by HC Hammond
“What is on your coat?” Maria’s pretty face froze halfway between disgust and horror. Harold called it her what-the-fuck face.
“I think it’s blood.” He eased off his trench coat and dropped it on the floor by the door with a mental note to burn it the next chance he got. Maria’s eyebrows notched up about ten centimeters as she stared at the coat. “I didn’t bite him,” Harold said defensively, choosing not to mention his dinner. “I could have, but I really didn’t want too.”
“Your ear.” Maria’s voice came out in a high-pitched squeak. Absentmindedly, Harold touched it with his punctured hand. “Your hand.” Harold stopped, looked at his hand, and looked at her.
“I had a misunderstanding.”
“I’ll bet,” Maria said and stalked into the kitchen. He stared at her round bottom stuffed into a tight white dress.
“So you made food?” He called after her.
Maria popped out of the kitchen with a ladle in her hand. She pointed it at him. “Get cleaned up,” she said and popped back into the kitchen.
“You know I’m not eating right?” He called again, to no reply. Harold did as he was told and headed upstairs to the bathroom.
After a regular shower with thorough checking to make sure his hand didn’t have any broken needle teeth in it and a thorough brushing of his own teeth, Harold emerged a new man. He felt practically human again. The smells were much stronger now and he found the table laid out with the “good” china, candles and even red wine.
“Feeling better?” Maria asked. She stepped out of the kitchen with a bowl of salad in her hands. She’d recovered her kitten attitude.
“Now that you’re here,” he said, eyes locked not on the salad, but her biscuits. Maria set the bowl down and turned to him. She reached up and straightened his shirt collar.
“You must be starved, poor baby.”
“I’m fine,” Harold said, still distracted by Maria’s low cut dress, “you look delicious though.” Harold’s teeth actually tightened.
Maria glared at Harold. “You’ve been at it again.” Harold nodded dumbly. Maria pushed Harold back with an small grunt, and then smacked him in the chest.
“What? What did I do?” Harold asked stupidly.
“I bust my butt working for money to bail you out, so you can go to meetings.”
“You didn’t actually pay…”
Maria turned cutting him off. She ran a hand through her dark salon treated hair and wailed in frustration at him. “Harold, what am I going to do with you?”
“Me? Look, I agreed to go to the meetings. I didn’t say I was going to stop drinking blood.”
“What do think I stayed up until 3a.m. in the morning for?” Maria gestured at the table of food. “I cooked this romantic meal, so we could sit down together, eat and celebrate you turning over a new leaf.”
He was not going to feel guilty. She was not going to make him feel guilty. He was a vampire, damn it. He had to eat.
“One meeting doesn’t cure a vampire, Maria.”
Maria crossed her arms. “That is all food the program recommends you start eating,” She said, nodding towards the table.
“I can’t eat that.” Harold looked at the table in horror. She seemed to think he could just make the choice to sit down to dinner.
“Well, you better,” Maria said. She looked up at him from under sculpted raised eyebrows and parted lips. It was the you-are-going-to-do-this face, which usually indicated he’d do something she wanted or else there would be no living with her for a couple days.
Harold turned back to the table. He tried to imagine himself sitting down to a meal like he used to before the whole vampire thing took over. Putting salad greens on his plate. Putting them in his mouth. Chewing the food. Swallowing the food.
It really was too much. If she wanted him to eat then she was going to be the one to clean up the sea-green puke results when his stomach rejected the meal.
“I can’t digest food Maria,” Harold said slowly. He crossed the short distance to her and lightly brushed her upper arm with the knuckles of his good hand. “I know this is important to you, but I can’t.”
Maria uncrossed her arms and halted the soft brush of his hand by covering it with her own. “Harold, you can’t pull that hypnotizing stuff on me now. We should talk about this.”
Harold sighed. “Okay,” he backed off, “how about this? I’m doing what everyone wants and going to meetings. I’ve been to one meeting and so far, it is literally pulling my balls through a meat grinder. Do you know I’ve got to live in some halfway house?” Harold pressed his hand against his chest.
“I’ve had my hand bitten into by a giant slug who is now my ‘group buddy.’ Look at it. Look!” He raised his shredded digits for her to examine.
“I’ve had a bad night and I got hungry, so I ate someone. If it’s so wrong, then I apologize for offending thee,” Harold swept out his hands and bowed grandly to Maria before continuing on. “I go to sleep in a few hours and I’m going to be asleep for a good day or more because of my injuries. If you’d want to have sex before then, great. If not, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go lie down and contemplate my shitbag life. Thanks for dinner, I appreciate the thought.”
Harold strode out of the dining room, leaving Maria by the table. That scene was a little more put off than he felt, but Harold considered it taking a page out of Maria’s book. His behavior might even pay off if it kept Maria from storming out of the apartment. It did. Just a few minutes later Maria came into the bedroom, peeling off her tiny white dress.
The next evening he gradually worked his way up out of the fog of his daily slumber. It took several long minutes to become fully awake. He was able to open his eyes first, but it took longer for his body to follow suit. One of the symptoms of being a vampire, always dredging himself up from a long hibernation. Always, each and every night.
He flexed his hands and arms and was pleased to see his hand completely restored. Harold glanced at the alarm clock and saw it past eight. He was up late today. Harold reached for his ear to find it also grown back. He thought it would grow back. The slug said it would grow back, but he wasn’t really certain. After all, this was probably the first time he’d actually lost a body part. Harold didn’t instigate fights when he didn’t have too. Injuries still hurt and wounds took extra energy to heal, meaning more blood.
Harold wriggled his toes and shifted around in the empty bed. Maria had long since gone, up and about doing whatever she normally did while he slept during the day. For a couple, they didn’t spend a lot of waking time around each other. Harold pondered the thought until his bladder made itself known to him. He also noticed he was hungry again. Ravenous, in fact.
Harold would have to grab another bite to eat for breakfast. Maybe slip out early and grab something at work. The hospital usually had some extra A+ blood on hand. He was positively screamy for type A.
Harold rubbed his eyes with a thumb and index finger to clear them of the gunk accumulated during his sleep, eased out of bed and padded towards the bathroom. After a long piss and a short shower, he padded back out to the bedroom and dressed for work. He looked through his scrubs and settled on midnight blue.
Harold worked the night shifts at the Union County Hospital. He simply called it the blood bank, since that was where he was stationed in the labs as a phlebotomist. Being a vampire gave him a definite taste and attraction for all things blood-related. He could actually credit the vampirism for kick-starting his career in phlebotomy. There weren’t a lot of people willing to work with blood, not with the chances of infection, but he was all over it. In fact, Harold genuinely felt vampires were perfectly suited to hospital work. He could identify blood types by smell and taste alone. He loved the color red and he even enjoyed working in the lifeless, sterile environment. Plenty of late night shift to go around too. Not to mention he’d never have to fear catching some blood-borne disease from the donors or donations. He was already infected. There was the added b
enefit of getting all the free blood he wanted, even though he had to be sneaky about it.
Harold did occasionally feel some guilt about taking blood needed by regular people, but he reasoned a guy did have to eat and he was performing a valuable service, the way a farmer takes care of his livestock.
Maria wasn’t home. Harold found a note on the refrigerator. She went in to a late shift at the salon and reminded him to eat something from the recommended list of foods FEBS sent them. Harold opened the fridge was assaulted by the smells of people food and immediately closed the fridge again.
He decided to go into work early for breakfast.
The trip to the hospital was blessedly short and easy. Past rush hour, this in this area usually involved waiting for three or four hundred people to pull out of the massive parking lot during shift change at the GE factory. Harold had to drive by the site nearly every day. In the winter, when he was able to take earlier shifts, he always got stuck in the traffic jam of people leaving the factory at six on the dot. Everyone wanted to get home as soon as possible, so no one got anywhere for a good forty minutes. They could stagger work times to reduce the traffic jams during shift change. But noooo… Companies worked three shifts a day. No deviations. Things were easier when everyone walked to work.
Harold checked in at the time clock and slipped into the fridge to find breakfast. He settled on a pint of type-A plasma, puncturing the plastic with his teeth and sucking greedily. The bag flattened into a pancake. After stuffing the pint bag into his scrubs pocket to get rid of in the hazardous waste bin, he washed and sterilized before returning to the desk he shared with everyone else who worked the blood bank slash lab.
David was on duty too, but he had run to the bathroom as soon as Harold showed up, yelling over his shoulder about the sixty ounce big gulp he’d downed in half an hour.
Harold shifted through the blood drawn requests and processing orders to get an idea of the night’s work. They drew most of the blood during the day or the donations were taken during the day. It was up to the night shift to process and filter and test any blood samples left over by the day shift with a range and variety of sampling tests Harold had never imagined existed before he became a Phlebotomist. Sometimes, Harold stayed late enough to start work on the test requests for the next day. He didn’t look forward to that part of the job. Waking up cranky patients at the ass crack of morning did nothing to improve his mood.
He was also responsible for drawing blood from possible infecteds, another thankless job he didn’t enjoy at all. Luckily, not many came through the hospital doors and most that did were false alarms.
Other fluids and tissues came into the lab area to be tested as well, but they were taken care of by other technicians. Harold just worked with blood. He was trained in blood. David was trained in blood, saliva, pooh and piss (and additional by-products of the human body). He took care of a lot of late night drug tests for cops. Harold also took care of blood-alcohol tests, but other things; weed and drugs mostly were checked in the urine and David or someone else took care of that one.
David let out a dramatic “Aaah” to announce his return and the oh so good feeling of an empty bladder. “You’re early,” he said, running a hand over his dark skinned, smooth shaven head.
“Couldn’t wait to see you,” Harold said.
“Ah,” David picked up a clipboard, “I knew you had the hots for me.”
Harold blew air out of his mouth and leaned back in the office chair. He clasped his hands behind his head. Most nights in the hospital were drawn out. Everything about a hospital involved waiting. It was something that confused most people. It certainly confused Harold.
People expected a mad dash to the rescue and frenzied doctors, harried nurses and lots of screaming with words like “stat” sprinkled in. He figured all people imagined a scene from ER waiting for them when they came into the hospital to get treatment, when most of the time treatment involved a lot of waiting around.
Even the emergency room patients waited around to be seen, heart attack patients were stabilized, given medication, put on heart monitors and given oxygen masks while they waited it out. Patients waited for nurses, then doctors, then technicians such as, Harold to come along. Then, the technicians waited for the machines to do their work, while nurses and doctors waited on them. When the results came in, doctors spent two minutes diagnosing the patient, most of the time. The patient was given a drug or a treatment and left to wait it out. Eventually, if they were lucky, the patient got better and went home.
When he first got the job, a technician told Harold most patients came to the hospital in pain expecting things to get better immediately. When in fact, things usually got worse before they got better. It was just a part of the treatment plan and another part of the big waiting game.
After completing the paperwork and processing and filtering of backlogged blood from earlier in the day, Harold spent most nights waiting for something to do. It actually got kind of boring, though in a good way. Harold always had his blood to keep him company.
“Have you gotten all the samples done?” Harold asked David. David nodded while still looking at the clipboard.
“What about the donations?”
David nodded again.
“Anyone need blood drawn?”
David shook his head. “Naw, man. It’s slow.”
Harold groaned, tonight was going to be an especially long night. He’d probably get really bored and find himself sneaking back into the fridge for some snacks if he wasn’t careful. Once he’d gotten caught. Had his mouth on the bag of blood when the door to the fridge opened and David came in. Most people dismiss it as a trick of the eye when they see something out of the ordinary and David quickly accepted Harold’s explanation that he’d left out his contacts and was looking up close to see the blood type on the pint he held.
“Want to play poker?”
David looked up from the clipboard with a grin. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Harold was already pulling out the deck of cards from the desk drawer. David pulled a seat over to the desk and cleared a space amidst the rubble of paperwork. Harold shuffled and started dealing when the phone rang… the ER.
David took the deck and kept dealing while Harold called down to them on the phone. The cops had dragged in a suspected vamp and needed blood tests. The nurses didn’t want to go near him to do the drawing. Harold sighed. He hated these cases. It brought home how closely he lived to the edge. The danger of getting caught was always right around the corner. Now that he’d actually been caught, Harold could safely say it was no better being on the other side of the needle.
“Don’t look at my cards,” Harold said to David and got up to get the right kit.
As he walked down the well light hallways he steeled himself against what he’d see. Vamp handcuffed to the bed, desperate looks, begging even. It’s not you, they don’t know about you, he thought. You have to stay calm.
He focused on the surroundings as he walked through the hospital. With the bright lights, he could almost imagine he was working the day shift. Maybe it was part of why he enjoyed the hospital so much, they kept everything so well lit and with very few windows. No windows in the hallways and certainly not in the office where he spent most of his time. To him, it almost seemed like a normal job working the middle of the day, but then he got to the emergency room and saw the wide bay windows of the waiting area and the dark night beyond and heard the nervous chatter of the ER staff.
Harold scoped out the emergency room before walking in. Already adrenaline started coursing through his veins, heightening sharp senses; smell, taste, sound. Initially, he mistook the sound of his own beating heart for the siren of an incoming ambulance but realized his mistake when no one went to the doors in anticipation of a patient. Two security guards were over by the vending machine, the night nurse was intent on the computer at the nurse’s station. Other people wandered in and out, Harold wasn’t too worried about them. A row of
curtains hung in series along the wall opposite the nurse’s station to provide some privacy for those who came into the emergency room. The ends of these partitioned rooms remained opened, so the nurses could look up and check on someone at a glance. It felt strangely surreal, skulking into the ER when only half an hour before he’d felt so free and comfortable in the hospital. Harold had to force himself to relax, move normally despite the tension in his muscles.
The patrolmen came over to greet him at the nurse’s station where he checked in. One, tall, burly and looking like he was just waiting for retirement joked they’d brought in a real live vamp. A clatter of metal instruments on the linoleum floor came from behind a curtain ahead of Harold, made him jump. He ignored the deputy’s smug grin, taking a few extra moments to sign in. Steady, Harold, it’s the same as every other time. Not a great experience, but one he could handle just the same.
The deputies brought over two men. Both men were in a minor traffic accident driving home. They claimed the light pole jumped out at them and ran into their truck. When the cops showed up, each said the other had been driving drunk and each claimed the other owned the vehicle. They were obviously drunk and devised the scheme to keep from getting into trouble.
When the cops ran the truck’s license plate number, they found it was registered to Hilda Tillman, common law wife of Bill Tillman, which to the cops indicated he was probably driving, but Bill still maintained that his friend, Zeke drove the car. Both also refused a breathalyzer, so to be on the safe side the cops brought both of them in to have blood drawn. The ER doctor spotted Bill’s condition as soon as he as saw the guy.
Harold immediately saw why the doctor called him down when a man came out from round the curtain, watery eyes rimmed in red.
“Whoa, whoa, there buddy,” the police officer stepped in front of the man, “Where do you think you’re going?”
The man didn’t look well. Dried vomit ran down the front of his red flannel shirt, his dark hair and mussed up beard and he stared blankly at the officer. He muttered something the officer couldn’t hear, but Harold was able to pick it up, him rambling about going home before the wife got mad.