The Heart of It All (HeartSick Series Book 1)

by Weston Mitchel

  Austin opened the door, and held it for her while she walked past him nodding appreciation saying “What a gentleman, thank you.”

  Dr. Greer placed a cup in front of Izzy and turned to Austin and said “Ok, first things first, your blood type.”

  “What about it?” Austin asked confused with scrunched up eyebrows.

  “Well, originally you told us that you were AB pos, which is fine, you would be surprised how many people don’t know what type their own blood is. But-“

  “But I do have AB positive blood, I know for a fact I do,” Austin interrupted her mid-sentence, and could now see she was about to speak again so he cut her off once more. “I was in an accident a couple years ago, and the only reason I am alive today is because of a blood transfusion, and our town is so small that the blood supply was extremely limited. I remember my dad telling me that the Doctor’s had told him that since I had lost so much blood that if I had been almost any other type, they might not have had enough blood to give me, but like I said, luckily I am AB positive. I’m what they call a universal recipient, it allowed them to give me blood from across the spectrum. So you see, there is no way that I’m anything other than AB+.”

  With his monologue finished, Austin leaned back in his chair, exuding confidence in being correct.

  “Well,” Izzy leaned forward and rested her elbows on the desk that sat in between her and Austin and continued, “We hear what you’re saying but science doesn’t lie.”

  “What do you mean?” Austin asked with a little bit of his confidence slinking away down his face, not as sure of himself as he was before.

  “What she means is that we can test it right here, right now and either prove we messed up the last three times we did it, or prove that maybe you misremember what exactly your dad told you, either way it’s no big deal, we just wanted to let you know… Izzy?”

  Without being told what to do, Isabelle grabbed a Vacutainer tube out of her drawer, which is a small vacuum tube with a lancet attached to it. She then leaned closer in to Austin to start the venipuncture in order to obtain another blood sample.

  Austin shrugged and placed his arm out in the direction of where Izzy was sitting, inner elbow facing up. She grabbed his wrist and wiped a cold alcohol pad over a small area on his inner forearm. She then tossed the pad into the trash and picked up the Vacutainer. Then with one smooth poke, the seal on the negatively-pressurized vial burst which let the blood rapidly fill the small container with a not quiet squishy-splat.

  Type Test Results

  The next twenty minutes or so went by slowly, almost silently, with a few brief moments of awkward chatter sprinkled in for flavor. Each of them tried their hand at starting up an actual conversation here and there to no avail, making them realize they had little in common to talk about, which lead to them sitting more comfortable in silence, than in talk.

  A message flashed on to Izzy’s screen, and a second later the printer across the room began to stutter out a piece of paper with words too small to see from where Austin sat.

  Dr. Greer scurried over to the far counter where the printer rested and snatched the page from the tray, lifting it up and lowering her reading glasses from the top of her head to the bridge of her nose.

  “Yep, winner, winner chicken dinner. We should have put some money on it Iz, this boy is as O neg as it gets,” The Doctor said snarkily handing the paper to Isabelle.

  “She’s right,” Izzy said glancing at the results, “maybe you did just remember it wrong, I’m sure you had been through a lot and something like that might not have stuck in your memory as well as you might think, but you definitely have type O negative blood.” She handed the paper to Austin, she rolled her chair back to her computer and started striking keys on the keyboard as if to say that was the end of that.

  Austin wasn’t real sure what he was looking at, but he could make out that in several parts on the page, the words O negative appeared while no other type was anywhere to be found.

  “No I’m telling you, that can’t be. I know without a doubt in my mind that I’m not O negative,” he said.

  Austin leaned back in his chair and in a defensive gesture he crossed his arms over his chest, his right arm weaving over his left. “I’ve been donating blood almost every two months to the Red Cross since that accident. Since my life was saved by some stranger’s generosity, the very least I could do was try and repay the favor.”

  Before Austin could continue his story Isabelle chimed in with her kind eyes and said “If more people did that, we would all be safer out there. You would be surprised how low this country’s blood supply is.”

  “Yeah I bet, I mean to be honest I never actually thought about it til I needed it, but ever since I’ve made it a point to do it. I mean I’ve been putting it off since I moved to Austin, until my friend led me here that is. Hell, I still haven’t switched to a local bank yet either.”

  “Well we both lucked out there then, we have a candidate for the second round and you get to walk out of here a pint light but two grand heavier to help remind you to find a bank. Pretty good trade off,” Izzy said.

  “Yeah I’ll say,” Austin said. Then steering the conversation back to his blood type mystery he tilted his head as if in deep thought and added “you know I’ve written down that I’m AB positive on every donation form for the last two years, wouldn’t someone have told me before now?”

  Dr. Greer, who had been leaning against the side of Izzy’s desk listening and nodding along intently, pushed herself off and stood ram rod straight trying to project an air of authority on the matter saying “Most places, even small town donation drives aren’t going to just go on a person’s word. Every bag is physically tested before being labeled. You can’t take the chance when you’re talking about transfusions. Introducing the wrong type into someone’s system causes catastrophic consequences. It would quite literally be a civil war inside that person’s body.”

  After saying this she walked back across the room to her coffee she had left on the desk next to the printer when she gathered the results.

  “I see,” Austin said succumbing to her point. Not wanting to get sidetracked he spoke up again but in a less confident voice now, “There has to be some sort of records from the hospital where I stayed after the accident, isn’t there? I mean you can check, right? To prove I’m not crazy or misremembering?”

  “Of course we can,” Izzy said trying to placate Austin, who was more concerned visibly by these results than she thought anyone should really be. In her, albeit, short career this was one of the most benign tests she had ever given results for. Before she could add anything to help Austin, Dr. Greer broke in.

  “Well, yes obviously we can, with your permission, but really there’s no need to, your type is what it is, that isn’t my concern,” The Doctor said from behind him, with cup in hand pausing in front of her mouth to speak before she took another drink of her house blend, black with no sugar or cream. She brushed aside his need to know flippantly and moved on to what she cared about.

  ”My concern, however, is the results we got back on this first round of tests. They were extremely promising to say the least,” Dr. Greer said trying to hold back a smirk.

  “I kinda figured as much since you were willing to pay me two thousand dollars, what, every 58 days?” Austin didn’t bother with trying to hold back his smile, he let his not-so-pearly whites grab some fresh air. “But what exactly makes my blood so… I don’t know, special? I mean what did y’all find?”

  Izzy straightened up in her chair as if she was waiting for this moment, like a teacher calling on the one student who had done the homework the night before.

  “Every fifty six days actually, given you come in and let us draw a pint. As for what we found… it’s pretty amazing. What we’ve been looking for, and honestly what I thought would never be found is-“

  “What we’ve been looking for,” Dr. Greer butted in shooting laser beams from her eyes to Izzy’s, with her m
outh drawn in a taut, stern line letting her know she will handle the reigns from here, “is a unique characteristic in a person’s blood that could possibly lead to a breakthrough in our research.”

  Dr. Greer grabbed the back of an empty chair next to her and rolled it in front of her, coming around Austin’s side and stopped it a few feet in front of Austin. She sat down with her knees and ankles pressed together slanting slightly to one side.

  “Look, Austin, there is no need for me to bore you with the minutia of what exactly we’re doing here, honestly you would be bored to death in a matter of seconds. It’s not rocket science, that’s easy compared to what we’re doing here.”

  Now in Austin’s full view, the laser eye was replaced with the feathery lightness of fluttering lashes, grinning toothily at Isabelle, “And Isabelle here is right. The odds of us actually finding this certain characteristic was roughly a million to one.” More like one in seven billion, she thought proudly to herself.

  Not letting herself get too carried away by her excitement for what they did find, she brought her level back down to a six, not wanting Austin to perceive the full ramification of their findings.

  Calm down, Cat, better to keep him in the dark for juuuust a bit longer.

  “At least, we think we may have found it,” she adds, “this next round of experiments with the blood you will be giving us today should get us closer to making sure we’re are on the right track.”

  That’s better nice, calm, and boring.

  “Ok, so I guess we better get to it then huh? I’ve still gotta go change into my costume for a party. My Mia-, I mean my girlfriend, has been ragging me about always being late a lot lately, so I don’t want to be, ya know? Late.”

  Austin lets out a small chuckle at himself with the least amount of confidence he has had all day.

  A little dose of Mia should help with that, she always seems to find a way to up my confidence somehow.

  Double Chocolate Goodness

  Austin stood up, letting Izzy lead him to the more comfortable, tan and beige recliner to begin the donation procedure. As she turns and points to the chair, Austin semi-squats down the same way he did over that pile of bird droppings the first week of school right before he met his new best friend, and then falls the rest of the way on to the La-Z-Boy. This makes it rock back and forth from his downward momentum so he put his feet on the ground to stabilize the bouncing.

  “My girlfriend and I are going as Sheldon and Amy from Big Bang Theory,” Austin says unprompted.

  “That’s clever,” Izzy said smiling, putting her hand on her hip. With her other hand doing an upside down lazy kind of pointing at nothing in particular thing she adds “I’ve always wanted to do a couples costume like that, but my ex would never go for it, he would always say costumes were for babies.” Izzy reaches out and rolls a cart closer to her, putting it to rest right beside the recliner.

  Squatting down in order to rummage through the contents on the middle shelf she began to place objects on to the tray on the top, grabbing this, and organizing that.

  “Even though he had no problem dressing up like a football player without the pads every Sunday to scream at the T.V.,” as she said this she slammed the tape down on the tray a little harder than intended and popped up over the edge of the cart glancing at Austin with an apologetic smirk.

  She wrapped a rubber tourniquet around his arm as Austin blurted out, “Well you’re more than welcome to come tonight. Heck you don’t even need to buy a costume or anything you could just wear your lab coat and come as Marie Curie or something.”

  His intent was to make her smile, she had been in a relatively good mood until she brought up her ex just now, and he was scared it was about to become awkward again.

  “Thank you, that’s sweet but I think I would be able to pull off Mindy Kaling from The Mindy Project a bit easier than Madame Curie.”

  She chuckled at herself and said “Besides I seriously doubt the Doc will let me sneak out of here anytime soon, night shift called in so…” she lets out a short sigh before continuing on, “Lucky me I’m pulling a double…again.”

  “Eeeeehh, being responsible really sucks sometimes, huh?” Austin says alleviating the tension.

  “No shit, Sherlock.”

  “Keep digging, Watson.” Austin replied out of pure habit, this being one of his and his high school friends most repeated sayings.

  Izzy laughed at this, “Never heard that second part before, that’s funny. Anyway, let’s get you drained here so you won’t be late for the Halloween party tonight.”

  As they were talking this whole time, Austin just sat back and watched Izzy get the equipment ready. Now she leaned over, poked the lancet into his vein, and taped it down to his forearm to make sure it wouldn’t pull out, making the area a bloody mess.

  “Well if you change your mind, it’s at the Alpha Tau Omega house, just walk on in.”

  Austin closed his eyes and tried to relax, hoping this put an end to the conversation. Austin cranked open his left eye, trying to sneak a peek to see if she got the hint. Luckily she did, and all he could see was her back as she walked towards her desk on the other side of the room.

  Twelve minutes later Izzy reappeared clicking a clip in to place on the end of one of the tubes, then eased out the needle from his skin. She then detached it from the tube, walked over to a red bin with a white lid and stepped on a pedal at the base of the can opening the lid to toss the needle in. She picked up the paper bag that was folded at the top that Dr. Greer brought back from Starbucks earlier, and she walked back to Austin handing him the treat.

  “We were all out of cookies, so the good Doctor gotcha something better, a double chocolate brownie,” She said raising her eyebrows as if she was giving him a most impressive gift.

  “Sweet,” Austin said as he unwrapped the goodie, and began to gnaw on it as he stood up. Without any wooziness, he strutted across the room chewing.

  As he pushed the door open with his hip, Dr. Greer called out “Forgetting something?”

  Austin had all but forgotten about the reason he was here, the small rectangular piece of paper that was flapping in her hand as she walked towards him, the check for two thousand dollars. Up to this point in his life, it would be the biggest amount he had ever deposited at one time, if he ever opens up a new account that is.

  “Ah, thank you” he said with a half full mouth of chocolate gooeyness.

  “Izzy here will call you in few weeks to schedule your next appointment, have a good night.”

  Dr. Greer, not one much for small talk either, turned and walked briskly back to her office leaving Austin leaning against the door. Before she got all the way to her office, Austin yelled out “Happy Halloween Doc… and Izzy.”

  With that he was gone, leaving the Doctor thinking to herself, its Halloween already?

  Walk to Party

  Austin was normally the type to go all out on a costume back when he had a ton more free time, and not as many bills to pay. Since his check from the K Prize Foundation was hiding away in one of the secret compartments in his desk and not in a bank account somewhere, and all of his spare time had been divvied up between Mia and homework, this year’s costume was on a budget, a budget of time and money.

  A red t-shirt with a bright yellow lightning bolt on the foreground of a white circle, the symbol for the comic book hero The Flash, and a white shirt with long sleeves that cut off at the middle of the forearm were the only two purchases he had to make. Both on the cheap, being that he bought them at the thrift store. And voila, he was Sheldon.

  Mia’s costume had a few more pieces to buy than his, but still they were able to find everything at the same place, Austin paying for all of it at once. He watched her walk towards him now, as he waited outside her dorm, in her knee length denim skirt, a black and red striped sweater vest over a light blue men’s oxford button-up, with hair straight as a pony’s mane parted right down the middle of her scalp, topped off with black Lisa
Loeb-ish glasses from the 90’s.

  Even when she tries to look unattractive and boring, she steals the show. How in the world did I-.

  “Hey Mr.” She cut into his thoughts with her hands raised at her sides, and twirled around slowly letting Austin see her from every angle and asked “Whadaya think?”

  “I think I’m one lucky guy, that’s what I think,” he said giving her his best shit-eating grin then reached out for her hand as she drew nearer and pulled her in, landing an innocent peck on the corner of her mouth, then turning to lead her away from the building.

  “Hold on, we can’t leave yet. Ash is on her way down, she had a bit of a problem with her costume, but I told her we’d wait on her.” Mia looked over at Austin with her eyebrows raised, biting her lip, already knowing what he was about to say.

  Austin didn’t want to start an argument right as they were about to start their evening, especially over someone else’s problems. As cliché as it was, their friends Brian and Ashley had what could only be described as a tempestuous relationship. The first few weeks they were together they sucked face, among other things, more than talked.

  More often than not they would begin the nights holding hands, or cradled in each other’s arms, then move to a nice long make out sesh, no matter where they were. Then they would follow it up with a raving, clawing dash to privacy. Which usually meant either to Austin and Brian’s apartment, or the girls’ dorm room, courteously leaving the other place for Austin and Mia.

  Several times however, they didn’t make their intentions known ahead of time to the other couple, leaving Austin and Mia to a few more peeks at their rumps and other more protruding body parts than they had ever wished to see.

  This led to the much needed alert system. Their system of coitus notification was a shade classier than the old sock, or tie hanging from the handle trick, but not by much.