leeches [another gory story]

Besides anticoagulant drugs, my postsurgery treatment involves leeches that stay on my thumb a few hours a day, sucking blood away and dispensing anticoagulants of their own. The hospital actually produces its own stock of leeches for this very purpose and most nurses are quite at ease with the procedure, even though a few seem reluctant to touch the animals. This morning I fell asleep during a leech visit and woke up to see it crawling across the corridor outside my bedroom, leaving a rather obvious trace on the ground…