Donating blood can be a surreal experience at best, donating in in a renovated Bingo Hall filled with perky competent techs dressed in blood red and black (like giving blood to an assassin's guild) more so. But donating blood while reading Mira Grant's Deadline is a downright freaky experience, especially if you are eyeballs deep in the scene with Sean and Becks in the bowels of the CDC. The blood tests alone'll send a bit of a shiver down your spine but the flashing green and red lights by the blood bag could very well send you over the edge.
Zombies aside the day ran with its usual silliness. I couldn't find my blood donor card, I got given pop and cookies at the beginning and was juggling them and my book and all the new paperwork while the nice tech was telling me I shouldn't have food any where near her blood testing equipment. er-sorry, I never say no to free food. I stole the pen after the questionnaire and had to break line to give it back under the frown of a hospital auxiliary lady, forgot the name of the meds I'm taking for my stomach and had to call home on a nurse's cell phone, forgot that the arm I clutch with might not be the best arm to use, and got chased away from the coffee by the sternly pointing finger of another ferocious hospital auxiliary lady who made me sit down and wait for her to bring me a coffee. Fortunately I'm fine with being bossed around by old women (or women of any age for that matter) especially old women bringing me timbits--see free food comment.
The questions are hysterical: in the last six months have I had a job that involves handling moneys and their fluids? Monkeys? I suppose that since I'm reading a book that has questions like Have you recently come in contact with the Kellis-Amberlee infected, asking have you had sex for money or drugs in the last six months is pretty tame. But Monkey fluids? That's just a bit weird.
Apparently I have excellent hemoglobin. Er cool. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a pick up line, but hey, she was a blood tech so maybe...
Finally got seated in my easy chair while the cute tech who was to be mine for the next little while admired my tattoo (done way past the six month cut off time.) Warned her my arm might involuntarily jump when a piece of metal was stuck in it and warned her that my blood has a built in safety mechanism that makes it move very very slowly when it is being asked to leave the comfort of the body that created it. Then it was sit back, try to read a really thick book with one hand while squeezing a rubber double decker bus with the other and glancing down to watch the lights flash green, red, green, red, green red. Steady red. Huh. guess that means I'm done and not that I'm about to go into spontaneous amplification. I'm sure they frown on that. Of course, any zombie that can get past the sternly pointing finger of a ferocious hospital auxiliary lady is one very determined zombie indeed. Post-Rising security has nuthin on these women.
Finally it was sit at a table covered in crayons, colouring books, and oreo cookies, read, drink coffee and fight the urge to sneak out before I was supposed to. Easy to fightactually since it was pouring down rain. Then back home to blog, write, and read with two dogs under the amplification weight requirement at my feet.
Profile
fionapatton- fionapatton
Comments
(On another subject entirely, did Tanya tell you we cross paths at the Toronto train station a couple of weeks ago? It was the best surprised I'd had in a while.)
Of course a cat tried to knock the computer off her lap. Laps are for cats, and that is all.
Reading that while donating blood...sounds slightly terrifying.
I don't think I could have managed the hardcopy of Deadline with one hand - it's heavy, thick, and I think a little narrower than standard page sizes, which makes it harder to turn the pages. But I read it easily on the nookcolor with one hand, and the new nook model (Simple Touch, I think they're calling it) is REALLY light and easy to manage. None of the other goodies the nookcolor has, though, so we're not sure whether we'll add a third nook to our collection.