HomeThe needle
Or, an appointment with the nurse
“NO PHOTOGRAPHY” said the sign at the door in big, bold letters. So this post doesn’t have any images in it; no photographs, at any rate.
It’s curious, the banality that major events can sometimes carry with them. The extent to which a world-changing event becomes a matter for paperwork. I walked through the chicane of barriers to the door of the leisure centre; was given hand sanitiser and had my ID and my temperature checked, before joining the end of the first queue.
Many, clearly, had gone before me. Almost three-quarters of the adult population of Wales have now had their first vaccination dose. For everyone who does it, though, it’s a significant step. Each queue, each desk that takes your name and details and gives you a different leaflet to read. I’m not sure quite why there had to be two separate desks to take the same details each time, with a new queue between each one.
My local vaccination centre is in the local leisure centre, its sports hall converted into a production line for vaccinating the masses. After the final check of who you are and where you live, you enter a long, fat holding chicane, fat to make sure each strip of the queue stays well apart. Plenty of time to appreciate the details of the production line arrangements. The hall split half and half between the stations for giving jabs, and the seating for patients to sit and wait afterwards. At the side of the room, desks for the Clinical Controller and the Admin Controller. Each of the numbered trestle tables had two nurses, two seats for patients, two computers and two big yellow sharps disposal bins. Whenever a nurse is free, they hold up their hand, and the nurse at the head of the queue directs the patient where to go, which route to follow to avoid stepping through someone else’s exhaled breath.
After you’ve been injected, after giving your name and details yet another time, you are moved over to the waiting area, to sit to ensure no serious side effects ensue in the first few minutes after the jab. Sitting in a sports hall, at a well-spaced chair, staring at a slowly-moving clock on the wall: naturally, it feels more like some sort of school exam than anything else. Possibly one of those dream-logic exams from years after you have left school, where there is no desk and no exam paper ever comes. Of course, in an exam, you still can’t sit and read your phone. I counted the minutes around the dial of the clock, turned my chair the regulation ninety degrees to flag it for disinfection, and walked out ready for the rest of the day.