Quote:

His veins burned--so badly that he didn't mind the pique. Weeks before he had stood over his pregnant wife as she took an ultrasound, in this very hospital, or perhaps it was another...he could not remember. Now he watched as others look down on him. For days he had complained of the IV burning in his veins, how each bubble of medicine expanded, stopped, collected, stopped again, and finally raced into his body. Each dose was like being thrown into a tub of scalding water. He had watched as they sewed his arm with three layers of neat stitches. He had felt no pain thanks to the local anaesthetic.

But the cleanings were different. Dutiful nurses sprayed antiseptic and water into the wound, creating bloody layers of skin and muscle, and turning the wound a harshly stinging white. A sympathetic nurse set him up with an IV, but the combination of painkillers and antibiotics compounded his pain. Worse, upon discharge the line was forced deeply and upward into up his arm, into the nethers of his chest and into his very heart, creating an eerie trail--like a bodily invasion.


I like this version much much better, very discriptive, I like, I like.