All In:Playing the Fool(56)

Joselin had found me after I was walking home from a downtown bar on  July 4, 1954. Some son of a bitch drunk driver had plowed over me and  kept going. She gave me the choice of living a long time or dying right  there. I was a coward, and too scared to die after I'd recently watched  my parents and younger brother do it.         

     



 

Joselin had been like a second mother to me from that day forward. She  had only been thirty-six-years-old when she was turned, but she'd been a  vampire since 1790. She insisted I move out of my shithole apartment I  paid for with minimum wages from the factory, and into her large, two  story plantation home just outside of the city. I'd been a slacker and  just lived with her for the next thirty years until she remarried, and I  finally decided to live on my own. Now Joselin was really the closest  thing to family I had left. That reminded me, her birthday was coming up  next week and I needed to send her a card.

Back to the blood mobile and "her". I should probably find out her name  and get to work instead of just sitting here in silence eye-fucking her.

"I'm Sam by the way. Thanks for donating today," I told her as I put on a pair of latex gloves.

"I'm Kate. Kate Adams," she said shyly, then looked down at her hands in her lap, blushing even harder.

I looked her over again, being less perverted this time and more professional.

"How much do you weigh?" I asked, wondering if her tiny frame actually met the damn weight requirement to donate.

"Excuse me?" she asked as she looked up, surprise showing on her face  from what was usually a very personal question for most women.

"Well, you need to weigh at least a hundred and ten pounds to donate, and you look like you might be under that."

"I weigh a hundred and ten pounds," she said defensively, but I wasn't convinced.

This girl was determined to donate blood, the consequences to herself be  damned. It showed just how sweet and kind she was. It wasn't like I was  going to refuse to let her donate. I wanted to keep her here beside me  for as long as possible. I just hoped she wouldn't pass out after she  left that chair. I'd make sure she was okay before I let her leave. She  may need to stay here even longer than normal just to be safe.

Getting on with it, the first step was for me to prick her with the  finger-stick to check her hemoglobin. She extended her soft delicate  hand to me and I tried to hold it gently even though I knew it was going  to pinch like a son of a bitch. I only had to squeeze three drops of  her blood directly into the blue copper sulfate to make sure she had  enough iron to make it sink. Yep, her blood was good to go.

Instead of wrapping the Band-Aid around the small gash on her finger, I  wanted to stick it in my mouth and suck it dry. That sure as fuck would  get me fired, I thought with a smile as I reluctantly taped up her  finger.

I had to slide my chair closer to her to tie the rubber band around her  lovely upper arm and make a tourniquet. That only put me closer to her  oh-so-perfect breasts that I wanted nothing more than to reach out and  touch. I sighed at my total lack of professionalism as I swabbed the  area around her vein with alcohol, probably a little longer than was  necessary, then it was show time.

I handed her the red stress ball and told her to start squeezing, and oh  and I had something else I'd really like to have her squeeze.

"Okay, are you ready?" I asked, trying not to look at her beautiful face  and get distracted again, or her chest, or legs, or where her skirt was  riding up. Yeah, I just needed to focus on the inside of her arm.

"Go ahead, I just don't want to watch while you do it," she said as she  turned her head to the side and started squeezing the squishy ball. Her  already fair skin had gone a shade paler.

"Alright, here we go. You're going to feel a sting but I'll try and make  it as quick and painless as possible," I told her. I jabbed the needle  in as gently as I could, but still made her flinch, then the worst was  over.

"Are you okay?" I asked after I taped the needle down.

"Yeah, that wasn't so bad," she said as she let out the breath she'd  been holding and finally turned her head to look up at me. Damn she was  beautiful.

"Good," I told her with a smile. "It'll probably take about fifteen  minutes to fill up the bag, then you'll need to eat and drink something  before you leave." I looked down to check on the progress in the bag.

"Oh shit!" I said covering my mouth before I could stop the outburst.  The other four people on the bus had stopped what they were doing to  turn around and look at me. I tried to think of a cover-up.

"Sorry," I said. "She just has really good veins," was all I could come up with. I was such an idiot.

My real surprise had been the color of her blood as it settled in the bag. It was almost black.