“Yes!” she exclaimed through giggling teeth. The pain, so horrifyingly excruciating, morphed into life.

He smiled, held the dog up to tickle her nose, then dropped the stuffed animal back into her hand like dead weight. She frantically pressed the drum against it, excited by the new sound she could listen to for eternity. But the thumping had already stopped.

“And that is how this is used,” her daddy said with pride, jiggling the syringe between his fingertips.

She looked up from the dog, her eyes wet with wonder. For a moment, as the syringe teetered between his fingers, it looked fluid. Like its form was far beyond anything she could ever comprehend.

“Daddy?” she began, never removing her eyes from the glass barrel.

“Yes?”

“Can I have it? Please?”

He paused in thought. “I don’t know if that would be such a—”

“Please, please, please, Daddy! I promise I’ll take good care of it!”

“I’m not worried about that,” he said. “I’m worried about you hurting yourself.”

“I promise I won’t! I’ll be super careful! Super, super, SUPER careful!”

His eyebrows tensed in thought. But her pouting lips made his face softened. “All right. I suppose you are big enough now to—”

“Thank you, Daddy!” she shouted.

He laughed and handed the syringe to her like a creature bestowing a flower. “Remember to be careful,” he told her. “This is my gift to you, but if you hurt yourself, I will take it away. Not only will I take it away, I will punish you for it as well.”

Her excitement eclipsed the threat. “I won’t hurt myself! I promise!”

And she has gratefully kept that promise. The more careful she is, the longer she will get to keep the syringe. She hopes that it will remain with her forever, so that one day she might hear the dog thump again when the magic strikes just right.

Thump-thump. Just like her own chest. Thump-thump!

Now, as she turns the syringe around in her fingers, staring at the edges, she sees something new. She brings the glass barrel to her face and squints.

Hidden against the inside seam of the barrel is a dark red smudge, pooled and winking. It must be new, she thinks. She spends too much time carefully inspecting her toys for her to miss a thing like that.

She frowns, wanting to know more about the smudge, and resolves to take the syringe apart. Two fingers squeeze the needle while the other hand grips the plunger. She bends these parts downward until she hears a snap. The syringe disassembles easily into three pieces: the needle, the glass barrel, and the plunger. She picks up the glass barrel, wiping the smudge off with the tip of her index finger. She brings it to her nose and inhales. It is wet and sticky and smells like the metal door.

Blood?

There is a knock.

“Vanilla, my sweet?”

With gasping breath, she picks up the pieces of the syringe to assemble them back together. Be careful, be careful, be CAREFUL! She collects the plunger and the glass barrel and as she reaches for the needle, it kisses her with a prick. She jerks her hand back from the sting and smacks her other palm over her mouth to snuff out her yelp. A circle of blood forms where the needle met her. She whimpers and holds her finger up, wanting to get a closer look at her own blood, seeing how it’s the same color as the smudge. She has never seen her blood before, though she knows she is filled with it. Knows it’s the color of one of her daddy’s favorite shirts.