“It would be my pleasure.” He held his arm out to me.
There was no rush to get home despite the quickly cooling weather. The company was enough to keep me warm.
“What are you looking to do with this contraption anyway?”
“I have found someone with strange blood. I want to study it,” I tell him truthfully. “I was happy to have a willing participant.”
“I guess they must be willing, especially if you want to use this on them. Bless their soul,” he said sarcastically. “Do you want me to show you how to use the apparatus? Can’t have you torturing the poor soul.”
“Is this your way of asking to be my lab partner?” I grinned at him.
“I wouldn’t be opposed to helping, but you’re doing the writing.”
“Deal.”
“Will it hurt?”
“Possibly. There’s only one way to know. If you’re going to use this on people, it’s important to feel it,” Viktor explained.
“Do I get to stab you too?” I joked nervously, staring at the long, curved needle in his hands.
“As a reward, maybe I’ll let you.” He smirked, tying the tourniquet around my bicep.
“How kind of you.” I shifted in my seat at the kitchen table.
The blood transfusion apparatus was a tall, graduated cylinder with a flared base to keep it upright. Two long tubes were secured at the base with long, curved needles at their ends. For the extracting and movement of blood, hand pumps on the side were squeezed to create suction for siphoning blood from one person to the other. We would use this one way, since it was the easiest way for me to measure and collect the blood.
“Ready?” He peered at me from over the rims of his glasses, positioning the needle at the crook of my arm.
“Mm-hmm,” I mumbled, unable to look away.
He pushed the needle carefully into a vein. I was hyperaware of my veins pulsing against the tourniquet and the sharp pain entering my arm.
I flinched, squeezing Viktor’s knee as I watched it go in.
“You don’t need to watch.”
“I do. How else will I learn?”
“Fair.” He twisted a dial on the apparatus before squeezing the pump. The blood slinked through the foggy tube and filled the glass about five milliliters. He pressed his thumb on the puncture and removed the needle. “See? Simple.” He kept his finger on the wound before wiping it with a cloth.
“I was expecting something more from the contraption.” I laughed, looking down at his hand holding my arm. A wave of heat hit me suddenly, nausea rushing over me.
“Alina? You lookpale?—”
I rushed to the sink, throwing my head over to heave.
Viktor was already behind me, rolling up his sleeves quickly and gathering my hair at the back of my head so it did not mix with anything unsavory.
“This is why they tell patients not to look.” He tried to lighten the mood. “It’s just adrenaline.”
“Yeah,” I groaned. I could feel the heat subsiding, but the whole ordeal had caused me to work up a cold sweat. I hung over the sink and shivered as I waited to see if anything else would come up.
“How about we take a break, yeah?” He smoothed the stray hair from my face and peeked over my shoulder to check on me. I could feel his hand brush against my neck as he continued to move away any flyaway hairs.
I nodded, afraid of heaving again if I opened my mouth.
“How are you feeling?”Viktor checked the temperature of the cloth he had placed on my forehead.
