Blood Type (Blood Type #1)(3)

“Good,” the administrator said. She nodded her head as the bag deflated. “Vitals all look good.”

Reyna breathed a sigh of relief.

The woman spoke to herself as she entered information into the computer system. “Temperature—97.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Acceptable. Pulse—72 beats per minute. Acceptable. Blood Pressure—102 over 65. Acceptable/Low.”

She turned away from her computer to face Reyna. “Family history?”

Reyna stilled her shaking hands. She needed to keep it together. She could talk about her parents. This was possible.

“My parents are, um…dead.” The words sounded hollow.

It had been thirteen years since they died in the car accident. Since she and her brothers had moved in with their uncle in the city. Since the world had gone to utter shit.

“Yes, but any diseases or chronic illnesses?” the woman asked. Her voice was flat. No compassion in the Visage hospital ward.

“Breast cancer on my mother’s side. That’s all I know,” she whispered.

    “Are you often ill?”

“No.”

“When was the last time you were admitted to the hospital?”

Reyna wracked her brain. She couldn’t even remember. “Probably when I was a baby.”

The woman gave her a searching look. “Any other treatments?”

“Nothing life-threatening. Just a cold. Local medical practitioners helped when we could afford it.” She stared the woman straight in the eye when she said it. No one could afford a hospital stay. This woman had to know it. She wasn’t going to act ashamed of her life.

The admin tapped out a few more notes and then withdrew a needle and a few small vials from a drawer. Reyna’s stomach dropped out, and the color drained from her body.

Reyna held her breath as the woman placed a tourniquet around her right arm, swabbed the crook of her elbow, and then without warning pricked the vein in her arm. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to calm her rapidly accelerating heartbeat. She suddenly felt nauseated, weak, and clammy. Fear pricked at the back of her neck.

She glanced down at her arm and gagged. Bright red blood flowed out of the vein and into the little tube. Pain throbbed in her elbow, but she couldn’t look past the blood. It made her stomach turn, and she had to physically look away until the administrator was finished.

After she removed the needle, the woman placed a Band-Aid over the hole and then gave her a cup to pee in.

“The doctor will be in with you shortly. Just leave the cup in the compartment in the restroom.” The woman pointed to a nearly invisible doorway to her right. “Come right back here once you’re through. The doctor will be with you soon.”

    “Thank you,” Reyna said hollowly.

At least the worst was over.

Reyna tried not to think about the blood loss or needles. She needed to think about eating right, sending money to her brothers, and finally living a real life again. It wasn’t as if this was permanent. She could get out at any time. She could work for a couple months as a blood donor and then quit if she wanted. Just enough to get her back on her feet…for her to find something else.

She left her sample in the restroom and then returned to wait for the doctor. At least the bed was more comfortable than the chairs in the waiting room. Honestly, it was more comfortable than everything else they had at home too.

When she had been younger—before the economic collapse and her parents’ deaths—she’d had a two-story house with a white picket fence, a green lawn, the whole nine yards. Then the accident happened, and she and her brothers had to say goodbye to their home and move in with their uncle in the city. All he was good for was drinking and gambling away their inheritance. He had been that way ever since their aunt had left him. Three years later, the economy crashed. He lost everything, and no one thought twice about him abandoning them when everything else fell to shit.

A knock at the door pulled her from her dark thoughts. The doctor strode inside with a clipboard. She was a tall wiry woman with black groomed hair held back in a ponytail and dark emotionless eyes. Like everyone else who worked there, she clearly didn’t think smiling was part of bedside manners.

    There was something about this woman that was…other.

Vampire.

The word slithered up in Reyna’s conscious and she recoiled away from the thought. It made no sense considering her current predicament, but she couldn’t help it. Deeply ingrained fear seemed to stick with her no matter her decision to work with them.

“Four hundred and ninety-two. Miss Reyna Carpenter. Five foot four inches. Brown eyes. Brown hair. Caucasian. O negative. Correct?”

“Yes,” she confirmed.

“Good. I have to make sure that you fit all the parameters.” She looked up at Reyna over the rim of her thick black-rimmed glasses. “You’re not pregnant?”

“Excuse me?”

“Is there any way you could be pregnant?” she repeated.

“I don’t think so.”

“There is either a chance or there isn’t.”

She thought back to the last month and cringed. “It’s possible, but not probable.”

The doctor sighed as if Reyna was inconveniencing her. “When you enrolled with Visage, you claimed not to be pregnant. We won’t take the risk of endangering a young life. I will order a pregnancy test since you’re not certain.”