Page 58 of Suck This

CHAPTER 14

Men suck. Even worse when they suck when they’re sucking.

-Keisha to Acadia

ACADIA

“Is there any possibility you could be pregnant?” the woman asked.

A shot of adrenaline poured into my veins.

“Um, not that I know of.”

I was on birth control, after all.

That didn’t mean that it was a hundred percent effective, though, my inner voice countered.

I told my inner voice to suck it.

“No,” I said more firmly. “There’s not.”

Not if you don’t count that time that that vampire came inside of you…

I tightened my fists, allowing my nails to dig into the sensitive skin of my palm, and watched as the woman took out a glass thingamajig and placed it onto the white paper towel she’d laid out on the counter.

The next thing she did was pull out an alcohol swab and start to clean my finger for the thirty seconds they were required by law to do.

Once finished, she pricked my finger, wiped the blood with the towel underneath my hand, and then set the glass vial to my finger and collected the sample that she used to check my iron.

Once finished, she placed the Band-Aid overly tight on my finger and shoved the glass vial into the little red machine.

The machine beeped, and she made happy noises. “Good, let’s go.”

She was gone before I could ask what the number was, racing toward the chair that I hated.

“I want to do it left-handed,” I told her, pointing at the other chair.

She huffed but allowed me to use the one I wanted without too much grumbling.

Another woman joined the first, both working in companionable silence as they got the miles and miles of tube figured out and untangled from the little bag.

I watched the TV, which was on a soap opera that I hadn’t watched in years, and waited for them to get ready.

It didn’t take long with two of them, and it wasn’t but seconds later that the original lady was sitting on her stool, huge cotton ball stick covered in alcohol swiping uncomfortably at my skin.

“Don’t bend your elbow,” she ordered as she reached for the needle.

I rolled my eyes.

I was here religiously every six weeks, and the woman had taken my blood every other time for the last six months.

I knew not to bend my arm, just like I knew that I couldn’t lift anything heavy with the arm I gave blood in for at least twelve hours. Or that I couldn’t do any strenuous activity for at least twenty-four hours after.

“Yes, ma’am.” I sighed, wondering if I had time to go to the Dollar Store after this and get a Coke before I was due back to work.

Likely I didn’t. I didn’t even have time to give blood, but the damn people called me constantly if it was my time to give, and I was ready to have six weeks of peace.

I’d never tell them to stop calling me. I knew they needed my blood. I was O negative, the universal donor. They’d continue to call me, and did, despite my efforts to get them to stop.

---