Blood Supply

The chair exhaled as she sat in it, a deep, growling sound which further stirred the ecstatic butterflies in her stomach. She was at the medical surgery, impatiently waiting to be seen by her family doctor.

“Calm down, I’m sure you’re fine.” Her mother was trying to calm her, gingerly rubbing the side of her arm. “If the tests had come back with anything major, the doctor would’ve rung us right away.”

Her mother had a point. If she was dying, they wouldn’t have wasted precious time waiting for the evening appointment, they would have ordered her into the emergency room a-sap. Still, the sweat kept coming, soaking unflatteringly into her shirt arms, and her heart kept beating. At least, she thought, there’s no doubt that my heart is working.

She just felt like something was going to go wrong. Today wasn’t her day, and there was a foreboding chill in the waiting room. Already, she’d tripped on the sidewalk, lost a button on her cardigan, and bitten her lip. She could still taste the lingering iron tinge in her mouth.

“The doctor is ready to see you now,” the receptionist piped up, not even bothering to make eye contact from behind the desk. The receptionist could have been talking to anyone, except that she was the only patient left. Everyone else was long gone.

“C’mon then, honey.” Her mother held out a hand, and she took it gratefully. Her mother’s hand was cold, like death, and the thought sent the butterflies reeling once again.

Down the hallway. White walls, pale floors, white light illuminating the night outside. White like death. But her heart pumped vigorously, a boom boom boom in her chest like a giant’s footsteps. She was alive, even though thoughts of the other side filled her imagination. She had to be positive, her mother was right: if the blood tests had been bad, they would have phoned right away.

“Well, the majority of your results have come back fine,” the family doctor beamed at her. “You can relax.” The room was white, and she couldn’t relax. Her heart kept practising karate, beating without pause or consideration for her comfort. The butterflies continued fluttering for their lives, unable to escape from the confines of her stomach no matter how hard they tried. The single painting in the room, of a hunting dog and a deer, made her think of thousands of deadly bacteria, hunting the healthy cells in her body. She thought of death, illness and her streak of bad luck.

“Honey, you look pale.” Her mother rubbed her back, trying to calm her down. But if she was pale it was because she was dying. The tests confirmed it. The majority had come back fine, but that still left a minority, and she knew from history class that a minority could be extremely, dreadfully dangerous.

“I’d like to add an extra blood test to the list...” the doctor continued.

She had just reopened the small wound on her lip, unknowingly digging her canines into it. Blood dripped down her chin, and she wiped it on her sleeve, not caring if the blood stained. If she was dying, there would be no shortage of blood on her clothes.

“Just to rule out anything else. I’ll phone the lab now and see if they still have your blood sample.”

“It’s pretty late,” her mother said to the doctor, “wouldn’t the samples have been destroyed by now?” She watched as the doctor shook her head, pigtails scraping across the shoulders of her yellow jumper. How could someone dress so cheerfully when she was dying? Funeral garb would have been more appropriate: black, black, gothic lace and some extra black.

The doctor was dialing a number on the phone, her fingers skipped over the buttons as if she’d done it a hundred times. She probably had. Confirmed a hundred deaths. The doctor didn’t care, she was just another dispensable patient, another strain on the healthcare system, another corpse waiting to be buried.

Her heart beat in time with the beeps of the phone. Beep boom beep boom beep boom… it was hypnotising, she felt herself relaxing slightly. Maybe she was finally dying. The white walls seemed to engulf her, swirling around the edge of her vision. The painting of the dog leaked into the real world, it was coming to hunt her, and she tasted the blood of the deer, her own iron-tinged liquid. Beep boom beep boom. She felt the butterflies burst out of their prison and they flew all around her; an assortment of colours and shapes dancing in front of her eyes. The cardigan, button lost, slipped off her shoulders and she felt weightless; gravity had no effect on the dead. Beep boom beep beep boom beep… beep… beep… boom. Her heartbeat faded, she heard people talking but couldn’t make out their words. All she could hear was the beep beep, then she entered the void of death.

“Welcome back,” her mother said. “You fainted back there, did you take your anxiety meds this morning?” She was in the car, buckled up in the passenger seat with a pillow behind her head. This wasn’t the afterlife; they didn’t take you on car rides in heaven. And they definitely didn’t provide you with pillows in hell. So she wasn’t dead.

The bacteria are killing me slowly, she thought. They made you faint first, gave you a taste of what was coming. Then they let you enjoy life for a little while, got your hopes up, gave you time to think that maybe things were getting better. Then death would hit you when you least expected it, like a truck at a busy intersection.

The night was pitch black, not even the man on the moon could smile tonight. The headlights were the only source of light, but they showed nothing but bricks. Red bricks, the colour of blood, which she noticed she could still taste in her mouth. But that didn’t matter, she was yet to taste a lot of blood in the lead up to her death.

“Where are we?” She didn’t bother to answer her mother’s question, she couldn’t even remember herself. Why bother with using your brain when it’s going to stop working soon, anyway? What she wanted to know was the sort of building those blood-red bricks represented.

“But do you feel okay now, honey?” Her mother was avoiding questions, too, it seemed. She did feel better though, those bastard butterflies hadn’t followed her. Their magnificent colours and other-worldly shapes weren’t visible in the darkness which enveloped her. Her heart… she couldn’t feel it. That was normal, she supposed, her perhaps just a side-effect of her impending doom. The bacteria works its way through your capillaries, is absorbed by the blood-stream, then it attacks the vital organs. That’s what she’d read, that’s what was happening. But it didn’t bother her much.

“Yeah, much better,” she answered. A light turned on outside. She could see a door amongst the bricks. The room behind it was glowing, but the glass was frosted and she couldn’t see inside.

“We’re at the blood lab,” her mother finally explained, “to get that extra test added. They wouldn’t answer the phone, but the doctor was sure someone would still be here. Luckily they were right.” The door opened and she watched as a robed man emerged from it, pulling a trolley behind him. That was more like it, this man knew how to dress when someone was dying. His robe was black, with gothic lace scraping against the ground. His hair, too, suited an undertaker; sleek and dark. Maybe he was an undertaker, and he’d come to measure her for a coffin.

“It looks like all the blood samples are in that trolley,” her mother observed from the driver’s seat, dimming the headlights so as not to blind the undertaker. “We better grab yours before it’s binned.” The trolley was hit by the white light, and it seemingly burst into existence, a paint palette of red, burgundy and black. It was full of blood bags, a cornucopia of bacteria and viruses, human life and foreboding death.

The undertaker spotted them, seated comfortably in the car, and a surprised expression crossed his face. She felt her heart beat slightly… boom boom. She felt her panic rising, the butterflies returning, as she realised that he didn’t want her there. He hadn’t come to measure her for a coffin; she’d go to the grave cold and unclothed, not adjourned in jewels, not in an intricately carved bed.

“Who are they?” Her mother said, her eyes fixed on a group of figures emerging from the darkness. Boom boom boom. She didn’t feel safe there, something was off, and not the blood. The blood was alive, full of living bacteria just waiting to get back inside her veins. It was the people. They were pale as ice. Boom. Their eyes were red as the fiery sun. Boom. Their hair black as night. Boom. Their feet just sweeped the ground, they flew like ghosts. Boom. Their teeth were as sharp as knives. Boom. They were dressed for a funeral, but not her’s. Boom. They radiated death. And she knew… boom… they were vampires!

“What the…” her mother gasped, but she paid no attention to the frightened woman beside her. The scene unfolding in the headlights held all her attention, not even the returning tickle of butterflies could take it away. The people shook hands with the undertaker, greeting him as a friend. And they picked up the bags of blood, of sweet, red wine. They raised them to their mouths, pricked the bags with their teeth, and sucked. She tasted the iron tinge of blood on her tongue; she was biting her wound once more. But not with the ecstatic glee that the vampires bit those bags of nectar with. They tore into the vessels like the dog in the painting; delighted with the fruit of their hunt. The vampires were drinking the blood samples. She was dying; her heart was exploding! But that didn’t matter anymore, it didn’t even frighten her. Because there were vampires. At the blood lab. And they were consuming the samples, they were tasting death.

The world faded to white, then she felt two strong hands on her shoulder. Slowly, her vision returned, and she was no longer outside the blood lab. The vampires were gone, their fangs and black garb just a memory. The darkness was gone too, she could see a shining orb in the corner of her eye. Was this death? But no- the orb was just a lamp, and the white walls surrounding her belonged to the doctors surgery. She noticed that painting on the wall, the unsettling hunting dog and deer.

Then her mother’s concerned face blocked her view. “Are you back, honey? You left us for a minute there.”

The doctor’s hands let loose their grip on her shoulders, and she saw the nauseating yellow of the woman’s cardigan as her pulse was felt. “Just a panic attack, you’ll be okay. Your results are normal, there’s nothing to be concerned about.”

She tried to register this, to believe the doctor’s words. But she wasn’t really back yet, her mind still lingered on the vampires at the blood lab. The way they feasted on those samples with such passion. The way bacteria were probably attacking her cells right this minute. She felt her heart, it was beating again. She focussed on the beats, on breathing in and out, in and out to its rhythm.

She straightened her posture, forced a smile, and lied for perhaps the hundredth time. “Yeah, I know, I’m fine.”