Pro-Tip for Vampires #55: 

There is more to life than parties and looking pretty. Vampires have jobs too.

Reality returned, much like a brick to the face. One minute I was in a happy place with clouds, then boom, I woke in the front passenger seat of Claude's car, dimly aware from the way the passing streetlights zipped past, that we were in the middle of committing several dozen traffic violations.

A spasm jerked my body, and I turned my head to look at my friend, my eyes unable to focus. They had picked up a nasty habit of wandering in opposite directions, and it gave me a headache to force them to behave. I blinked a couple of times, which seemed to do the trick. Except now, one eyelid stopped working entirely.

"Wha's happ'ing?" I managed to slur. Apparently my mouth was also taking a vacation. Upon further inspection, it seemed that the rest of my body was as equally unresponsive. I was a ragdoll, held upright only the grace of a seatbelt.

"I'm taking you to the hospital, man," Claude said without taking his eyes off the road. He glided the car around a difficult corner and then continued. "You just had a fucking seizure back there. You might have had a stroke or something." He glanced at me for a moment. "Your eyes and ears were bleeding, dude."

Something popped in my ear, and my eyes finally decided that they wanted to focus on Claude after all. There was a tingly feeling all over my body as nerve receptors started to fire again. I somehow managed to flop one hand up in an attempt to massage my neck.

"I feel like shit. Like I overdosed or something."

"Just stay still, man. I got your back."

"Feeling better already. Really." I slurred.

"She sells silly salty sluts by the seashore. Say it!"

"Brain no like," I sputtered.

By the time we screeched into the hospital entry road, I was fully recovered, but a certain stubborn someone-who-shall-remain-unnamed (Claude), wasn't listening to me. That same someone managed to commandeer a wheelchair, and dumped me into it with more force than necessary. Then humming the theme song to the Facts of Life under his breath, he wheeled me into the emergency room, where I expected to spend the next three hours of my life waiting for boredom to slowly kill me.

As soon as we entered, the guard on duty who had a bit of a John Goodman (Big Lebowski era) thing going on, took one look at me and pointed Claude toward a desk where a bored-looking black lady sat. There were about a dozen people scattered throughout the waiting room, and more would be coming. According to Louise, Friday nights were always the busiest nights, with all of the whack-jobs simultaneously deciding to engage in risky behaviour. The lady at the desk looked particularly formidable, so I got ready to explain why I didn't have my health card and why I had the number committed to memory. It was a charming story guaranteed to make the nurse not hate me too much.

Claude wheeled me over to the desk, and without looking, the nurse handed a clipboard to him. Claude didn't even pause, just took a pen and started writing, filling out my information as if he too had it fully memorized.

"What happen with him?" Nurse Bradshaw (according to her nametag), asked with a sharp Jamaican accent, and then she saw my eyes, and one eyebrow shot up.

Fuck. I had forgotten about my eyes. I didn't have a story, charming or otherwise to explain that anomaly—

Nurse Bradshaw exhaled in a way that clearly said "not this shit again" and got up from her chair, picking up what looked more like a price scanner than a medical instrument. There was a de Biers Instruments logo on the side, which at first glance it had looked like a little bat, but that must've been an illusion of design.

"Well there's actually a really funny story—" I tried to come up with a good response, but I was already failing.

"Look here, right at me," Nurse Bradshaw said in a no-nonsense tone and raised a finger in front of her nose. I obeyed and found myself looking into the blue light of the scanner. There was a beep, and Nurse Bradshaw said, "Uh, huh, thought so."

I glanced back at Claude to see if he found this as odd as I did, but he was of course acting as if this was an everyday occurrence while he filled out the paperwork.

"Raise yuh hand," Nurse Bradshaw said, and proceeded to clip a blue plastic band around my wrist, while at the same time motioning to a passing orderly. "See if yuh can find Doctor Mendelshonn. This is one of them special patients."

Claude passed the iPad back to Nurse Bradshaw, and she glanced at it briefly before nodding to the orderly, who just rolled her eyes and led the way through the swinging doors into the maze of examination rooms beyond.

The first time I had actually had to go beyond those doors as a patient, it had been an eye-opening experience. A lot of people think that the main waiting area at the front is the main obstacle and that once you're through the main doors, it's a simple matter of getting treatment. What most don't expect is that there are more waiting areas for less severe cases before you even get to see a doctor. I'm a veteran of emergency rooms all around the city, so I was completely prepared to wait for another three hours despite our speedy progress through triage.

"In case you didn't recognize it, yes, this is the same emergency room that Louise works at," Claude murmured, and I looked around more attentively even though I knew there was almost no chance of Louise actually being there.

The orderly escorted us to an examination room and hooked a thumb towards one of the three empty exam bays, then left without a word. Claude went off to check out the curtained-off bays to make sure nobody was in the room with us.

I couldn't hold it in anymore.

"Did she know I was a vampire?" I hissed at Claude.

"I dunno, man," he admitted. "She knew you were something, that's for sure."

"I've never actually gotten through the front so fast before," I blurted out. " The eye scan thing was kind of new—"

"You've been in the ER way too many times if you know the procedure so well."

"Not really that many," I said evasively. "I hang out with some stupid people when you're off doing your heists. You have no idea how many times stoned people think it's a great idea to do home renovations while tripping balls."

Claude frowned thoughtfully. "The thing that gets me is that they seem awfully well-prepared for someone like you. Like there are a lot more vampires around than you'd think—"

The door at the far end opened and a short blonde woman bustled in, lips pursed, brilliant pale-blue vampire eyes curiously appraising us. Her name tag read Dr. Iva Mendelsohnn, something that I realized I could read from twelve feet away.

Apparently I wasn't going to need to wear glasses for a very long time. Upgrade!

Dr. Mendelshonn noticed Claude, and a smile broke across her face as she decided she liked what she saw. She liked it a lot as a matter of fact.

"What seems to be the problem?" she asked and then cocked her head, confused at what she was seeing. "Are you wearing coloured contacts?"

"I'm not the patient," Claude pointed out and stepped aside so she could see me better.

"Hi. I had a bad reaction from some coffee?" I waved helpfully.

Dr. Mendelshonn looked from Claude down to me where I was trying my best to look like the obvious patient. Her smile faded as she saw my eyes, and she sighed the deepest of sighs. She gestured to the bed indicating that I should sit, and I complied readily, trying hard not to fanboy all over her. Wow! An actual vampire!

Dr. Mendelsohnn was all business as she examined me. "I'll be honest," she said, "I haven't seen an Accidental in a long time. Harry's pretty much put a stop to that, and we especially don't see your type."

"And what type is that exactly? Black?" I said evenly, my eyes narrowed to a slit as I prepared for whatever toxic bullshit she was about to spew.

To her credit, Dr. Mendelshonn blinked in surprise and sudden self-awareness. She shook her head in solemn horror. "Oh no, sweetie: I just meant that you were too poor to be a vampire."

Surprise threw a bucket of cold water on my anger, which was undergoing an identity crisis as it struggled with the decision to turn into indignation or shame turning into indignation. All I could say was: "Oh."

Even Claude was stunned. "Are you sure you're even a doctor?"

She pointed at Claude. "This one was made to be a vampire. He looks like he was born in that suit. He's the type that goes through the program with a silver spoon in his mouth and comes out looking like what people want their vampires to look like: Tall, dark and yummy." She turned her attention to me. "You, well, you're common as muck, as ordinary as they get. You weren't recruited: you were rescued. Ergo: Accidental."

"How can you be so sure he's an Accidental?" Claude said defensively, and Dr. Mendelsohnn smiled ruefully.

"You guys are here because he had an embolism from drinking coffee," she pointed out. "It's kind of a day one lesson. Now, anybody got more stupid questions?"

"You just made me lose all excitement about meeting other vampires," I admitted. "I was about to fanboy all over you."

"You're so fresh out the grave it's sweet."

"The grave?" I said incredulously, my brain reeling. "Are actual graves involved?" Another stunning thought occurred to me. "Are we the undead?"

Dr. Mendelsohnn reached out and pinched the skin on my bicep, hard. I yelped at the sudden stinging pain, pulling away from her.

"Just be glad that wasn't a scalpel. You bleed, you feel pain, you have to eat actual food. You shit, you piss, and you sweat. Guess what? You're still alive. Just different now, so no more of this undead shit, okay?

"I'm sorry, but everything I know about vampires is from books and movies, okay? I'm just a little bit fucked up over the impossible fact that vampires exist outside of pop-culture and that is one serious mind-fuck."

Dr. Mendelsohnn raised a finger in warning, apparently knowing what was coming.

"Do not ask me about werewolves."

"But I wasn't about to ask you about werewolves," I mumbled.

I was totally lying.

Claude raised his hand. "I'd like to ask about werewolves."

Dr. Mendelsohnn snapped the cover on her iPad shut and wheeled on us, stabbing a well-manicured finger at Claude, then at me, pretty much whoever she decided was pissing her off more.

"Let's get one thing clear here. I am not your magic fucking elf. I'm not here to dispense wisdom and tell you all the shit that you don't know about being a vampire. I'm especially not here to send you off on some grand adventure, so fuck you and especially fuck you." That last one was to me. "It's the same with all you Accidentals, I swear it. You want to learn how to be a vampire so bad, then go find whoever turned you and tell them I sent you—" Her eyes narrowed as she made a connection. She looked around the empty room and all of the arrogance and righteous anger went out of her. For the first time, she actually looked vulnerable. Human.

"Oh, goddamit," Dr. Mendelsohnn said with sudden realization. "It was Louise wasn't it?"

The silence spoke louder than we ever could.

"We were kinda hoping someone here had seen her," I admitted.

"Did you see if they came for her?" Dr. Mendelsohnn asked so quietly that I almost didn't hear her.

"If who came—"

"The Gentlemen!" she snapped, eyes blazing, and I nodded under the force of her anger.

Claude glanced at me, a question in his eyes, since I had avoided telling him about the Gentlemen and now this more experienced vampire was terrified of the men I had avoided mentioning. I looked somewhere else, pretending not to see.

"She's okay," I whispered hoarsely. "She has to be."

Dr. Mendelsohnn sighed deeply and bitterly. She barely contained her anger as she spoke.

"Dilute your coffee, three to one ratio, avoid getting your head chopped off, but first: get the fuck out of my hospital."

***

We got the fuck out of her hospital. If music had been allowed over the intercom system instead of silence broken up by different calls and pages for doctors, I was sure the universe would be mocking me with a song from Jaime's Infinite Playlist. Maybe 'Loser' from Beck, or Radiohead's 'Creep', just to make things interesting.

"You look like you have a plan," Claude noted as we walked toward the exit.

"That's because I kinda sorta do," I admitted.

"Is it a good plan?"

"I have no idea, but that's never stopped me before."

"Fair enough," Claude said with a shrug. "So wanna tell me where we're going?"

I would have stopped and taken off my sunglasses at that point just to be dramatic, but I had glanced back over my shoulder and had spotted Dr. Mendelsohnn watching us from down the corridor, so that almost threw me off my stride.

"We're going to have to go back to the scene of the crime," I said. "Where I died."

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