The five-year old - I wish I knew his name - starts to squirm. "Hold him still!" the resident yells at the mother. She tightens. He places the needle on the skin between two knobby vertebrae in his lower back. I tug on the sleeve of the resident and point to the unopened vial of lidocaine on the table. He looks up at the mother, but her eyes are fixed on the needle. "Shush!" he responds under his breath.
The intern pushes the needle into the boy's back. The child screams; mom and I cringe. She holds him tight, squeezing him open to us. Tears roll down her cheeks. "It'll be over soon," the resident states. Buthe's wrong.