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Prose
Giving it away
Mary went into the clinic with more than a little trepidation. It was her
friend Stella who was supposed to be here after all. Still, what are
friends for
if not to get you into all sorts of different trouble? Last time Stella
had got her into trouble it was on more familiar territory – a stitch up
with an ugly blind date. God he was horrible. Right now she’d rather
have been back on the date.
Stella had been doing it for years. Mary knew about it, but they never really talked about it, it was just something Stella did now and then. Mary hadn’t even really thought about why Stella did it, what made her want to do it in the first place. Mary didn’t really believe in charity, which was what this was after all, making a donation. She’d just about been talked into buying a red nose, but under protest. She couldn’t really think of when she’d actually given something away, for nothing.
Stella had phoned her last night sounding awful. She had a real stinker of a cold and cancelled their rendezvous at the wine bar. They’d gossiped a bit, mainly about the woman who managed the wine bar, then Stella had suddenly come out with it. She couldn’t donate with a cold, it wasn’t allowed. She was really upset, she’d never missed before, ever. She asked her to go in her place. At first Mary refused point blank, she got squeamish about plucking her eyebrows, never mind this. But Stella was so good at talking her round. She made it into a challenge. She knew Mary hated turning down a challenge.
The ‘clinic’ was actually set up for the day in the local sports centre. As she walked in Mary could see several people on trolley beds, tubes sticking out of their arms. She nearly fainted before she got to the registration desk. After the usual details they asked her if she knew her group. She didn’t of course, just vaguely remembered doing something about it at school – she’d got it mixed up with vitamins in her homework, said she was group ‘C’, an easy mistake to make. Then they pricked her finger and told her to sit down. Her finger hurt. She began to quake at the thought of the main event. If her finger hurt, how was her arm going to feel? She was right on the verge of doing a runner when they called her name.
The nurse told her to sit on the bed. ‘Is this your first time?, she asked. Mary made a short series of rapid nods. ‘Okay, you can sit up if you want to watch, lie down if you don’t.’ In a split second she was on her back. ‘Now, you’ll feel a bit of a sting, then we’ll be up and running.’ Mary wondered if the nurse had read her mind. The sting came, to Mary it felt more like something hot on her arm, but not burning. ‘Was that it?’ she asked the nurse, but there was no reply. She opened one eye, the one furthest away from her punctured arm. The nurse had gone. She opened the other eye and raised her head. The nurse was attending to someone else. She saw her punctured arm. There was the tube going down into a bag which was already filling up quite quickly. She stared at it fascinated, it didn’t seem like hers at all, and what a deep dark red colour, much deeper than it looks when you cut yourself. She carefully pulled herself up and sat up properly. A pint they said they’d take, how many do I have altogether? She dimly recalled the number eight from somewhere. Eight pints – it didn’t seem much, how many boyfriends had she had who could drink more than that in an hour? How do they get it back into someone, they must have to pump it in. Then the question that everyone wonders, who’s going to get mine? The nurse looked over at her, ‘Are you okay? ‘Yes, fine.’ Mary replied. ‘I’ll be over in a sec, you’re nearly done.’
A couple of minutes later she was sitting sipping at a cup of tea that she didn’t particularly want, but somehow felt obliged to drink. She looked down at her arm, now sporting a plaster on the inside of the elbow which she smoothed over partly to get rid of a crease and partly to check on how much it hurt. She couldn’t really believe she’d done it. She couldn’t wait to get outside and phone Stella, tell her how brave she’d been, what a doddle it was, and pretend she’d had a fit male nurse looking after her. When she got outside she felt differently. She’d just given a piece of herself for nothing for the first time in her life and she felt higher than when she’d had half a dozen Breezers on a Friday night. She didn’t even know who was going to get the stuff, but she felt amazing and amazed. Why hadn’t Stella told her about this before? She looked at her mobile for a second, then switched it off and half walked, half ran straight round to the house of her cold ridden friend.
Copyright Bare Nibs 2009