Storytime: "BAD BLOOD"

BAD BLOOD
by William Pauley III

The first time I met Ellie, it had been raining for a week straight.

She lived in the Eighth Block Tower, a derelict apartment building on the south side of town, where the drainage system was subpar, at best. As I stepped off the stairwell that led down from the L train, my feet were greeted by about half a foot of standing water. Had I known the southside couldn’t handle the rainfall, I would’ve spared my tennis shoes by making the two-block trek to the tower completely barefoot, but it was too late for that. Nothing could save them now. It took twice as long as it should’ve to get there, and the entire time all I could think about was how much of an inconvenience it all was.

Then I thought of my brother and immediately felt guilty.

I worked for a non-profit organization called CHANCE, which provided home healthcare access to lower class individuals at no cost whatsoever. It was an amazing program, and one that had a profound impact on me, as it extended my brother’s life by nearly a year. It was bittersweet, those last few months with him, and I thank the heavens every day that we had that time with one another. It meant everything to me. Before his illness, we lived separate lives and only caught up with one another on major holidays. Nothing personal, it was just life. I went to college and he joined a band, we were just on different paths. We became so estranged, unfortunately, that once he got the news that he was sick, he didn’t even bother to tell me. I don’t think it ever crossed his mind. I found out through Instabook, a crummy social media site that everyone had, but no one actually enjoyed using. Once I heard the news, I made a point to see him every day. I offered to help in any way I could, but he was already given healthcare access through CHANCE and because of that, he didn’t need my help. In that last year of his life, I really got to know my brother. He was an amazing human and I miss him more with every passing day.

After the funeral, I reached out to CHANCE, asking if I could volunteer my time in some way. I had a nursing degree and worked full-time as a registered nurse at a hospital uptown. I only had one day off a week, on average, so I didn’t have much time to spare, but I just couldn’t get myself to wind down and relax on those days knowing I could be out in the world, making a difference in people’s lives, people who otherwise would have never been given the opportunity to receive treatment.

Now that isn’t to say that there weren’t drawbacks, because there were many. It was tough work, and often thankless. Many of the individuals assigned to me needed more than just medical treatment for physical ailments. They needed psychological help too, some more so than others, but that was beyond my area of expertise. It wasn’t uncommon to have a day where I was verbally or physically abused by patients. It actually happened often enough that it started having an effect on my real job at the hospital. But no matter how bad it got, I still put in time for CHANCE patients every week. Thinking of my brother, there was never another option for me.

That is until I met Ellie.

No one hurt me like Ellie.

She was a patient assigned to me through the CHANCE program, and one I initially perceived to be an easy case, as it required nothing more than a single shot in the arm, once a week. I thought the difficult part would be the awkward twenty minutes or so of waiting around to monitor the patient, to ensure she didn’t have any negative reactions to the medication, but boy was I ever wrong. In hindsight, I should’ve known to run after that first meeting with her, but at the time I had no idea the weirdness would escalate to a level of actual danger.

By the time I was standing in front of her apartment door, I was drenched head to toe, and making quite a mess in the communal hallway. She took one quick look at me, then shut the door right in my face, before I could even introduce myself.

“You’re the nurse from the CHANCE program?” she asked, from behind the door. I told her I was, then apologized for my appearance.

“I got caught in the rain,” I said. “Do you think I could dry myself off in your bathroom? I’m sorry, I know that’s not professional of me, but I’m absolutely drenched.”

She didn’t respond, so I asked again. Still nothing. I pushed my ear to the door, curious if I could hear her rummaging about on the other side, but the only thing I heard was a low, resonant hum coming from the door itself. Then, all at once, the door was thrown open. I nearly lost my balance and fell inside. She screamed.

“Not my new carpet!”

Once she realized her carpet was safe, she sighed in relief, then pushed a short stack of warm linen against my chest. Before I even had a chance to see what it was she’d just handed me, she once again shut the door in my face. Standing behind it, she asked if I’d change out of my wet clothes before entering her apartment.

“What, right here in the hallway?” I laughed, looking around to see if anyone was lurking. “And into what? Unfortunately, I don’t have a change of clothes.”

“I just handed you a towel and a robe,” she yelled. “The carpet was installed just yesterday. It took me a full year of pleading with my landlord before he finally approved the purchase. We don’t get luxuries like this around here that often. I’m protecting this carpet with my life.”

I laughed and said, “fair enough,” then stripped down to my undergarments, right there in the hallway. Thankfully, no one was around to see anything. I folded the robe over my body and tied it in place, then wrapped my hair up in the towel. Once I was drip-free, I gathered my belongings and stepped inside.

I must admit, I was surprised to see Ellie’s Eighth Block apartment was so…normal. From all I’d heard about the place over the years, I certainly wasn’t expecting decent furniture, clean countertops, and an overall cozy flat. It wasn’t much, but it was hardly the shithole everyone made it out to be. I could live here, I thought. The rent is probably a fourth of what I pay now, and look at that view…

“This place is cute,” I said, still taking it all in.

“You mean it’s not what you were expecting, right?” she asked, then laughed. Her laugh was odd, and it caught me off guard. It didn’t match her voice at all. It was deep and throaty, like something that would’ve rumbled out of the swollen belly of a bullfrog. That’s when I looked at her, I mean really looked at her. She was short and plump, and wore it well. Her clothes were sort of plain, but clean and nice, and her hair just seemed to go on forever, like there was no end to it. Her face was caked in makeup and wasn’t to my particular taste, but I’m sure she turned a head or two whenever she went out.

“Right,” I agreed, feeling awkward for saying it. I felt compelled to elaborate, hoping she wouldn’t be offended. “People say awful things about this place, as I’m sure you’re well aware. It’s my first time here, and it seems…nice. Well, your apartment is nice, at least. It’s certainly changed my view of Eighth Block.”

“No, they’re absolutely right. Eighth Block is fucking insane,” she said, and we both laughed, though hearing her thorny chuckle again had me clam up almost immediately. “I might be the only sane one living here. I don’t really talk to any of my neighbors, but they all seem out of their gourds.”

There was an awkward silence, then suddenly I remembered what I was there to do in the first place.

“Your shot,” I said, the instant it popped back into my brain. I fumbled with the ball of clothes in my arm, trying to get to my purse, where I kept my little pack of supplies. “There’s nothing to it, just a simple in-and-out, but I will have to monitor you for twenty minutes afterwards, just to make sure all is well.”

“Sounds good,” she said. “Oh, and you can put your clothes in the bathroom for the time being. Maybe as you’re monitoring me, you can dry them off with the hair dryer? I don’t have a washer or dryer. Sorry. I use the laundromat across the street.”

“No worries. The hair dryer should be fine. Really, I’d just like to dry my shoes. The clothes won’t make it back to the train dry, even if I left here in a fresh outfit.”

“Well, the bathroom is right down the hall, you can’t miss it,” she said, then flashed a smile at me. I returned the gesture, tossed the ball of wadded clothes into the sink, then came back to give her the shot. When I returned, Ellie was tugging on her earlobes.

“Everything okay?” I asked, not really thinking anything of it. Lots of patients get nervous before receiving a shot. But then I noticed she was spaced out, completely gone. She wasn’t even aware that I had come back into the room.

“Ellie?” I asked, leaning over slightly, directly into her line of sight. “You okay?”

She turned and smiled, though she still had a worried look about her. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just thought I heard something.”

I nodded, then prepared the syringe. “Are you ready for your shot now?”

Once again, she tugged at her earlobes. “I’m ready,” she said.

Her eyes clouded over. She seemed off in some strange space again. I rolled up her sleeve, sanitized a small section of skin near her shoulder, then pushed the needle inside. Push and pull. And that was that. I held a cotton ball over the injection spot to soak up any blood that may have seeped outside, then covered it with a band-aid. Afterwards, I disposed of the needle in a portable hazmat container I carried in my purse, to be properly disposed of once I got back to the hospital. Then I pulled off my latex gloves and tossed them in the trash.

“Not so bad, right?” I asked, but again, she acted as if she couldn’t hear me. She dug her fingers into her ears and twisted them in place, as if she was trying to bore a hole for them to fit snugly inside.

“Ellie? You’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”

Still nothing, but her eyes squinted and her body leaned forward, as if she was about to pounce. I tried to find whatever it was she was staring at, but I couldn’t see it.

“There you are, you bastard,” she said, finally pulling her fingers from her ears. Her lips were trembling. She stood up, walked into her kitchen, then returned seconds later with a fly swatter in hand. “You came into the wrong apartment, my friend.”

She walked through the living room and over to the windowsill, raising the flyswatter high above her head, as if she meant to not only kill, but to obliterate. Whatever was crawling there, its guts were splattered against the glass a second later. “Gotcha, motherfucker,” she said, under her breath. She seemed to hate insects even more than I did. Personally, I’d never seen anyone kill something with such rage flowing through them. It was alarming, even if it was just a measly little insect.

Once the bug was no more, Ellie ran to the kitchen and dug through her cabinets. She returned half a minute later with latex gloves over her hands, a roll of paper towels, and a bucket full of cleaning solvents. For the next six or seven minutes, she scrubbed every inch of that window until it looked almost totally invisible. A bit overkill, I thought, but it was none of my business. I started to walk down the hall, back into the bathroom, but something she said stopped me from leaving the room.

“I hate when it rains. That’s when the bugs like to come inside,” she said.

“Pardon me?” I asked, even though I heard her perfectly. I just wasn’t sure how to respond.

“I can hear them, you know?” she said, spraying yet another coat of sanitizer over the glass. “The bugs. I can hear them speaking. Want to know what they say?”

That was it. I was spooked. I wanted to leave the apartment right that second. In the matter of only fifteen minutes, Ellie went from being my most normal patient to my most bizarre patient. I didn’t want to stick around any longer than I had to.

“Um, not really,” I said, then quickly changed the subject. “If it’s okay with you, I think I’ll work on drying my clothes now.”

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” she asked, sounding genuinely disheartened. “It’s just my OCD. Obsessive compulsive disorder. I have to clean things like twenty times. It’s exhausting, but that’s my life. I can’t even leave my apartment without a pair of latex gloves.”

She really thought it was the cleaning that spooked me?

“No, I don’t think that at all,” I said, saying anything I thought she’d want to hear. “Many of my patients have OCD. I’m used to it.”

She smiled, then continued scrubbing. “I think I just have bad blood or something. If only there was a way I could exchange this bad blood for some new blood, then maybe I could get better, you know? Be normal, like you.”

My heart was racing. What the hell did she mean by that? Exchange her blood? Normal, like me?! None of that was okay with me. I needed to get the fuck out of there, fast.

“Oh, the hairdryer is under the sink,” she said, and I took that as my invitation to leave the room. I nodded and damn near ran down that hallway, straight into the bathroom.

I decided to skip out on drying my shoes, that way I could leave at the exact second the monitoring session ended. I wrung the excess water from my clothing as best I could, then quickly threw them over my body. I carried my socks and shoes in my hands so that I wouldn’t chance spotting her new carpet. I could only imagine how upset she’d be over that.

The more I thought about her saying she had bad blood, the more it disturbed me. I tried to put it out of my mind, but it proved to be impossible. I took a deep breath to calm my nerves, but it did nothing for me at all. I made my way back into the living room. It was time to go home. It would be the only way to properly settle my nerves.

“Alrighty, well, time’s up. It was really nice meeting you, Ellie,” I said, making my way over to the front door. My hands were shaking so bad, I could hardly get a grip on the doorknob.

“No, no, no!” Ellie screamed, then came charging straight at me. I nearly jabbed her chin with the ball of my hand, but as my arm stiffened, I realized she wasn’t barreling towards me, but towards the door. She threw her back against it and shot some crazed smile at me. She was sweating under the thick coat of makeup and it was pushing through the surface. Seeing her painted face up close disturbed me even more. Nothing about her look was real. Her eyebrows, the thickness of her lips, even her eyelashes—they were all fake, painted or glued on.

Who was this person? And why the fuck would CHANCE send me here?

“What are you doing?” I asked, trying to remain calm, but my heart was fluttering in pure panic. She held up her hand to silence me, then proceeded to flip the light switch on and off repeatedly for the next thirty seconds. The rapid blinking of the overhead light actually started to piss me off. Was this bitch fucking with me right now?

After the light flashed a total of twenty-two times, she finally stopped and stepped away from the door.

“Okay, you can go now,” she said, dabbing the sweat from her forehead with the sleeve of her shirt. She was smiling again, as if everything she was doing was fucking normal.

“What the hell was that for?” I asked, letting a bit of attitude slip through. She didn’t pick up on it.

“So your heart doesn’t explode, silly,” she said, still flashing that fake smile of hers. I started to respond, but something caused Ellie to turn around and creep back through her apartment. She tugged at her ears. Not this shit again, I thought, then immediately slipped through the front door, determined to never step foot inside that building ever again.

---

Two days later, I met the love of my life, Tessa.

Well, I suppose I didn’t actually “meet” her then, at least not in person, but that’s when she reached out to me online. She said she was a friend of my brother’s, that they shared the same cancer doctor and bonded over their battle with that awful disease. She mentioned they fell out of touch at some point, and that she had just come to hear of his passing—in the same way I heard of his illness, through Instabook. She offered her condolences, which I thought was sweet of her.

Then she asked about me. She asked if I was a doctor, because of the scrubs I was wearing in my profile picture. I told her what I did for a living, and felt like the biggest loser on earth, because I didn’t have anything else to talk about. My entire life was work, work, work. So, I took the heat off me and put it on her. I asked what she did for a living. She said she worked for a major telecommunications company, online customer support, remotely, all from the comfort of her home. To me it sounded like a dream job. If I knew I could get paid to sit around in my pajamas all day, I would’ve skipped nursing school altogether.

“Yeah, but you get to help people, like really help people,” she typed. We were chatting through the Instabook chatbox. “How rewarding that must be!”

“It can be, sure,” I typed back. “But in all honesty, it’s mostly just grueling, and the amount of hours we work a week should be illegal. It’s too much. It’s become all I am.”

“If all you are is a miracle worker, that’s not so bad, right?”

“That’s kind of you to say, Tessa, but I assure you, I’m no miracle worker,” I typed.

“I wouldn’t still be here without people like you, that’s for sure,” she responded.

My heart ached as I read it. I pulled up her profile picture and stared at it for at least a minute, studying the contours of her face—her cute little button nose, big blue eyes, perfect, pouty lips…

“Maybe you’re the miracle,” I typed, then hit send before I had a chance to rethink it. Maybe it was the glass of wine before bed that made me say it, or just the fact that I was stressed and completely out of my mind, whatever it was, I said it, it was out in the open, and I barely knew her. I immediately felt embarrassed and pinned my laptop shut, calling it a night.

---

The next morning I avoided looking at my phone for a full hour, dreading Tessa’s reaction to my shameful attempt at hitting on her. She offered me her condolences and I responded with some drunken frat guy’s worst pick up line. That morning, I really fucking hated myself. Two cups of coffee later and I finally worked up the courage to check my messages.

I only had one. From Tessa, of course.

“Does that mean you’re gonna come and work me?”

A shudder of heat ran through my entire body as I read it. I didn’t know what to do. I found her sweet and sexy, definitely my type, however the entire situation was weird. She was my brother’s friend, and, most importantly, I didn’t really know her at all. I thought it best to take a step back, so I tossed a bucket of ice on our little fire.

“Hey, sorry about last night,” I typed. “I was out of line. It had been a long day…a long week, in all honesty, and I had a glass of wine…not to make excuses, but I really just wasn’t at my best. I hope you can forgive my forwardness. I really do think you’re pretty great, but let’s get to know each other first, okay? Hope we talk soon.”

I must have read it twenty times over before I hit send. I wanted the message to be both an apology and an invitation to become friends, while also communicating that I was open to things getting more serious down the line. I didn’t want her to feel ‘friend-zoned,’ but I also didn’t feel comfortable typing out sex fantasies with someone I barely knew. I felt like an asshole, because I was the one who started it, but that was just how I felt. I mean, how I really felt.

I sent the message and buried my phone in my pocket, trying my best to put it in the back of my mind as I worked through my shift. During my lunch break, halfway through my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I checked to see if she’d responded.

She had.

“I was just about to send you this exact message. I too had a couple glasses of wine (okay, maybe three—who am I kidding?) and when I woke up this morning, I was mortified by what I’d said. Look, I know we don’t know each other well, but I like you. I would love to get to know you. So, I agree. Let’s focus on that. Let’s start with your week. What made it so stressful? If you don’t mind me asking, that is.”

I think I just have bad blood or something. If only there was a way I could exchange this bad blood for some new blood, then maybe I could get better, you know? Be normal, like you. Immediately Ellie’s words played in a loop inside my head. I think I just have bad blood…bad blood…BAD BLOOD.

I started typing.

“Well, work was stressful, as usual, but oddly the main source of my stress in the last week came from something that happened outside of work. Well, sort of. See, I do volunteer work on the side, providing services for lower income folks with healthcare needs, and I just met my newest patient. She’s quite a handful, to be completely honest. I went to her apartment to administer her weekly meds, and she did some things that really creeped me out. I can’t get her out of my head. I haven’t told the charity that I’m not going back just yet, but I’m seriously considering it. I don’t think I could ever be in a room with that woman again. Just the thought of her makes my skin crawl.”

A few seconds later, Tessa responded.

“Oh, wow. Well, that’s no good. What creeped you out?”

As much as I didn’t want to do it, I rewound the memory in my head and played it out in full, analyzing it scene-by-scene. The makeup, the talking insects, the flickering of the lights, the bad blood…I told Tessa everything that happened inside that Eighth Block apartment, and as I typed it up, I thought perhaps I was just overreacting. Was it really as terrifying as I was making it out to be? The more I thought about it, the less crazy it all seemed.

“I guess I can see how that stressed you out,” she typed. “But in all honesty, she just seems like she’s suffering, just like the rest of us. I think she could use a friend. It doesn’t sound like she gets out much.”

I wanted to crawl inside a hole somewhere and rot. Tessa was such a good person, and I was just…an asshole, clearly. I didn’t deserve her.

“Maybe you’re right,” I responded. “I think this job has hardened me. I used to be more empathetic, but now I just feel guarded and suspicious of others. I’ve just seen so much over the years. I’m jaded. My eyes are clouded.”

“I understand completely,” she typed.

I sat there with my thoughts for a moment. She was right. I was overreacting. Ellie just needed help, and I was the one who volunteered to be that help. It would be wrong to deny her that. After all, it was just a shot. Once a week. Twenty minutes. In and out.

I finished the last of my sandwich and said goodbye to Tessa.

Four days later, I returned to the Eighth Block Tower.

---

It was still raining when I arrived.

Once the train made it out to the southside, I took notice of the rising floodwater as it rolled over the city streets. The people wading through it hardly seemed phased. They were still running errands, ordering takeout, and some were even walking their dogs (swimming their dogs?). The water was easily a foot higher than it was last week, and was creeping into the lower levels of every surrounding building. I wasn’t looking forward to stomping my way through that mess for the next two blocks, just to get to the Eighth Block Tower, however I was pleased that I actually came prepared for it that time.

I wore tight leggings and a pair of sandals that wrapped around my feet and ankles. It would still be a cold, uncomfortable walk, but at least my Nikes wouldn’t be ruined. I also packed a backpack full of towels and dry clothes to change into once I got there, and transferred the necessities in my purse to a smaller one, one that I could strap across my body, but didn't hang so low it dragged through the collected rainwater.

When I finally made it to Ellie’s apartment, I knocked on the door, but she didn’t answer. After all I’d gone through to get there, I refused to believe she wasn’t home. I kept beating on the door and even shouted her name a few times, but still no response. What luck, huh? She probably only left her apartment once a month, and I just happened to be there at that very moment. I was so annoyed that I wasn’t sure if my body was trembling due to hypothermia or just because I was so damn angry. I couldn’t even leave, because I’d feel an overwhelming amount of guilt if I did. I had her medication. Without me, she’d have no choice but to go without it. I couldn’t do it, so instead, I just stood there and stewed.

I took a moment to steady my breath, trying to get a grip on my anger. Everything is fine. She won’t be gone for long. Could be back any minute now…

As much as I tried concentrating on positive thoughts, it just wasn’t working out for me. All I could think about was how numb my legs were from wading through that disgusting, freezing cold floodwater for the last twenty minutes. I could feel it running down my legs and collecting into a pool at my feet, and with every drip, I got angrier and angrier.

Drip, drip, drip…

I threw myself against the door in pure rage. I beat it senseless. I screamed her name over and over again, each time a little louder than the time before. I didn’t care about disturbing the other residents. I didn’t care if I looked insane. I just wanted out of those goddamn wet clothes, and most of all, I wanted to get back to my warm, cozy uptown apartment, where the streets were clear and the residents had the courtesy to keep their insanity to themselves.

I beat on that door until the handle literally shook loose and fell to the floor.

My heart raced. I wasn’t sure what to do.

The professional thing to do would’ve been to stand there and wait for Ellie to return to her apartment, but I kept going over all possible scenarios inside my head, and I couldn’t get past the possibility that Ellie might’ve actually been home, just unable to hear the door for whatever reason. Maybe she took a little cat nap and was a heavy sleeper? I tried to think of what would happen if Ellie really was gone, and she came back, just in time to catch me creeping around inside her apartment. Would she call the police? Would she call CHANCE? Was my professional reputation on the line? For some reason—probably the wet clothes and numb legs, not going to lie—none of that really concerned me. If I stood out in that hallway for half an hour, an hour, two hours only to find that Ellie was home the entire time, I probably would’ve strangled her on the spot. Thinking of her health, I dried myself off, took off my shoes, and pushed the door open.

It was dark inside her apartment, except for the gray midday light seeping in through the window of her living room. Right away, a pleasant aroma greeted me. She must’ve been burning a candle somewhere in one of the back rooms, because I could see the kitchen, dining room, and living room from where I was standing, just inside the front door, and I couldn’t detect the source. I stepped carefully through the hallway, not really expecting danger, but not ruling it out either. About halfway down, I could see several flickering flames disrupting the natural dark of the windowless bathroom. They were somewhat obscured by the thin, plastic shower curtain that hung over the tub, but I could see them enough to tell that they were tea light candles. Ellie had lined the entire outside of the tub with them. There must’ve been ten flames dancing in total.

“Ellie?” I said, just a hair above my breath, hoping I wouldn’t startle her. I stood at the doorway, waiting for an answer. “It’s time for your appointment.”

No response.

I stepped inside to get a better look. I wasn’t sure why she’d bother to light candles or close the shower curtain if she wasn’t inside the tub herself, taking a bath, but I’d learned long ago that trying to understand the thought processes of my patients would only serve in sending me to the madhouse myself. I suppose I could’ve thrown open the curtain to get an immediate answer, but I was trying to be respectful, and to avoid any unnecessary embarrassment for both Ellie and myself, so instead I just looked into the tub through the frosted curtain itself, just to see what I could see.

Ellie was inside the tub, or at least, someone was. I could make out the dark outline of an arm, shoulders, and head, but the person wasn’t moving.

As I stepped closer, my feet were greeted by a pool of cool liquid that had collected on the floor, just outside the tub.

“Ellie? Are you okay?” I asked, praying for a response, but still not getting one. “You’re making a mess in here. That doesn’t seem like you.” It was so dark, I could hardly see a thing. I took out my phone and toggled the flashlight feature. The room immediately became bathed in a harsh, cold blue light, revealing an absolute horror show.

The pool of cool liquid at my feet wasn’t the bathwater I’d expected it to be. It was dark and red. Blood. Lots of it. It was dripping from the edge of the tub and shower curtain. My hands grew cold at the sight of it. Immediately, I threw open the curtain, and nearly vomited from seeing what was on the other side.

It was Ellie. She was fully dressed and lying inside the otherwise empty tub, totally unconscious. Her face was as dolled up as ever, but now spattered in blood. She was cradling a tubby orange and white cat that was just lying there, unmoving. Both were covered in blood. It looked like a crime scene, something only ever seen in movies. Even in the hospitals, it never looked quite like that, at least in the areas I worked. The more I examined their bodies, the stranger it got, too. There were several plastic tubes that had been pushed through the skin of the cat, in seemingly random places, and they were transporting blood out of the animal. I traced the tubes to their destination, and to my horror, they all seemed to lead straight into Ellie.

I think I just have bad blood or something. If only there was a way I could exchange this bad blood for some new blood, then maybe I could get better, you know? Be normal, like you.

Ellie’s words echoed inside my head. She’d done it. She really tried to replace her blood with animal blood. Holy shit. Was she dead? Had she bled to death?

I called the police.

“911. What is your emergency?” the operator said.

I struggled at first, not knowing what to say. It was all so insane; I just couldn’t find the words to describe it. “Um…there’s been a suicide. I think it was an accident.”

“I’ll send someone out immediately,” the operator said. “What’s the address?”

My mind went blank. “Shit. I don’t remember, but she’s in the Eighth Block Tower. Surely you’ve heard of it.”

The call immediately went silent.

“Hello?” I said, but the call had been disconnected. Perfect, I thought. I can’t even get good cell reception here. I looked at my phone to check the service bars, but they were full. It shouldn’t have dropped the call.

I called back, but that time no one answered. How was no one answering, it’s fucking 911! After about ten rings, a prerecorded message played on the line: “I’m sorry, but the party you called has blocked your number. Please hang up and consider other options.”

Blocked?! Other options? Was this a joke?

I hung up and dialed again, but got the same message.

Eighth Block. Did the operator really block my number after I reported a death at the Eighth Block Tower? That had to be it. I couldn’t come up with another explanation for it.

Whatever it was, I had no choice but to consider other options, but what other options were there? In all my panic, I couldn’t think clearly, but a logical first step seemed to be taking pictures of the scene, so perhaps I could then go to the police station myself and prove that it wasn’t just some prank call.

As I was taking pictures with my phone, I noticed a couple details I hadn’t upon first inspection. First, there was deep scarring on both of Ellie’s arms, as if she’d made a habit of cutting herself again and again over the years. There were so many that there were newer scars running over older scars. How is this possible? I thought. I saw her arms the day I injected her with her first shot, and these scars weren’t there. I was positive about that. I would’ve noticed. Then I looked at her face—or at least the illusion of her face, as her true self was buried behind a thick layer of foundation, eye shadow, and blush—and that’s when the thought occurred to me that perhaps she had covered her entire body with makeup, just to hide her scars from me. Knowing that Ellie was an obsessive-compulsive person who sought total perfection in even the smallest details, I didn’t think it was a stretch to assume she’d go to great lengths to cover her every imperfection, or at least the ones that could be hidden under makeup.

Another thing I noticed was that there was a fair amount of blood leaking out the right side of Ellie’s mouth, and it didn’t make sense to me that it would’ve been her blood. I just couldn’t think of a scenario where it would’ve been hers. It had me assuming that at some point, she had sucked the blood directly from that poor animal.

Suddenly my legs felt weak and I had to sit for a moment. It was just too much to take in all at once. I sat down on the lid of the toilet to think of what I should do next, and it was right about that time that Ellie woke up.

She gasped and shot up into a sitting position, staring off into nothing, in some hazy trance. My heart dropped, but I didn’t move a single muscle, despite having been scared to within an inch of my life. I just locked up and nearly passed out, like one of those fainting goats. Once Ellie finally snapped out of her trance, she looked over at me and instantly began to weep.

“I’m so embarrassed,” she said, raising her arm to block my view of her with the shower curtain. “How long have you been here?”

I pushed the curtain open again.

“What the fuck is going on here, Ellie?” I asked, ignoring her question completely. “Whose cat is that? Is it yours?”

She just shook her head, instead of answering with words. She was staring off into nothing again, but now she was breathing heavily, almost to the point of hyperventilating. The tears cut through her makeup and dripped down into the tub. Once I realized she wasn’t going to give me any answers, I broke the silence.

“Look, I know you need help, but I can’t be the one to help you anymore. This is too much. You need to see a counselor, psychiatrist, something.” I continued to watch her as she stared into the empty space between herself and the faucet. I had so much to say, but I wasn’t sure if it was for her benefit or my own. I said it all anyway. “I know you can hear me, Ellie. I’m not okay with this. I’ve been more than accommodating. I’ve spent hours on the train for you, waded through knee-high water, and even pretended to be comfortable when you were spouting the most insane shit from your mouth. I even remained calm when you slammed your body against the door, preventing me from leaving your apartment. In all honesty, I shouldn’t have come back here. I don’t know what I was thinking. I try to be a good person, but there’s a line that I just can’t cross, and this is it. This is the line, Ellie. I’m calling CHANCE first thing on Monday morning and canceling our arrangement here.”

Out of everything I said, only that last line managed to get a reaction out of her. She turned her head and furrowed her brow. “You better not, bitch,” she said, almost sounding possessed.

“Excuse me? What did you just call me?” I said, standing up, feeling the adrenaline racing through me.

“How will I get my medicine if you report me, huh? I can’t afford a doctor! I’m not some rich bitch like you!”

“I’m hardly rich, Ellie. Honestly, I make just enough to get by, not that it’s any of your business. I don’t even get paid for coming out here and doing this for you. I just do it to help people.”

“You don’t care about people! You only care about yourself!” she shouted, then pushed herself into a standing position, still inside the tub. The dead cat rolled off her lap and fell right at my feet. It took everything in me to keep my cool after that. I managed well enough, that is until she uttered her next words. “What would your brother think?”

A shudder of pure terror ripped through me. What would my brother think? How did she know anything about my brother? I lost it. I began shouting into her face.

“What the fuck do you know about my brother?”

She just laughed, which made me even more upset. I grabbed her by the collar of her shirt and forced her body forward. I leaned into her, looking deep into those fake bullshit eyes of hers, caked in layers of mascara and eyeliner, and asked her once again what she knew about my brother.

“You can find anything on Instabook,” she said, finally. She was still smiling, as if pissing me off gave her a great amount of pleasure. I pushed her away.

“I’m serious, Ellie. You need help. I’m not coming back.”

I started to turn away, but once again, Ellie said something that cut straight through the nerve. I turned around.

“What did you just say?” I asked, even though I heard her clearly the first time, I just couldn’t believe it. She repeated herself.

“If you report me and I’m cut off from my medication, I’m gonna kill your little bitch of a girlfriend. Tessa, is it?”

This horrified me. Not because I thought she’d actually go through with it, but because there was no public record of me having anything to do with Tessa. We’d only been talking for a few days at that point, and all in private messages. There were no public comments, pictures, anything. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if we’d exchanged friend requests at that point. It was more than just a threat. She was making it known that she had access to my private life.

“How could you possibly know anything about her?” My voice quivered as I said it. I’d always thought of Ellie as a helpless individual, and one I pitied greatly, but now I saw her in a totally new light. She was truly mad, and I wasn’t so sure what she was capable of anymore.

“What can I say?” she said, laughing once again. “I’m quite resourceful.”

Without thinking, I charged at her. I let my anger get the best of me, and doing so came with some unfortunate consequences. She stabbed me. She removed one of the tubes from her arm and jabbed the end of it directly into the right side of my chest. It didn’t go in too far, but it was enough to open a vein. I took a step back from her.

“I’m not crazy!” she shouted, sounding crazier than ever. “I just don’t like the idea of letting strangers into my home without doing a little background check on them first. I admit I may have gone too far with it, but if I’m anything, I’m thorough. That’s not so crazy, right?”

I just shook my head and walked away. “I’m out of here.”

“All I want is my medication,” she said, catching her breath. “I don’t care if you ever come back, just don’t report me. Let someone else give me my shots.”

I turned around. “I could never in good conscience allow someone to walk into this apartment without warning them of the horrors that go on in here,” I said. “No deal.”

“What if they didn’t have to come here?” she said, bargaining with me. “I can meet up with them somewhere, publicly. Isn’t there some facility or clinic or something that I could go to?”

I thought about it for a moment. I could probably work it out so that she could get her dose at some nearby clinic, but I’d first have to make sure they could arrange a security escort for her every appointment. I didn’t want there to be any risk of someone becoming injured over her again. I knew I should’ve just walked away, but there was some kind of deep, people pleasing desire written into my DNA that wouldn’t allow me to just walk away whenever I was capable of providing help.

“If I do that for you, you’ll leave us alone?” I asked, hoping I wouldn’t regret my decision. Ellie smiled and nodded.

“Yes, of course, I’ll leave you alone. I only care about my medication,” she said. Once again, she was tugging at her earlobes. Another bug, I presumed. I must’ve been out of my mind making a deal with her, but that’s exactly what I did. Made a deal.

I told her I wouldn’t report her, so long as she agreed to having security escort her through every appointment. She promised, and being the fool I was, I trusted that she’d follow through on that promise.

Just as I was exiting her apartment, I remembered her little freakout the week before and thought it best to avoid that altogether.

“Do you want me to flip the switch, or is that something you have to do yourself?” I asked. “Twenty-two times, right?”

She shook her head and waved me off. “Don’t worry about that. I don’t care anymore.”

I nodded and exited her apartment. As much as I would've liked to believe that last statement meant her mental health was improving, I knew better. She only meant she no longer cared if my heart exploded. I couldn’t say I gave a fuck, either, cause I was more than ready to forget her entirely.

It was time to go home.

---

On the train ride back to my place, after drying myself off and stealthily changing my entire wardrobe, I dug into my purse and removed the small med kit I’d packed to administer Ellie’s shot. I used its contents to clean the wound in my chest and bandage it up. Thankfully it was only a flesh wound. Nothing too serious. It would leave a gnarly scar though. I wasn’t too thrilled about that.

Once I was all patched up and in dry clothing, I pulled out my phone and changed the password of every digital account I could think of. Once I was through with that entire ordeal, I checked my messages.

There was a new one from Tessa.

“Do you have the night free? I was thinking maybe we could grab a bite to eat. My treat!”

I smiled. Even though the entire last hour or so of my day was absolutely draining, to say the least, I still agreed to meet up with her. If I didn’t, I’d have to wait until my next day off for a date, which was an entire week away. I couldn't wait that long. Besides, I knew if I put it off, then I’d be kicking myself over it all week. My face was glowing. I was falling hard for her and we hadn’t even met in person yet.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked, followed by a blue heart emoji. Inside my head, I was already going through my entire closet, picking out an outfit for the evening. Before I could make any real progress, though, that one question would have to be answered.

“Do you like Mexican? I was thinking maybe hitting up the Cathedral Cafe in the Little Village.”

“The Little Village?” I typed. “Isn’t that in the Southside?”

“Is that a problem? It’s amazing! Well, I love it, anyway.”

“You know it’s flooded, right? The entire Southside is covered in about two feet of water.”

“Oh, really? Damn. I haven’t been out there in a while. Well, we can go anywhere, really. Wherever you want!”

I thought for a moment.

“I could really go for a glass of wine and maybe some toasted ravioli. How about Francesca’s? I can send you the address.”

“Perfect! It’s a date!” she typed, then added, “Oh, and I should mention…I’ve had a couple surgeries lately. Cancer stuff. Not fun. We can talk about it later, but please don’t be alarmed by my bandages.”

“Of course not! You poor thing! Yes, let’s talk over dinner. We have plenty to catch up on. See you soon!”

She ended our conversation with a series of blue heart emojis, twenty-two in total. I guess I wasn’t the only one excited about our date.

---

I was the first to arrive at the restaurant.

I didn’t want to seem overeager, but after the day I had, I really needed a drink. At first I just sat at the bar, watching patrons shuffle in through the door, but as the place quickly filled for the dinner rush, I decided it might be best if I went ahead and got seated at a table.

It wasn’t until the hostess asked me how many there were in my party before it all felt real to me. “Two,” I said. Suddenly, we were two.

She was coming. She’d be here at any moment, I thought, and immediately I was thrown into deep panic. I thought of texting her to let her know where I was sitting, but my hands were trembling too much to type. As much as I hated the sweating part of it, I had to admit, it was a nice feeling, falling in love. Now if I can only get myself to drink a bit slower, all should be fine…

“Another glass of wine, signora?” the waiter asked, offering a pour from a cold bottle of house red. I held up my empty glass and motioned for him to fill it up all the way to the top.

As the waiter poured my wine, I caught a glimpse of the front door opening. A woman stepped in. She was wearing a beautiful, black and sparkling sequin dress, and her hair was done up in curls, but that was all I found pleasant about her. There were deep lines carved into her face, not by age, but by the edge of a blade, and there were so many scars that her eyes, nose, and lips were hardly noticeable at all. I couldn’t help but stare at her as she made her way to the hostess’ stand. I didn’t want to seem rude, but I’d never seen anything like that before. I just couldn’t turn away.

As she chatted with the hostess, my eyes traced her every curve, and to my surprise, the scarring wasn’t limited to only her face. Every bit of exposed skin, from her neck down to her feet, was riddled with a cross-hatching of thick scar tissue. I finally got myself to look away, but only after she’d caught me staring.

No, no, no, I thought, hoping she wasn’t walking in my direction. I buried my face into my wine glass and tried not to make eye contact with her. In my peripheral, I could see she was stomping toward me. I gripped the stem of the wine glass a bit tighter, just in case I’d have to douse the bitch with the rest of my house red.

She came to a halt, right before my table. I swallowed the last bit of wine in my mouth, then looked up and smiled.

“Can I help you?” I asked. I’d like to think I was looking her in the eye when I said it, but likely I was hopelessly lost in her web of scars. She didn’t answer my question. Instead, she threw out her arms, invitingly, as if she wanted me to hug her. That’s when I noticed the bandages wrapped around her hands.

“Tessa?” I asked, extremely confused. She looked nothing like her pictures, and not in that usual online dating way, where certain attributes could be hidden or enhanced by experimenting with angles and lighting—no, not like that at all. The woman standing before me had different colored eyes, hair, and was easily three, maybe four, times her size in weight. Even if Tessa had undergone some kind of intense therapy that caused all those characteristics to morph radically over time, her eyes never should’ve changed. Now, I’d be the first to admit that I hardly knew the woman, but I knew enough to know those weren’t her eyes.

She wiggled her bandaged fingers, still motioning for me to stand up and give her a hug. She was smiling in the most bizarre way, too. I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat there and did nothing.

“Aren’t you going to hug me?” she asked. Her voice was lower than I was expecting it to be. It almost sounded fake. As she spoke the words, a shudder of horror ran through me. Was I on one of those weird game shows where they secretly record people while they're being pranked? This couldn’t be real life, I thought. Right?

“Tessa?” I asked.

She laughed. “Of course, silly. Who else would it be?” I could think of at least one other person, I thought. She motioned for a hug once again, but I just stood and gathered up my purse.

“I’m sorry. I don’t feel comfortable with this,” I said. “You’re not who you presented yourself to be.”

“You mean the way I look?” she asked, tears welling in her eyes. “If you only knew half of what I’ve gone through in my life, you wouldn’t be giving me such a hard time right now. Sure, I’ve changed. But after two or three dozen surgeries, who doesn’t? Not to mention, all the drugs they have me on right now. I’ve gained thirty pounds in water weight alone. I can’t catch a break.”

I wasn’t stupid. I knew it was Ellie. She couldn’t fool me. All those scars, that’s what she really looked like beneath all that makeup. I first caught a glimpse of it when she was lying in the bathtub. She sat down at the table and buried her face into her hands, allowing the bandages to soak up her tears. Of all the things she could’ve bandaged, she chose her hands. I can’t even leave my apartment without a pair of latex gloves, I remembered her saying on the first day I met her. It was her OCD.

“So, you had surgery on your hands?” I asked, just curious to hear how she’d respond. She just continued to weep, pretending she didn’t hear me. “Both hands, too, huh? That’s a tough break.” I was really rubbing it in now.

“You should be ashamed of yourself. Tessa really has gone through a lot,” I said, finally coming clean and speaking to her as Ellie. She refused to look at me. “I should’ve known you’d hack into her account. I was stupid for trusting you. Look, the deal’s off. You’re clearly some fucking psychopath who needs to be locked up before you hurt somebody. I’m reporting you. Good luck with your fucking life. This is the last time you’ll ever see me.”

I stood up to walk away, but something was keeping me there. A heaviness came over me, all at once, and suddenly I was unable to even lift my foot. I swayed there, in place, for several seconds, before my eyes fell shut and I passed out, right there on the floor of the restaurant.

---

Beep beep beep…

I woke up to some shrill alarm that was pulsating like a panicked heartbeat in the dead of night. My body still felt this incredible weight that deterred my every movement, no matter how insignificant. Just opening my eyelids took every ounce of my strength, and once they were open, it didn’t help much. My vision was clouded, and everything that wasn’t darkness was hopelessly blurred. I tried lifting my arms, but the task seemed impossible.

“Relax, you’re not going anywhere,” I heard a voice speak from out of the dark. It was Ellie, no longer disguising her voice. “We only have about another hour or so, and we’re all finished.”

Finished? Finished with what? I thought, then lifted my head just enough to catch a glimpse of Ellie’s pale, slashed-up face. Her eyes were boring holes through me from not even three feet away. I had to stare for several seconds before my vision finally cleared and I was able to see her fully. She was sitting in a steel folding chair in the living room of her apartment, and her body was stuck with a series of plastic IV tubes, each one filled with bright red liquid. The other ends of the tubes all led into some makeshift pump system, one I’d never seen in all my years of nursing. The red liquid pumped from the machine, pushed through the IV tubes, and entered Ellie’s body through seemingly random insertions on both her arms and legs.

I wanted to ask her what she was doing, why I was there, why she came after me the way she did, but I just didn’t have the strength yet. I struggled to keep my head up, but once I finally allowed it to drop, I saw that I too was connected to the machine. Instantly, I realized what it was she was doing. She was replacing her bad blood with my blood.

“Where’s Tessa?” I managed to say aloud, but the words were slurred. Even though I was at the mercy of some lunatic aiming to steal my blood, all I could think about was her. “Is she safe?”

“She’s fine,” Ellie assured. “I only hacked her account so that you’d agree to meet with me. I have no use for her. She has the same problem I do, bad blood. You’re the only one who can help me.”

Once again, I tried lifting my head, but the effort was all for nothing. I couldn’t do it. Instead, I just sat there, unmoving, and focused on the details of everything within my line of vision. I examined my arms and wrists, looking for some type of strap or rope, something that was keeping me fastened to my seat, but there was nothing. I wasn’t restrained in any way whatsoever, my arms or otherwise, but still, not a single part of me could move any more than an inch or so. I noticed too that I was sitting in a steel folding chair, just like Ellie, and that there was some shiny plastic material lining the floor directly below me.

“How did I get here?” I asked her, my head still drooping over my lap. I was genuinely curious, but mostly I was just keeping her distracted while I planned an escape. Even though it seemed hopeless at that point, I was no quitter. Call me stubborn, but I was always the type to go down swinging.

She laughed. “It wasn’t easy, I’ll tell you that. I slipped you one of the tranquilizers the state sends me for my chronic pain issues, and you went down fast, even faster than I was expecting. Thankfully, the waiter was more than happy to help me get you out of his restaurant. He said you went through an entire bottle of wine in something like half an hour. He didn’t seem too surprised that you collapsed. Getting you through the city was the easy part. No one batted an eye.”

For a moment, I imagined Ellie stepping onto the train, carrying me, an unconscious woman, in her arms, and propping my limp body up in one of the seats. When did it become acceptable to not intervene in a situation like that? This goddamn city.

“You like my little machine?” she asked, referring to the blood pump in which the two of us were attached. “I made it myself. Took about four or five months to source parts for it, give or take. Putting it all together was nothing really. I’m pretty savvy with technical stuff. Always have been.”

As she spoke to me, I remained focused on the plastic sheet below me. It extended out about three feet in all directions. What was its purpose? And why were we sitting in these damn uncomfortable steel chairs, instead of one of the many cushioned chairs that lined the outer edge of her dining room table? Then it hit me—and once it had, I felt stupid for not having thought of it sooner. Her OCD. The chairs, the plastic sheet—she was protecting her new carpet. That was the ticket out. Destroy the carpet. She wouldn’t be able to control herself. She’d have to get down on her hands and knees to scrub it clean. For her, there wouldn’t be a second option.

“What are you doing to me?” I asked. The words barely came out. I already knew the answer to the question, but I needed a few minutes to get going. Now that I had a plan, I just needed some time to gather the strength to see it through.

“I thought that would be obvious,” she said, smirking. “You are in the medical field, aren't you?”

I didn’t have to be in the medical field to figure out her little plan, I just had to listen to her for a few minutes. In the time that I knew her, she mentioned her bad blood no less than three times, and I spent a grand total of maybe forty minutes with her—well, conscious, that is. Besides, her little blood pumping machine wasn’t in any of the medical journals I’d read over the years. That much I knew for certain.

“My machine extracts blood from your body and pushes it into mine,” she continued. “And at the same time, my bad blood is extracted from my body and is pushed into yours. That way neither one of us bleeds to death. I just added that part today, by the way. You’re welcome. Before that, I was only extracting blood from animals I found roaming around Eighth Block. None of them made me feel any better though. It wasn’t enough. I needed to exchange blood with someone that was more my size.”

I was hardly her size, but I suppose I was closer than that poor housecat she’d drained in her bathtub earlier that day. I closed my eyes and steadied my breathing, trying to remain focused on centralizing my energy.

“I know we still have a ways to go, but already I’m feeling so much better,” she continued, sounding as peppy as ever. “No wonder you get so much done! If I felt this way all the time, I’d be…an Olympic athlete!”

Not hardly, I thought, feeling a rush of anger surge through me. I pushed all of that energy into moving my right arm, and much to my surprise, in one quick movement, my hand was up on my lap.

“I bet you think I’m mad, don’t you?” she asked. “Well, perhaps I was, but this machine here is a cure-all. My madness…it’s almost gone. I can feel it leaving my body as we speak. And the bugs, I don’t hear them anymore!”

She was shouting now, and the louder she spoke, the more I felt motivated to move. I wrapped my fingers around one of the plastic IV tubes attached to my left arm and focused all of my energy on ripping it straight out of the machine.

“Do you know how much that bothered me?” she asked. I was hardly paying attention at that point.

I wasn’t even entirely sure what she was talking about. “I heard them everywhere, especially when I left my apartment. Despite what doctors have told me in the past, I think all my problems are products of that single disease. Hearing those bugs made me want everything to be pristine and thoroughly cleaned, to create an environment that was rid of everything they needed to thrive. It drove me to madness. That’s when I started doing the other things…”

I could’ve let her rattle on, but I was more than ready to go home. In one fluid motion, I tore the IV from the machine, and like a lawn sprinkler, it spat blood across the room in quick spurts, dousing her new carpet in the process.

“Not my new carpet!” she shouted, then, without thinking, she leapt from her seat to clean up the mess, exactly as I had planned. However, as she stood, the IVs tore from her flesh, causing her open veins to spurt from each wound as she ran across the room. That wasn’t part of my plan. She was bleeding profusely, all over the carpet, the walls, everywhere, and no matter how hard she scrubbed, that carpet would never come clean. Still, she never gave up on it. I guess it was her OCD. Even with a body full of fresh new blood, she was still the same old Ellie. She scrubbed until she lost consciousness and collapsed on the floor.

It took a while for the drug to wear off, but eventually I was able to safely remove the IVs from my arms and legs, using the med kit I kept in my purse to administer Ellie’s shots. Before leaving the apartment, I checked on Ellie, but she was already gone. She lost too much blood. Sometimes I ask myself what I would’ve done if she was still alive. I’d like to think I would’ve helped her. It was in my nature, after all. Guess I still had enough of my blood to still be me.

---

About a month later, I moved out of the city. Too much rain for me. Thankfully, I’d worked enough by then that I had quite a bit in savings. It was a nice enough nest egg to get by without a job, for a while, at least. I just needed some time to clear my head, to figure out what I really wanted in life, to ‘do me for a bit,’ as they say.

I finally met Tessa, the real Tessa, that is, and she’s every bit as wonderful as I could’ve hoped. We’re supposed to go on vacation together in a couple weeks. Coronado Beach. Neither of us have ever been, but I’ve heard it’s nice.

---

Bad Blood
© William Pauley III, 2023
All rights reserved.