Descriptive Essay: The Death Of Arby

I absently look at the time on my watch, “Sure. I’ll meet you around eight or so. Stub and Herbs?”
“Stay strong,” he salutes with a fist.
“Army strong, Sergeant,” I smile and continue walking toward the Arby’s down the street.
I check the time on my phone, class started fifteen minutes ago.
May as well make a few bucks to get by, I shrug.
I cross the Arby’s parking lot and walk next door where a gaggle of crackheads, homeless and welfare check recipients all chain smoke in front of the small office building entryway. The glass front door is reinforced with duct tape in a long “X-shape” over a spider-webbed crack.
Inside, I put my name on the sign-in roster and take a seat on a plastic chair in the crowded waiting area.
The remake of
The technician greets me wearing a white lab coat and plastic safety glasses, “Bed number thirty four is ready for you. Let’s get you all set up and on your way,” they nod as they check a handful of boxes of their clipboard.
We pass a long row of people laying back on examination tables with tubes leading from their arms to plastic medical bags at various degrees of fullness: thick yellow liquid bloating the bag as pinkish liquid courses back to the arm in the tube.
The paper sheet crinkles atop my designated bed as I lay down with my arm outstretched. The technician swabs a cotton ball soaked in alcohol against the inside of my arm and wraps the rubber tourniquet tightly against my bicep. The vein throbs underneath. I look away then feel the sharp stab against my skin of the needle into my arm.
“How do you guys train for this, anyway?” I ask as I study the tube flowing out form my arm.
“We have to puncture a balloon without popping it,” the technician nods while they pull the tourniquet from my arm and place a small piece of tape over the neck of the