A Picture of my Veins

by Lucas Liu

It was hardly an email at all, but rather, a picture. It was something I did not recognize, either. It was bright pink, vivid, and all the way zoomed in.

Why someone would send me such a picture was beyond me. After all, I was only an insurance broker. There weren’t many things people’d wanted from me. My day had consisted of arguments, mostly, of people’s very ill (or, not ill enough) health. Whether or not someone could have struck a deal was never a matter of whim, nor of my mercy.

I’d liked to think myself of the merciful sort. Sure, I’d gotten emails before, but never like this.

“This is the inside of my vein,” the next email said.

It had been from an email domain called sharklasers, and, I, not recognizing it, typed it up. Ah. A service provider for sending anonymous emails.

I spent some time looking at my inbox. I awaited something more. An explanation? No, I thought. Perhaps it was less of an explanation I’d been waiting for, but a reassurance.

Insurance brokers were evil for the most part. I had done nothing wrong, or, so I’d hoped. I began recounting all my sins I could remember from childhood. Ah, yes, I had borrowed my aunt’s cousin’s Xbox without returning it. Where had it gone? I’d kept it under my bed, and shoved in a corner. When the clock had struck 1, or 2 am in the morning, I rushed out to plug it in, to play at the lowest volume before the TV.

Sean, who was always the nervous sort, seemed to fret for almost a whole month before I finally gave in. One day, he’d simply found it on his porch. He did not mention this to me, and I didn’t even get to hear him complain.

Okay, if that hadn’t really been evil, then, what else? I pursed and perused my lips, and taking a sip of my coffee, almost burned my tongue. And then, it hit.

Ah yes, it had been an ex-girlfriend. I had wronged many of them, though, by my account, it had only been a handful of them. Surely, I’d felt justified everytime. I’d cut one of them off for getting too close to one of her male friends (we’d both been dating her, at some time, and I’d been spending a little too much time at work). I then woke up one day to see my windshield cracked, just down the middle. And though it had also hailed, I couldn’t shake the unmistakeable sense that it had been tied to something I had done wrong.

Was it because I was fat? Was it because I lacked good looks? Perhaps if I had a more formidable sense I would have avoided something like this from ever having happened to me. I usually liked my mirror reflection, though, on some days, I spent time leaning in, to nitpick. Ah, yes, that little crinkle over there. An ever deepening line, running just past the side of my right nostril, all the way down to the top-side of my mouth. You would have thought that you would have gained such a line from smiling, but, no. I feared, instead, that it was from my own tendency to smirk.

On many occasions, I had found pleasure in sharking someone over an insurance deal. One I’d felt particularly guilty about was a rather thin woman, who also added in a sidenote that she might’ve been pregnant (she wasn’t sure how this would have impacted her application). I, having prided myself in the manner and which I would navigate the intricacies, and delicacies, of insurance rules (each and every policy, I knew it like the back of my hand). If you or your loved one dies…

“I just want to make sure she’s covered. If, it, y’know, happens.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, miss,” the upper side of my lip curled. I’d almost been about to tell her to see a therapist. A counsellor, or a social worker (she’d already maxed out her own coverage). I hid, from myself, another smirk. I could feel it rising.

“But can’t you do anything about that?”

I’d almost just about hung up the phone when she’d cried out, and yelped. I, with a started, looked down at my receiver. It was her husband, who was on, and I had to spend just about two hours explaining why it was that the both of them could not have coverage for whether or not she would experience a miscarriage. Birth complications did not get covered, by her line of insurance. You could see a doctor, I’d almost said, before winding the little wire cord all around and on the side of the top of my forearm.

Eyeing the top left-hand side of my monitor for another notification from Outlook, found the whole thing, entirely, to be quite appalling. Although I sure felt like I’d done something wrong, I most certainly had not.

“Looks nice,” said another email I received.

I deleted it and sent it to my trashcan. Away, away you lot, I said to myself in my head. I should banish the thing.

But the thought tugged harder and I found myself deleting it from my inbox. 

“Hey Rob,” a voice behind me said.

I swivelled around, with a start (only inside, of course. I was at work). “We have a new young lady here for some paperwork.”

I looked up and over the counter. It was a plain, young woman, with shoulder-length, plain, brown hair.

She sat before me on a rolly stool. “I’d like to see if I’d in any way be compensated, let’s say, for extended family.”

I, still feeling quite uncomfortable, gave her a bit of a pursed smile. My stomach took a tumble, then, and I stopped myself from clutching it. No, no fear. Robert.

My veins, I thought.

Robert, you got this.

My veins, I thought.

That picture of my veins.

She said a bit of hoodlum before someone else came bursting in through the door.

“Rob, someone needs you. They’re in the lobby.”

I quickly stood, abandoning my client and making my way toward the front door. Though I had not seen anyone at first, found myself surveying the room for someone. But, no one was there.

I went back to see my client. She was there, sitting pretty. And, knowing that I was being watched, somehow (after all, how did anyone get that picture of my veins), I stamped her case clean and gave her her dues.

Lucas Liu is a Canadian from Toronto and has previously published non-fiction work in Psychology Today and Routledge.