The pathology collection point is about halfway along the Rocks Arcade in Ettalong, between cafes and a hairdresser. There might be a dentist there too and a shop that sells clothes. I go there every three months or so, so that the doctor can check by body is working like it’s supposed to, and the depredations of Diabetes aren’t able to do their thing. So far, things have been good.

You can’t eat before these tests but you have to drink a lot of water. A lot of water makes me pee and I sit on a chair in the waiting room squirming and trying to hold my legs together. It’s hard to walk when you hold your legs together and anyway, as I said, you can’t eat, so I’m usually out of bed and in the car before I’ve even remembered you need to drink water. I stand in the queue with the other early risers, masks on, feet shifting to quiet pangs of hunger. Nowadays they’ve put chairs out and we sit in arrival order, clutching our pathology papers and our phones so we can check in as soon as they open.

There’s a limit on how many they let in and in winter it’s cold. When you become one of the lucky ones, you hand your papers in and sit down in the warm waiting room. It’s then I remember to drink water and I sit next to the big jug and drink thimblefuls of water as fast as I can. Alas too late, I manage only two or three before my name is called and a cheerful face ushers me into one of the sparkly clean collection rooms. She can smile, she isn’t about to have her elbow pricked.

The room has furniture all round it, cupboards, chairs where I leave my handbag and whatever I have worn to keep warm on the chairs outside. I don’t know what’s in the cupboards. The business end of the room is all in one corner, a computer, shelves, a bin for the used needles and several boxes of plastic gloves glued to the wall. The person taking the blood, who is too friendly to be called a vampire and is making nice conversation, invites me to sit in a chair next to her computer and puts a large pillow under my arm.

“Pump your fist,” she says, demonstrating a fist opening and closing. I oblige. She takes a multicoloured elastic strip and pulls it tight around my upper arm before poking at points on my inner elbow with the tops of her fingers.

“Open and close.” Once again, she demonstrates opening and closing a fist, then tries manipulating my inner elbow again. She grabs the pillow and shoves it under my other arm. She takes the piece of elastic and constricts my upper arm under the pillow. “Make a fist,” she instructs me again, before manhandling my elbow.

“Did you drink any water this morning?” she says and I gulp before confessing that I didn’t manage to drink as much as I hoped. I’m probably not the only one because she shrugs.

“Your veins are rolling under my fingertips,” she says. “They won’t stay still for the needle. They seem alright when I press them, but they roll away from the needle.”

“Smart veins,” I think.

She looks about in despair, then grabs my hands and starts looking them over. The backs of my hands have always been a network of bluish veins loosely covered by skin. If you pull down the skin in one corner, the veins stick out, more so now that I’m older. I got my Diabetes because I was too fat, everywhere but the backs of my hands. Her eyes light up or maybe I just imagined that. “I can take blood from there,” she says, “but it will hurt.”

Heart in mouth, I nod. I can usually handle pain.

She looks at the sheet the doctor had printed out requesting the tests and begins to assemble her kit. A kidney shaped bowl, test tubes, stickers and a butterfly with a capped needle at one end and a place for the test tubes at the other.

“Hold out your hand,” she says. I do so gingerly and she uncaps the needle and plunges it in. It hurt like hell and I press my lips together before the ‘ouch’ and various other screams can escape. Blood flows into the test tube she pushed into the other end. She changes test tubes gently as you can but there is still a slight jerk and a light stab of pain. She changes test tubes again. Blood flows, then she pulls out the test tube and carefully extracts the needle. “All done,” she says and swabs away the drop of blood that has formed, before covering it with a small round bandaid. “Don’t do anything strenuous for the rest of the day, or it will bruise.”

It probably will anyway, I think, the backs of my hands often do, though you can’t tell because the veins stick out so much. At least it no longer hurts. I make a mental note to drink more water next time but of course, I forget.