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“I’ll be right back,” said the technician at the blood lab. “I’m going to get some help.” I didn’t hear that last part. It’s just as well; I’d know soon enough that she was an incompetent hack.

We needed to draw blood from my 8-day-old son, to make sure his yellow tint wasn’t jaundice, but rather due to his parents’ predilection for curry. I expected no complications from the procedure, for he’d had a blood sample taken the week before in the hospital and barely whimpered.

Our technician returned. She was a portly woman with lots of makeup, where by “lots” I mean “more than I think looks natural” as opposed to “enough to cover the moustache.” She’d retrieved a senior technician, although the lab-coated senior tech simply stood in the background to supervise. I think our technician, who I dubbed Vampira, was an intern.

What is it with the healthcare industry that interns learn the trade on live patients? Don’t they make cadavers for this sort of thing?

She poked Raphael in the heel with one of those spring-loaded disposable pinprick devices. He didn’t even flinch. “That was smooth,” I thought, until after ten seconds of increasingly confused foot-squeezing, Vampira stammered that no blood was coming out. She’d been holding the pinprick device backwards. In a fairer world, she’d have stabbed herself in the hand with it.

On her second attempt, with guidance from the senior tech (“You’re holding it backwards!”) Vampira drew blood and a scream. Then she began wringing my son’s foot like a rag. This went on for five minutes! In spite of ample evidence to the contrary, I assumed she knew what she was doing, and I let her continue. Finally, though, the tiny wound had healed, and Vampira had failed to collect the three drops of blood she needed, although she had somehow managed to smear blood all over her gloves and my son’s foot. Her aim is as bad as her lancing technique.

“In the hospital,” I offered, “they had little chemical heat packs for this. The heat brings the blood to the surface of the foot, making it easier to collect a sample.” Unlike Vampira, I’d seen this done once before.

“We don’t have those,” said Vampira, flustered, aware that my baby’s agitated state was entirely of her making. But a moment later she noticed a stack of little packets bearing the label “Infant Foot Warmer” on a nearby shelf.

Vampira then failed to activate the warming pack and lamely offered it to the senior tech, who, after a moment’s wrestling, also failed, and took it down the hall in search of competent assistance. To be clear, neither of the technicians on duty was capable of using a device designed to make their jobs easier.

At this point, my son was inconsolable. He’d been stabbed in the heel, had his foot bruised by five minutes of incessant squeezing, and now had to endure the whole procedure a second time because the half-sample they’d collected was beginning to scab over.

The senior tech returned with the warming pack, freshly activated by someone down the hall in possession of a clue. They warmed Raphael’s heel, stabbed him again, and Vampira started up her wringing.

“You would probably collect more if you’d hold his foot below his heart,” I offered. Vampira hadn’t mastered the idea of gravity yet, although from the wheezing and panting after she’d bent down to retrieve a dropped band-aid I would have thought she could extrapolate some of its other properties.

With that correction, the procedure was completed relatively quickly. Vampira was rightfully ashamed and if I had to guess seeking a transfer to a part of the hospital where she’d be less likely to inflict damage on anyone (e.g. the morgue). Raphael recovered as only babies can. But I felt like the world’s worst father as I washed the dried blood off his foot.

For what it’s worth, here’s the right way to collect a blood sample from an infant.