Pant Like a Dog

When I was little, and it was time for me to get my shots, my older brother always sat in the exam room with me. I sat on the papered exam table, staring wide-eyed at the door I knew the doctor would eventually come through, and my brother stood beside me, distracting me with Highlights magazine.

When the doctor came in, Brandon took charge.

"Don't worry, Rebecca," he promised. "You'll hardly even feel it."

He pinched me.

"See?" he asked. "It's not even like that. Did that hurt?"

"No," I whispered, lying.

When the needle came out, though, my brother grew pale. He grabbed my hand and told me to squeeze it, but squeezed mine instead. While my mom looked on from the chair, Brandon coached me the way he had been coached by her.

"Pant like a dog," he said, his eyes darting wildly from the needle to the soft skin of my arm, which the nurse was swabbing with a wet cotton ball.

(I'm not sure where my family picked up this "pant like a dog" distraction technique, but we were sort of famous for it in the small pediatrician's office we used until my brother and I went to college. "There goes the Beyer family," the nurses probably whispered to each other as the four of us made our way from waiting room to scale to exam room over the years. "You know, the ones who pant like dogs.")

"Don't look at the needle!" Brandon cried, turning his head 180 degrees away from the approaching syringe.

But I did look.

"Rebecca, don't look... I can't do it," he finally yelled, throwing my hand down and racing from the room as our doctor chuckled.

"Pant like a dog!" my brother yelled, vanishing behind the door.

As I've gotten older, I've become more like my brother in my aversion to the sight of other people's pain or potential pain. The other night, my chicken-shittedness came out in full force. Tiffany and I sat down to watch 127 Hours, the movie about the hiker who has to cut off his own arm to survive after being pinned to a wall by a falling boulder. (Strangely, my brother recommended this movie.) When the inevitable scene began, Tiffany got up to wash the dishes. But I stayed on the couch, trying to be brave.

"Tell me when he's done!" she yelled over the sound of the water, which did nothing for me in the living room to mask the sound of flesh being penetrated with a pocket knife.

"Oh god," I whispered.

"Rebecca?" Tiffany called.

But I couldn't answer. I had turned away from the television to press my face into the couch cushion.

"What are you doing?" Tiffany asked, coming into the room.

"I think I might pass out," I said, my voice muffled, "but don't tell my brother if I do."

And then I started panting like a dog.