Story told from the Point of View of a Vampire whose boring night job is tasting blood at the blood lab analyzing blood to determine various chemical details, diseases, etc. -- Anon Guest
My name is Tae Devereaux I am a Hematological Dilettante.
To be frank, there's not a lot of jobs that would welcome a vampire. Like, disposal services for Kosher or Halal butchers. Or helping out the blood spatter folks at crime scenes. Sure, we're fast and accurate, but we can't be used in court because of that whole oath thing.
Holy stuff and vampires don't mix because we're already violating divine law. So we're allowed to direct. We're allowed to indicate. We're allowed to lead, but we can't provide the actual evidence. A complete battery of medical tests needs a lot of blood. A well-trained Dilettante only needs a drop to narrow things down for the folks in the lab.
Yeah I know about that one lunatic who thought they could detect everything in the blood based on one drop. Vampires can detect actual blood diseases. We can detect toxins in the blood or deficiencies of the patient. It saves the lab people a lot of time and the squeamish a lot of blood withdrawals.
Another mistake people make about Vampires is our diet. We can survive on quite a lot of fluids, not just blood. I make myself something of a smoothie with coconut water and a lot of dietary supplement stuff. It's not vegan so I won't disturb you with the details.
For work, I clear my palate with ice water. It's just as unpleasant as you imagine. Body temperature control is a huge issue for people like me. I go through a lot of heat packs.
Then it's a series of double-blind tests with the blood drop introduced to my waiting tongue. The people doing that have full PPE so they don't throw off my senses, and the test substance is contained in a sealed capsule before they give it to me. I'm also blindfolded to remove any other bias. Science is serious business.
One drop is all that's necessary, but they give me three. I take a deep breath as I roll the sample around my tongue. "I'm getting a lot of iron," I said. "Lack of platelets... You might want to check for four diseases - Erythrocytosis, Hemochromatosis, Immune Thrombosis, and Polycythemia Vera."
"We'll correlate with the patient symptoms. Thank you."
It would be half an hour for me to clear my palate and warm back up again. Just a small part of my working day.
[Photo by ANIRUDH on Unsplash]
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