Sanguimancy

Her fingers were prunes, skin rubbed raw. She had been standing under the spray from the shower back at her apartment for what felt like an eternity. The red still refused to circle down the drain, lapping at her ankles. Every time she scrubbed harder at her hands and arms, it seemed only to make it churn more violently.
Nearly four years in the ER, and she’d never seen anything like it.
“Doctor Malcom to bed fourteen. We’ve got a bleeder. GSW, just came in.”
“On it.”
Apparently, the turkey sandwich she’d gotten one bite of on her break would continue having to wait. Colleen Malcolm loved her job, but not the accidental crash diet it resulted in. Coffee would have to be enough, since she could pound that back as she power-walked down the hall. Nearly spilled it ducking gurneys and the drivers that were nearly as bad as the drunks on them.
“Shouldn’t you have headed home an hour ago, Chirs?” she pulled on gloves as she arrived to assist.
“Nah. Jenny’s birthday next week. Had to pick up a few shifts because that ring isn’t going to pay for itself.” the other doctor didn’t look up from the young man on the bed.
“Good luck with that.”
“Thanks. Jump in, I need the hands. And so does Mister Thomas here.”
“Gang related?”
“What do you think?”
“Chicago.” the two of them chorused as she moved to provide whatever help she would.
A young man’s bofy shouldn’t have had that many bullet holed and still be breathing. Not well, she noted as the monitored blared behind them, but he was definitely still breathing. She’d come to recognize a lot of the gang insignias and tattoos from her work, used to patching the thugs up before the cops came to cart them away. As they cut away the shirt so they could get a better look she was surprised: not a single tattoo or mark matched the catalod in her head….But, it also seemed like every week there was some new group of idiots who wanted to live life like a rap song. This looked a little bit more…Intense than 50 Cent’s nine times though.
“Call the surgeon. Some of these are way too deep. We’re going to need to recover them. Like this stomach one for instance…” Her gloves were completely saturated. It was a miracle that the kid-How HAD this kid not bled out? “You okay, Col?”
“Yeah, fine.” she started to use even more water to get the blood away so they could get a better look, the results a pink slutty on the sheets.
There were no holes. No ridges of a bullet. Just blood. Copious, ridiculous amounts of the stuff. The Gothic script on the man’s ribs seemed to have a glow to it when she looked, and she was certain it wasn’t because of the shitty florescent lightning. She pushed her fingers along where the blood had been pooling the worst. Nothing. Just firm muscle and flesh.
“What the fuck….”
“Colleen?”
“I’m going to go grab Matterson. This is out of my league. He’ll be here pretty quick.”
“I-wha-Colleen?!”
 
Her eyes closed tightly as she let the spray run over her face again. The blood from rubbing her arms still hadn’t gone down the drain, and she still didn’t know why. But, the water was cold as ice now, and it was starting to get painful. So, Colleen dragged herself from the shower, the water that hit the tile floor just as red as it had been in the bottom of the tub.
“Just need to take my vacation days. Seeing things is a sign of exhaustion. I’m sure they’ll approve it for me.” She muttered this to herself as she wrapped her hair in one of the fluffy towels and pulled on her robe.
She didn’t look down to see the blood make its way out of the tub like a snake crawling over a rock. Didn’t notice as it coiled around her legs in wispy smoke-like strands. She covered her legs with a blanket to try to choke out the chill that was still building, so it was impossible to see it now.
It seemed like whoever knocked had been waiting for the exact moment when she finally was settled to relax. Colleen groaned, hoping they would just go away if she ignored it. Times like this, she wished she’d gotten some big guard dog instead of the cats.
“Miss Malcom? My name is Drake Thomas. You helped me at the hospital earlier tonight.” She froze almost instantly. The young man was unconscious in a hospital bed. Or at the very least not well enough to be outside her door and knocking. She found herself reaching for the knife she kept in the coffee table’s drawer after the neighbor got broken in to.
“I think you may have taken something from me. Well….Borrowed something accidentally. Please let me in? I can help you. A Favor for a favor.”
Colleen snorted. Mystery men who should be bleeding out in a hospital bed telling her she took something from them? Now she knew she was….
She looked down as she had stood up and the blanket pooled at her feet. The red still swirled like lazy smoke trails around her calves. She violently shook one of her legs in an attempt to kick it off, but it was as if it was stuck to her like gum on a shoe. She felt pressure for a moment as if it squeezed.
“I’m a blood-”
“What the fuck is going on?!”
“Mage. A Blood Mage. My magic was keeping me together before I got to the hospital. I wasn’t able to turn-Can we not talk through your door? This is weird, and it’s really cold out here.”
“What this is is absolutely insane.” Colleen shook her head as if the man could see it. “You can stay right where you are.”
“Miss Malcolm, I understand you’re afraid. But the blood around your legs won’t rest until you can tell it to. And it ruins fabric.”
“How-”
“If you let me in, I can explain.”
Colleen sighed, one hand on the doorknob, the knife still in the other. There was no such thing as a blood mage, or whatever this fucked up dream was talking about when you were a doctor. But, at least this would make for an interesting story for her psychiatrist.
“You have five minutes to convince me to not call the cops.”
“Done.”