Tonight, his regular nurse, a no-nonsense woman named Carla, was off. A young, nervous-looking substitute named Ben fumbled with the tourniquet. “Okay, Leo, let’s see what we’ve got,” Ben said, patting Leo’s forearm. He looked at the pale, scarred landscape of Leo’s inner elbow. He sighed. He palpated gently. He sighed again.
“What?”
“What is that?” Leo whispered.
Ben grinned, finally relaxing. “Want me to send you the APK? It’s not on the public store. You have to get it from the closed clinical trial forum.”
That’s when Leo saw it. On Ben’s tablet, which was propped against the IV pole, a strange application was open. It wasn’t the usual clinical scheduling software. It looked like a topographical map. A faint, pulsing blue glow traced the inside of an arm— his arm. iv-navigator download
Leo let out a breath he felt he’d been holding for three years.
Every time he started a new round of IV antibiotics, his body felt like a foreign country. He never knew which vein would be the highway and which would be the dead-end dirt road. Last month, the nurse had blown three veins on his left hand before giving up. Leo had left looking like a pincushion, his knuckles bruised purple and yellow. Tonight, his regular nurse, a no-nonsense woman named
“It’s a download,” he said, more to himself than to Ben.