Zarna Garg Knows That Sometimes Pretty Hurts

Even with faint splotches of blood blooming across her cheeks, Zarna Garg seemed unfazed. Looks can be deceiving. “I’m panicking inside,” the comedian confessed as Dr. Sonali Lal drew a laser device with 49 pulsing needles to her skin. “I wouldn’t do this at a place that’s not run by a doctor,” Ms. Garg said. “You have to have some faith in who’s shooting this thing right next to your eye.”

She paused, then deadpanned: “I would send my mother-in-law to the nearby spot. She doesn’t need a doctor.”

Coming off the April publication of her New York Times best seller, “This American Woman: A One-in-a-Billion Memoir,” Ms. Garg stopped by Dr. Lal’s Upper West Side clinic, RejuvaMed, on a drizzly Friday for one of her favorites: a “vampire facial,” or micro-needling layered with platelet-rich plasma (P.R.P.). (Total cost: $750.)

First, she traded her outfit — a cheery yellow cotton churidar-kurta with delicate flowers custom made in India by the designer Mallika Mathur, paired with orange sandals from Lukurë — for a simple black-and-white kurta, yoga pants, fuzzy pink socks and black Crocs.

Dr. Lal placed a stress ball in Ms. Garg’s hand as she drew her blood, filling three vials that would be centrifuged to extract yellow platelets. Last time, Ms. Garg recalled, she went home with a doggy bag of leftover P.R.P. “Every time I washed my face, I dabbed it,” she said. “It was like breast milk. You don’t waste a drop, right?”

Dr. Lal nodded. “They call it liquid gold,” she said.

“I wouldn’t do this at a place that’s not run by a doctor,” Ms. Garg said of her vampire facial with Dr. Sonali Lal. “You have to have some faith in who’s shooting this thing right next to your eye.”Credit…Gabriela Herman for The New York Times