Chapter 1 - Part 1

Jonathan watched in horrified fascination as the blood drained from his body, flowing through a clear plastic tube and finally being deposited in a plastic bag hanging beside his bed. He’d spent the last ten minutes gazing at his blood in a sort of trance that alternated between feeling queasy and feeling oddly giddy, as if he was on the verge of laughter. It seemed an insane notion that he could simply sit and watch the very life drain from his body.

“Hey, Jon,” said a voice. On the next bed over his friend Adam had twisted his own tube into a few loops. “Check it out, the silly straw from hell.”

Jonathan rolled his eyes to cover the fact that his stomach had lurched sickeningly at the sight. Adams deep brown eyes narrowed in amusement at his friend’s discomfort.

“What’s wrong, Jon? Not having fun?” he said innocently, with the barest hint of a smile.

Jonathan felt he might throw up if he opened his mouth so instead he focussed his energy on looking about the room. Typical of a hospital, it was small and very well organised, managing to fit an amazing amount into such a small space. The walls were the same shade of turquoise as the massage-table ‘beds’ they lay on. A few small cabinets filled the remaining space, no doubt crammed full of equipment. The only hint that this was a room in which volunteers gave blood were a few pamphlets that lay scattered around and a motivational picture of a celebrity with his thumbs up. Never a fan, by now Jonathan’s feelings had developed into absolute loathing.

A girl stepped through the doorway and Jonathan immediately tried to arrange his features into something like calm and collected. Samantha was his other best friend and it’d been her idea to convince the nurse to move the blood bag from under the beds to beside them, under the pretence of being ‘interested’. The nurse, disarmed by the keenness of the charming - if a little bizarre - girl, had complied, not suspecting that Samantha’s real motives were simply to try and freak out her friends. Samantha had gone first, casually chatting away to the girl beside her as her blood bag filled up. Once filled, the nurse had disconnected her and led her away to an area with drinks and biscuits. The nurse then returned and sat down Adam and Jonathan, explaining the process as she hooked them into the system.

It was then that Jonathan discovered he didn’t much like blood.

“So, how’re we doing?” asked Samantha with a mischievous smile, moving to stand between the beds. Jonathan, a little taller than her five foot seven in height, found it quite disconcerting to have her towering over him, especially in his present state. She looked down on him and smirked at his ashen face, ready to pass a comment. Before she could, however, Adam answered.

“Better than that girl you were beside, that’s for sure,” he said with a chuckle.

“What do you mean?” said Samantha with a frown. Jonathan quietly let out a sigh of relief, glad she’d been distracted.

“You’re joking,” snorted Adam, “you mean to tell me you didn’t notice how much you scared her? She was already nervous and then you go and get the nurse to pull out your blood-bag and put it on display. She couldn’t take her eyes off it!”

He chuckled again. Samantha’s eyes widened and she had the grace to look abashed.

“Oh! I completely forgot about the bag, I just thought she was a little…odd. I…” her voice trailed off in shame.   

Jonathan, feeling quite sympathetic to the poor girl at the moment, didn’t join in Adam’s laughter. Just then the nurse bustled in. Obviously encouraged by the sound of laughter she said brightly “There now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?"

Adam became silent immediately, his eyes dropping to the floor, but Jonathan gave the nurse an weak smile before realising with a shock that the blood bags were full. After the nurse disconnected them Jonathan got unsteadily to his feet, whilst Samantha thanked the nurse again for letting them see the bags.

“No problem at all,” beamed the woman, “Glad to see students so interested in medicine. Maybe you’d consider nursing as a career?”

Samantha grinned. “Honestly, now that we’re close to leaving school everyone’s trying to get us to choose their career, it’s very confusing.”

“Well, we all have to take our shot at convincing you, dear. Now,” she said, noticing Jonathan’s pallor, “let’s get you some juice and biscuits, we need to replenish those fluids.”

As they all left the room Samantha dropped her voice so that only Adam and Jonathan could hear. “Baby.”