Chapter 1

I am sitting in a row of shameful chairs, waiting impatiently, for what could soon be my much deserved death. The place has the smell of an average middle class hospital, with a splash of death, mixed with a saturated aura of worthlessness. I guess you could say that I fit right in. I’m sitting here trying my best to focus on anything but what is to come. It is useless. Soon the needle will be inserted, and euphoria will slip further from reach, as I pass away to another dimension of thought.

This is the type of place where townies came and joked about as being their full time job. It is funny, but I never laughed when I realized that it is probably true. This facility gave junkies, and broke college kids like myself, the ability to make forty dollars for one hour of torturous sin. This is a plasma donation center. This is my body broken for you. This is a three hundred and fifty dollar bag of life saving essence, which I am going to trade for forty dollars. You can bet your ass I am.

That is, if I don’t pass out in the progress. My track record for successful plasma donations has not been their highest. Things would probably be fine if they would obtain my plasma, and allow me to leave, but there is one more step. After pumping a liter of plasma from your biggest vein, in the arm of your choice, you then must sit and wait as a half liter of saline is pushed back into your circulatory system. You can think of this as the glass shards in a menthol cigarette being sucked through your trachea. The only difference is by way of veins instead. I should be dead now.

The scariest moment we all face in a medical institution’s waiting room is the feeling of being next. Just the thought of having your last name read allowed to an audience of strangers should bring chills to your entire body. Everyone stops what they are doing for just one moment to look up and see who is brave enough to bear that name. Mathematically, you then begin to distinguish between the ones who came in before and the ones who came in after you. My time was soon, and I knew it. There were only seven or eight other people in the room with me.

This is about the time where I normally contemplate leaving. Playing chicken and darting across the road. Why did the chicken cross the road? I’ll tell you why. On the other side of the road, there is not a man or woman dressed in white waiting to spike my skin. Sometimes I would leave. Everyone else in the room, once again, would stop what they were doing, look up, but only this time they were confused. They didn’t hear another name called, so they watch as I pitifully make my way through the double glass doors. Of course, there was always the downside of leaving, because that night while my friends were all out to bars, parties and panties, I would be alone in my dorm room. It is funny how a health care unit has sole bearing upon my teenage rebellion.

“Carter!” The name rings out amongst the willed and broken.

At this point, I looked up to what seemed like a sea of faces. Everyone’s looking around them to see who stands up. Not one person moved. Many times this would happen. Usually it was someone in the bathroom preparing for a piss test, or occasionally it would be the addicted chain smoker past the double glass doors pretending not to notice his name being called. The institute took this factor into consideration when building the place. There is a large speaker right above the outside doors that plays the same elevator music and name calls that we hear from within.

“Carter!” The name rang out again, but only this time with that feeling of finality. Nurses who work joints like these have the best job in the world. This isn’t the type of place that you think of when you hear the term nurse. There is no passing meds, or fifteen minute checks. No cleaning up shit or bathing involved. To be honest, absolutely nothing could be involved if one were to not respond to their name being called, twice.

“Phillips!” The nurse plundered on. Immediately a woman two rows over, facing me stood up and walked to the desk. She probably was a townie, but I didn’t make that quick assumption because I was appalled by two huge bruises that inhabited both of her arms. Dark purple with light blue and black splotches of contused skin ran from her biceps down to the middle of her forearms. How could someone do that to themselves? Is a measly forty dollars worth the pain that inhabits her life when she leaves here? You can bet your ass it is.

The question should be how is this chicken going to get his pathetic ass out of the chair, without having everyone realize, it was “me,” again? God, I wish I knew.