Half-Turned: Claimed by Blood and Hunger

•IVY• My phone buzzes against the tile before I even open my eyes. Seven missed calls and all are from Nora. My stomach drops. Why the f*Ck would she give me second missed calls in the early hours of the day? I fumble for my phone, squinting my eyes at the screen while my head throbs hard enough to make my vision blur. That b*tch doesn’t call seven times unless something’s wrong. I’m on the bathroom floor, already fully dressed with my boots still on which is somehow the detail that scares me the most because the heck are my boots still on? I literally don’t remember putting them on. I don’t remember coming in here. And I definitely don’t remember falling asleep on the damn floor of my bathroom. Ugh. I push myself upright too fast that it makes my room tilt as black spots dance across my vision. “Okay,” I say out loud to no one but myself No. This s**t is not just okay. “Okay. Okay okay okay.” Stop. My hands are shaking so I look at them first. It’s a habit now so it’s not something I fret about. Three years of habit. There’s blood beneath my nails. It’s not a lot, but it’s just enough for the morning light to catch it when I turn my hand toward the window. It’s a dark red. Almost black. And packed beneath the edges like it’s been sitting there for a while. My breath catches in my throat at the realization. No… f*****g no! I know what dried blood looks like mostly because I handle it every day. I draw it for a living, I bag it, label it, and freaking feed it into machines that tell strangers what’s wrong with their bodies. This isn’t mine. Mine doesn’t dry like this, and mine definitely doesn’t smell like this. The copper smell is so toxic that it settles in the back of my nose. I can’t ignore it. I call Nora before my brain gets the chance to make this worse. “Oh my God, finally.” She says, sounding wrecked like she’s been up all night. “Where were you? I called like eleven times.” “I was asleep.” My voice comes out rough. “I’m sorry. My phone was on silent.” “You never put your phone on silent.” “I did last night.” There’s a pause that follows making me able to hear the diner behind her. But that’s not the problem, the problem is that she doesn’t believe me. And of course Nora doesn’t believe me. “You sound weird.” She states the fact. “Don’t you ever stop to think that maybe it’s because I just woke up?” I retort. “It’s ten in the morning babes.” “I had a late shift bro.” She goes silent again and this time I hear the clattering of plates somewhere behind her, and the sound of an annoying human laughing way too loudly for what the time is saying. She sighs. “Just… text me next time, please. You scare me when you disappear like that.” Disappear. That’s what I do now. I always disappear. “I will.” The lie slips out too easily from my mouth that it even shocks me, so I end the call before she can hear it in my voice. My back finds the side of the bathtub, and I stay there taking one breath at a time until my raggedy breath comes to a halt, or maybe preferably slows down. My heart eventually stops trying to beat its way into my throat. I force myself to the sink. I take the soap and lather some on my hands and turn up the tap and almost immediately hot water starts rushing out turning my knuckles pink. My beautiful babies. I palm my hands together until the blood disappears, but finding it hard because the smell seems to be so difficult and stubborn. The sharp smell of copper that refuses to leave the inside of my nose no matter how hard I scrub my hands, but regardless I stand there continuing to scrub because doing something feels better than doing nothing at all. Ugh. My coat lies crumpled beside the front door. I also don’t remember leaving it there either. Which is so great and not very fantastic. What else don’t I remember? I check the pockets out of habit making sure that at least I didn’t misplace the things I keep in there as well, andy comes in contact with my keys, gums, and my hospital badge. Then my fingers close their way around something that shouldn’t be there. A wallet. I freeze. What the f*ck? That’s not mine. I don’t have a freaking wallet with a shape like that the heck. I take it out and see the brown leather material, that’s soft around the edges from years of use. I’ve never seen it before. I open it carefully like moving too fast might do something that I’m not f*cking with right now. Driver’s license with the name Marcus Webb scribbled on it. His passport photo with a face with tired eyes that looks like he’s maybe in his mid-fifties. The kind of DMV photo that makes everyone look miserable. There’s an address across town. A photograph slips free from the underside of the wallet and falls to the floor. I pick it up, and it contains a woman, two kids, and birthday decorations scattered behind them. He’s smiling, should be someone’s father, I think. Someone’s husband and someone’s entire world. I stare at his face for a long time and still don’t seem to recognize him or remember him from a memory. I don’t know him and I’ve never seen him in my whole life. So then why is his wallet in my pocket? I should probably call someone. The thought comes immediately, simple and clean. I should definitely call security. Call the police, Nora, or in-fact anyone at this point. But instead what I do is slide the wallet back into my coat pocket. Slide my boots on properly and then walk outside like I have somewhere important to be. Mind you, I don’t. The thought that I know I’ve done this before lands inside my brain quietly. I don’t say it out loud. I don’t need to. The morning air hangs heavy over the city and it’s not because of it’s raining nor is it dry but more of the fact that everything looks damp enough to have forgotten what sunlight feels like. I don’t decide walking toward the hospital. But it looks like my feet have developed a mind of their own because before I know it they’ve taken me past two blocks already like they’re following the directions that nobody bothered giving me. Three blocks from my apartment, I reach the alley and my feet stop dead in their tracks. There’s a police tape, two Land Cruisers, and an ambulance with its back doors standing open. But there’s nobody running. And that right there is enough to tell me everything because paramedics only stop running when there’s nothing left to save, and no one else to retrieve. A body bag rests on the wet pavement. The sound of the zipper bag closing being enough to slice through the silence of an empty. And I just continue looking anyway. I stay outside the tape like I’m just another woman who stopped to see what happened because that’s all anyone else sees. But inside I’m legit screaming. One of the paramedics crouches beside the body to grab something from the floor. The moment he reaches for something I now know to be a phone, it slips right from his glove, slides across the wet concrete, and stops beside my boot. Before I can think better of it, I’m already bending down for the device. My fingers wrap around it. The screen lights up automatically and I silently say a prayer of grace due to the fact that it’s still working perfectly. On the Lock Screen, there’s a dead man’s face smiling back at me. His arm is looped around a woman. I know him. Not from the wallet or anything, but because of the hospital from two nights ago. The third floor and room 314., a patient that I drew blood from during the start of my shift. He talked to me the entire time and made a stupid joke about vampires while I searched for a vein on his body. He also called me “Doc” twice, and every single time I corrected him. I never left my apartment that night. And I very well remember locking my door tightly, I remember checking it twice the same way I’ve been doing lately. Sue me, I was just a scared rat. And that’s very valid. I hand the phone back to the paramedic without a word but just a look of pure confusion, and I hear him mutter a distracted thanks without looking at me. Across the street, a tall man with dark hair that’s gotten a little too long for him who’s also in hospital scrubs is leaning against the wall outside a closed coffee shop with his arms folded tightly and is watching the entire scene. He’s probably on a break. There’s an ER nearby as well, so it shouldn't be anything strange. I look away and don’t think much about him. Back in my apartment, I lock my door twice, and lean my back against it, breathing like I just ran a million-dollar marathon. I need to delete that picture. I don’t even remember taking it, but I’m guessing that some of the reflex on my thumb must’ve hit the screen before I handed the phone back, and now the waste of information is sitting on my camera roll like it’s an evidence I planted against myself. Please, I’m not ready to go to jail. I open my camera roll to find it and see that its no where to be found. My stomach tightens. What’s freaking happening ugh! I scroll up all the way through all the documents and come across a folder without any name, but just a blank gray square. One that I don’t f*cking remember making. I tap it open, and immediately every organ inside me goes cold. There’re six more photos with six different faces. I don’t recognize any of them, and none of them are people I remember getting in contact with. But somehow I know. Somehow I know it before I even finish looking. And somehow I know that they’re all dead.