice smell. In Japanese."
"You mean, like a perfume?"
"Yes, a perfume with a nice smell."
"It's beautiful."
She attached the test tube. The blood looked black.
I hadn't noticed the prick of the needle.
"Is it a common name?"
"These days it is. Twenty years ago all the Japanese girls were given western names like Fiona, Sandra and Julia. Now they're called things like Diamond, Pearl and Perfume. In Japanese."
"Oh."
She wrote on the label with a blue ballpoint pen. "What does your name mean?"
"I'm not sure," I said. "But when I think about it I think of a mountain fortress somewhere in Scotland surrounded by Englishmen with bows and arrows and sharp sticks and clubs with spikes sticking out of them who will sooner or later climb up the craggy slopes of it and massacre everyone hiding inside including all the children by swinging them by their feet and smashing their heads into the stone walls."
She taped a little white cloud of cotton wool over the pinprick.
"That's why you need a blood test," she said.
She smelled like white lilies in a crystal-clear pond where silver fish swam in circles.
I love this story, Gordon! So delicate and beautiful. Thanks!