The Donor

I’d never known terror until yesterday; until now. As a writer, I’d of course described it from my imagination using the obligatory key words; fear, frozen, wide-eyed and cold sweat…but these emotions seem almost redundant. The one word that keeps screaming inside my head is hopeless.

Everything’s so far removed from yesterday; it seems like another person I’m remembering. I’ve been going over the week before, over and over, and I can’t pinpoint one reason as why I’m here.

Last night I was walking home from after work drinks, it was a little damp, that drizzle that hangs in the air and collects in curly hair making it frizz into cotton wool. We’d met in Covent Garden; which was lovely as they’d just put up the Christmas decorations and the market roof was frosted with sparkling white lights. Being tipsy I was enjoying the moment; loving the fact that Christmas is so near, thinking that I’d have to get a move on and start buying gifts for the family.

I’d made my way across the Strand towards Embankment, walking down the dim, cobbled hill of Villiers Street towards the station entrance: the proverbial light at the end…

The cafes were closed and darkened, and the Pub on the corner had just locked its doors. There were only a few people about; a homeless man slept in a doorway wrapped up in a sleeping bag. A couple kissed by the black, lightless telephone box. Of course, it was too late by the time I noticed the presence behind me.

My arm was twisted painfully up my back and something was put over my mouth and nose. Every time I tried to gasp for breath, I was overwhelmed by a strong smell that made me feel dizzier and dizzier. My last thought was that I was being raped or mugged, but I couldn’t find the strength in my arms and legs to hit out. The blackness was almost welcoming.

It must have been self preservation that kept me silent when I awoke. It was pitch black and soundless, like I was in a soundproofed box. The air felt heavy and had a metallic, coppery tang to it. My skin prickled with a slight chill, and I realised I was wet, and the air was cooling the liquid on my skin. This was what had awoken me.

This also made me realise I was naked. The panic that rose into my throat had threatened to overwhelm me. I could feel the wetness over my breasts, stomach and legs. It trickled invisibly between my thighs. But it was with this fact that I suddenly realised, or rather felt, that I hadn’t been raped. It was only a few seconds of comprehension, but I knew.

The headache hit me then, and with my head pounding I tried to sit up, but realise my wrists and ankles where strapped to some sort of table. The sound that finally escaped from my lips and filled my ears at that point had an animal like quality to it. I felt it bouncing off the close walls and back to me, mocking its delivery and taunting me. I was trapped and helpless.

From biology lessons I remember that the body has about five litres of blood. It circulates through the body around three times every minute. The heart beats around 100,000 times in one day, and unconsciousness will occur after eight to ten seconds after loss of blood supply to the brain.

So, when the light flicked on, blinding me for a few seconds, I truly realised what the word ‘terror’ meant.

The small square room’s white walls where splattered from ceiling to floor with blood. It was all over me and puddled on the tiled floor in black pools. It was of course what I had been smelling. In one pool I could see pieces of meat; white skinned, sopping red in the pool where it let its blood. It reminded me of the road kill i sometimes passed on the way to work. I couldn’t tell what parts of the animal had been set askew across the tarmac, but I knew it was an animal.

It couldn’t be my blood; I couldn’t have lost so much without being dead. Numbness had set into my arms and legs, so I couldn’t feel them anyway, but lifting my head a little, I could see me feet, I could see my hands, my wrists cuffed in huge chucks of leather with metal buckles. I was whole.

Someone else must have been here. Someone else must have been strapped in the cuffs. The knowledge set my heart pounding in my ears. I prayed that I wouldn’t give whoever it was the satisfaction of seeing my fear, but it was a thinly made resolution. The panic made my chest rise and fall in spasms. I could feel sweat prickling my armpits, and imagined it running in rivulets through the blood I lay in.

The mirror that took up about a third of the wall at my feet was a two-way. I had the feeling that someone was watching me intently; taking in my response to my surroundings, maybe noting them down.

A door open to my left and a tall man in green hospital overalls and a mask busied himself with a machine just out of my peripheral vision. Twisting, all I could see was his back, the white ties at this neck and waist, a glimpse of denim, a black leather belt. His head was completely covered by the green hat, but the mask’s laces cut into a fuzz of black beard at the edges.

“Please?” I whispered, “What are you doing? There’s been a mistake”

At this he turned to look at me, his eyes blinking as if he had a tic. “You have a donor card in your bag.”

He turned back to the machine and then kicked it, sending it across the blood splattered floor; my body convulsed at the violence.

“Do you know how many people are waiting for an organ transplant today?” He hovered over my face. He was sweating, droplets fell onto the congealed blood on my shoulder.

He stormed out of the room, slamming the door. The light flicked off a few seconds later, leaving me to wait in the dark.

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