I’m taking my break on a regular Tuesday morning when another full vial of blood is placed on the staffroom table in front of me. When I turn, Cam is perched on the arm of one of the sofas, grinning back at me.
‘Don’t tell me your thyroid patient is back?’ I say, closing greedy fingers around the plastic tube.
Cam laughs. ‘Nah, I’ve got the trainees practising taking blood from each other.’ He straightens a twist in his lanyard before looking back at me with a cheeky little grin. ‘I’ve had three already.’
‘You’re incorrigible,’ I say, but it doesn’t stop me from popping off the top or from downing the whole thing. Cam just shrugs, making no move to leave. ‘Are you bribing me again?’
He throws up a hand in mock offence. ‘Firstly, that wasn’tbribery, it was encouragement.’
‘Agree to disagree.’
‘And secondly,’ he goes on, ignoring me, ‘I was just bringing you a gift.’
I snort a laugh. ‘Four whole millilitres of B negative.’
He shakes his head, the smile back on his face. ‘That wasn’t the gift. That was just an aperitif.’
Ok, now I’m intrigued. ‘Go on.’
‘We had a note on the system from the lab,’ he says, popping up off the sofa and rounding the table, pulling up a chair next to me. ‘At first it seemed like a classic lab error, maybe a storage failure. But when the tech looked more closely, they found there was something strange going on with the red blood cells. They referred it to George, and he did some further tests on it.’
George Kennedy is one of the men who fought with Cam in the First World War. Now he manages the lab that processes our samples. He weeds out anything suspicious, you know, just in case any mortals start poking around and asking too many questions.
‘But this one has stumped him,’ Cam says, reaching a hand up to scratch his head through his mess of curls. ‘He doesn’t remember ever seeing blood behave like this. The patient presented with vague symptoms: palpitations, fatigue, an occasional rash. Nothing to point in any obvious direction, but there’s definitely something off about it. Maybe an atypical anaemia? He’s asked us if we can repeat the sample and send it directly to him.’
I nod. I can’t help myself; I’m invested. ‘Ok, so the mystery is the gift?’
Cam grins at that. ‘No,’ he says. ‘The gift is who it is.’
He turns his phone screen so that I can read the patient info.
QUINN, Joe
It feels as if someone is squeezing my throat. ‘Is it him?’ I ask, trying to come off casual. ‘The guy from the vampire bar?’
‘Maybe,’ he says with a slow nod. ‘Same name, and the age is about right.’
‘And I saw him in the waiting area last week,’ I mutter to myself. I only remember that Cam has insanely good hearing when I see him smirk. ‘What?’
He shakes his head, feigning innocence. ‘Nothing.’
It’s obviously not nothing, but I’ll let him be. ‘Are you going to contact him?’
‘Thought you might like to do it,’ he says, eyes twinkling with mischief. ‘It’ll give you the chance to flirt with him again.’
I rear back. ‘I wasnotflirting with him.’
If I’m being really honest with myself, was I? Probably, yes.
Am I going to admit that to Cam? Absolutely not.
He considers me, one hand rubbing at the stubble on his chin. ‘He was flirting with you.’
Something flip-flops in my chest at the idea of it, but I school my expression into something cool and even.He’s human, I remind myself.And humans die.
‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ I scoff. ‘From what I hear, he’d flirt with a brick wall.’
Cam sits back in his chair, his thumb smoothing over his stubble on one side of his lip. ‘He didn’t flirt with me.’