Bagged
“I don’t think I can drink from someone yet,” I say. As weird as drinking blood from a bag sounds, I can’t imagine staring into someone’s eyes while I suck them up through a tube. “Sorry.”
Dr. Grange pats my hand. “Nothing to be sorry for. This is your journey. Don’t let anyone else tell you how it should be traveled.”
Dr. Grange excuses herself from the room in order to notify the nurse. I sit in the low-lit room listening to machines click on and off.
When the nurse next appears, she has a bag of blood on the tray.
“Dr. Grange says you’d prefer to begin with a blood bag?”
“Yes, please,” I say without hesitation.
The nurse lifts a side table from the arm of the bed and swings it out in front of me. Then she places the brown plastic tray with the single blood bag on it as if
