“I’m not a huge fan, but I don’t have a phobia,” I said. “Why?”
“Because you’re about to meet a lot of them.”
* * *
“Let’s do this first and get it over with,” Dr. Lee said, before shoving a cotton swab through my nostril all the way back to my brain. This was actually the last part of my physical, which I was informed I had passed, but the first part of my vaccine regimen.
“Well, that’s fun,” I said, when it was done.
“If you think that’s fun, let’s not ever meet socially,” Dr. Lee said. She packed up the swab to be tested. “You don’t look like you’re infected, but of course no one ever looks infected at the beginning, so we’ll just be sure. And in the meantime, let’s get you shot up.” She reached into a cabinet and pulled down a tray holding a series of syringes.
“What are those?” I asked.
“These are your basic vaccinations,” she said. “Just the usual stuff, new and boosters. Measles, mumps, rubella, multispectral flu, chicken pox, smallpox.”
“Smallpox?”
“Yes, why?”
“It’s extinct.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you.” She held up one of the syringes. “This is new. COVID vaccine.”
“It’s out?”
“Technically it’s experimental. Don’t tell your friends. They’ll be jealous. Now. How much international travel have you done?”
“Not much. Canada for a conference last year. Mexico as an undergrad for spring break.”
“Asia? Africa?”
I shook my head. Dr. Lee harrumphed and reached up for another tray of syringes. I started counting and got nervous.
Dr. Lee noticed. “I promise you want the shots more than you want what they’re protecting you from,” she said.
“I believe you,” I said. “It’s just a lot.”
She patted my shoulder. “That’s not a lot.” She reached up again and pulled down a final tray, which had at least ten syringes on it. “There. Now it’s a lot.”
“Jesus Christ.” I actually moved away from the tray table. “What the hell are those?”
“They told you you’d be working with big animals, right?”
“Yeah, and?”
“Okay, so…” Dr. Lee pointed to the closest syringes in the new tray. “Those are for the diseases the animals could give to you.” She pointed farther down. “Those are for the diseases their parasites could give you.” She pointed to the last of those. “And those are for the diseases you can catch just by existing in the open air.”
“Holy shit.”
“Look at it this way,” she said. “We’re not only protecting you from them. We’re protecting them from you.”
“Can’t you just give them to me all at once in an IV drip or something?”
“Oh, no, that would be bad. Some of these vaccines don’t react well to others.”
“And yet you’re going to put them all into my body.”
“Well, we have a specific order they go in,” she said. “So, your bloodstream will have diluted the first of them by then.”
“You’re fucking with me, aren’t you,” I said.
“Sure, let’s go with that,” Dr. Lee said. “Also, really quickly, let’s talk side effects. For the next couple of days you might feel achy or sore, and you might run a slight fever. If that happens, don’t panic, that’s perfectly normal. It just means your body is learning about the diseases we want it to fight.”
“All right.”
“Also, at least a couple of these are going to make you feel ravenously hungry. Go ahead and eat all you want, but avoid excessively fatty foods, since one of these is going to tell your body to purge fats in a way that absolutely challenges normal sphincter control.”
“That’s … not great.”
“It’s a mess. Seriously, don’t even think about trying to fart for the next eighteen hours. It’s not a fart. You will regret it.”
“I don’t like you.”
“I get that a lot. Also, you may find the color blue giving you a migraine for the next couple of days.”
“Blue.”
“Yeah. We don’t know why it happens, we just know it does. When it does, just look at something not blue for a while.”
“You know the sky is blue, right?”
“Yes. Stay indoors. Don’t look up.”