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Show 200 from the bottle into the tube which fed her vein. She stopped pumping her fist. She closed her eyes. They were both quiet. After a short time the man was no longer sure the woman was still awake. Then the man in white returned and again stood between them. "Well," he said triumphantly, "here it is." In his hands he held their blood. The bags seemed smaller and darker than when they went away. "You're such nice people," he said, "that I ran yours through right away, ahead of the others. I'm not supposed to do that." The woman opened and closed her eyes. "Thanks a lot," she said. "No problem, though I can't promise to do it for you every time." He hooked her bag of blood on the metal stand above her cot, in tandem with the bottle of saline, and again adjusted the plastic tubing. "By the way," he said, "you have excellent blood. Not like the thin stuff a lot of these people come in with." He twisted a plastic valve and it began to flow. It was hard to tell now whether the blood was red or blue as it made its slow way back down the tube, replacing saline, toward her arm. The woman stared at it fixedly as the man in white moved over to cot twenty-three, repeated the procedure on her companion, and left. The man on the cot breathed deeply. Then he said, "It won't be long now. It goes back in a lot faster than it comes out. I don't know why." "Then we're done?" asked the woman. |
