No wonder there was a program to trade saliva for blood. It was as good as liquid gold.
Luis read the whole page and then stared longingly at the ‘add to cart’ button. He could buy it to try, but then what? If it worked, a tiny tube like that would only last so long. It would be expensive to keep buying and keep treating himself.
He could afford it, probably, but it was still a lot of money. A lot of money for a small bit of comfort.
But.
There was another way to get vampire saliva.
That was really the thing. He could buy ‘enzymes’ that would help his treatment wounds, but if he let a vampire bite and drink from him directly, he’d get the task done and there’d be no wounds at all as Karim told it.
No needle, no lasting pain. It was a two-bird-one-stone solution. Luis was already giving his blood to vampires; this was just less steps.
Less needles.
His mother would be furious if she found out, but did she have to know? He’d moved out so he wouldn’t have to live by her rules anymore. He’d been driving Karim and Julien for a year, and his mom didn’t know about it. He could keep this a secret too.
The guilt itched, and he rubbed his hand over his face. He was too old to still feel like this. She shouldn’t still have this hold on him, shouldn’t still make him so afraid to make decisions in his own life.
What would it be like not to have to use a needle twice a month? To not have his arms ache and have the sickly, nausea sit in his stomach from having to remove his own blood.
Better? Worse?
Luis didn’t know, but the curiosity was overwhelming.
What if it was better? What if it was so much better, and he couldn’t go back to the way he was doing things now.
Could he lie to his mother forever?
##
A week later Luis’s red blood count came back on the edge of being too high, and he found himself finally looking the Blood Donor Program up online.
The first thing to come up was the government website. On it were a list of requirements to become a freelance donor.He scanned through them quickly, and then clicked over to the search bar for finding places near him looking for donors.
When Luis put in his zip code, a few health clinics and several of the bars they frequented came up.
Luis nixed the idea of going to a clinic immediately. A sterile environment full of healthcare equipment would be almost as bad as a hospital.
He started looking through the bars.
Each bar listed had a drop-down tab that showed a calendar of days they had open donor spots on. Most had Friday, Saturday, and Sunday fully booked.
If Luis wanted to do this anytime soon, then he’d have to go midweek.
He blew out a heavy breath. Was he going to do this? The website said it was easy to sign up. He just had to fill out the forms and submit a copy of bloodwork from within the last three months.
Luis had just recently gone for a checkup. His online medical portal had all of that.
Still, he hesitated. For days Luis kept the tab open on his phone thinking about it. In idle moments he’d stare at it, daring himself to book a date.
It was only after another Friday, a regular one where Luis just took them to the bar for drinks, that he realized why.
He was waiting for someone else to make the decision for him. He was putting it off, procrastinating to the deadline. Waiting forLater Luisto deal with it.
His mother had dictated so much of his life, and now, out on his own, he dragged his feet to make decisions. He was scared of fucking it all up, choosing wrong. At least when his mom made him do something, he didn’t have to feel bad thathe’dchosen wrong.
It was cowardly, what he was doing. He was an adult now; he needed to take the reins of his life.
