Page 67 of Heal Me

I smile and point to myself. “Not a snooty premed kid here. After I graduate, I’m going to train to be a midwife.”

“Hey, good for you. My cousin is a doula.”

“What’s her name? I’d love to get hooked up with someone in that community.”

Meg forwards me the information and I smile at my good luck. I follow her into the patient’s room. Meg introduces us, checks over the paperwork and then quickly and efficiently applies a tourniquet, cleans the vein, and collects seven vials of blood. She places barcode stickers on each vial, removes the port, and bandages the man’s arm.

We say our goodbyes to the patient, and I follow Meg as she pushes her cart down the hall. We step onto the service elevator and ride down to the lab. I look over at her cart and the vials of blood. “I’ve always wondered why so much blood is taken.” My thinking is you’ve got a sick person, the last thing they need is to lose more of their life force vitality. I know from personal experience, as Brad bled me to try and steal mine. I rub the scar on my forearm. Vivian gave me a healing salve I’ve been using religiously. The scar is slowly fading. I’ve also been using it on Gabe’s back, but it’s not doing the trick for his scars. “Doesn’t a standard test only use a small sample?”

“Yep. But you try telling that to a doctor. I get my marching orders and I march.” She shrugs as we scan our badges and enter the lab. “Hey Vicky,” she says to the older woman behind the counter. “Vicky, this is Charlotte. She’s shadowing me for the day.” Vicky gives me a death stare and I wonder what I’ve done to offend her. “Hey now, Charlotte’s actually a nice person. Not like the last one.”

“That last girl shadowing you was a real bitch, pardon my French. Had her nose stuck up so far, I was afraid she’d drown if it rained.”

My money’s on Jen being the bitch in question, but I’m not going to let them know I’m the bitch’s roommate. That whole guilt by association thing. “No risk of me drowning, I promise.”

Meg hands Vicky the paperwork and the tray of vials and Vicky scans everything into the system before placing the blood in a round centrifuge machine. “What happens when the blood cells get separated from the plasma?” I ask.

“After a little shake and bake action,” Vicky says, “these get sorted by test type and sent to the right division here in the lab.”

“Why is so much blood needed from a single patient?” I wonder.

“You want the official answer or the real answer?”

“Both,” I say with a laugh.

“Officially, coagulation tests require more volume and so it’s best to err on the side of caution. You don’t want to go to the trouble of collecting blood only to realize you don’t have enough for the test. Plus the vials need to be big enough to stick on the barcode to identify it, and big enough to fit into the automated system.”

“So why not just order a lower volume while still using the same standard size vials?” I ask.

She shrugs. “Why do doctors do a lot of things?”

“What happens to all the extra blood that isn’t used for the test?”

“We hold all samples for twenty-four hours, just in case there’s an order for a retest or additional testing. After that, creepers come and take it to the offsite incinerator.”

“What do you mean ‘creepers’?”

“You ever met the folks who handle the medical waste transport?”

“No.”

“Creepy as fuck, pardon my French.”

Just then the door opens and in walks a woman in her early twenties I would describe as creepy as fuck, and likewise pardon my French. I get a really bad vibe from her, so I visualize my aura with an additional layer of protection. She’s a few inches taller than I am, rail thin with long, jet-black hair, black eyes, and pale skin that’s accentuated by her black scrubs. She looks vaguely familiar, but I can’t imagine where we would have crossed paths. She walks straight to a large, mounted biohazard box, uses a key and removes the box, replaces it with an empty one, and walks out without a word.

“You heard that creeper, Lisha, was banging Dr. Cooper?” Vicky leans forward and informs us.

“What? No way. Oh, don’t get me wrong. Everyone knows that Dr. C is a manwhore, but even manwhores have standards,” Meg says.

Meg fills up her tray with sterile supplies and then walks over to a cubby station. “Here are the test request slips. I like to arrange them based on time and floor,” she says as she sorts the stack. “And we’re ready to go back out and do it again.”

We wave goodbye to Vicky and make our way back to the ICU. “Seriously, watch out for Dr. Cooper.,” she says quietly as we enter the elevator. “Pretty girl like you would be just his type. Be careful around him.” I wonder if Meg is talking from personal experience.

“Thanks for the heads-up.” Mentioning Dr. Cooper has me thinking about the missing pint of blood. “Hey, random question. Does blood that’s been ordered for a surgery ever get lost in the shuffle? Say once it’s mobilized from the blood bank to the surgical floor, could it go missing?” I should probably just let it go considering Dr. Cooper “vouched” for me.

“Could it? I guess so, but someone would’ve really had to screw up for that to happen.”

“How so?”

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