Influence

“Well, that went badly for humanity, but rampaging vampires doesn’t seem very good either.”

“No, but we do test you and decide whether to go forward”

“Where backwards is to kill me?”

“Possibly… but living dead don’t have many rights … including the right to complain.”

“So I am a slave?”

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ROOFS

It is noon, so I head to dialysis — My clinic is in Menlo Park, almost within the Meta campus. I was on Facebook when it first came to California, but got off it when the social value of the social network became very suspect.

Dialysis patients get hooked up to a hemodialysis machine using either their catheter or the two dialysis ‘sewing needles’ described above. I used a catheter for about six months, but progressed to direct artery access, which looks the same as a fistula. The flow rate can be higher with the needles, so I can support all the patients in my shift. For the first six months I needed to have another vampire (Susan) with me, but now I can go it alone.

My machine is different from everyone else’s, but that isn’t visible to anyone who works in the main room. There is a technician controlling flows between patients and me, so people get their own (cleansed) blood back. I feel like the RNs know something is unusual, but they keep their concerns and questions to themselves.

Josephine ‘wires’ me up, and for the next four hours I am trapped. Dialysis can be very draining for normal patients: cramps, sleepiness, etc. It is draining for me also. I commonly need to sleep for most of it. Given my dialysis shift starts at noon, it is somewhat ironic. I need to sleep for a while at night too, so maybe I am just half-vampire?

“No, you are not exactly a slave — but you are also not free. From now until you wish to die, you will need to do dialysis with a Stanford-approved clinic.”

“Can’t I just bite people on the neck or something?”

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“You can try, but there isn’t any evidence that would work. And you would likely end up dying in jail”

“So, as long as I do dialysis, you will help me to continue to exist?”

“Yes”

“No other quid-pro-quos in this contract?”

“No, but we might like your help at times”

“Yes… master. Am I going to say no to the Gods?”

“I suspect you might, at least sometimes. That is really up to you… and how happy you want your gods to be “

“Ecstatic?”

I return to M5 from the ICU — except now I am part of the clandestine V5 clinic (an ‘M’ contains a ‘V’ hiding in plain sight). My diet changes: I can now eat more kinds of foods. This is all just practice for my cover story; I don’t actually digest any of it.

But to be compliant, I should avoid foods rich in phosphate, never eat foods that could contain bacteria, keep my sodium intake low, and so on. Basically standard practices for a liver and kidney transplant patient. A living person’s biome needs to be balanced, and without a liver and kidney monitoring and adjusting to what you are consuming… tests, diet changes, and medications take their place.

It is critical that I understand all of this to keep my cover,

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especially because one of the addiction-recovery meetings I go to focuses on liver and kidney issues. For me to attend, I need to know a bunch of tests, activities, and experiences that an end-stage patient would know. This is beyond just dialysis, and includes regular testing of all kinds of things. Some of these tests collectively produce a MELD (model for end-stage liver disease) score. This determines your priority for a transplant, so my score has to match needing dialysis, but not be so high that a transplant (or death) would be imminent. I pick 21 as my normal MELD score, and my test results are set up to match that. In California, a 21 (out of 40) means it will take years before I am offered a transplant.

The layers of lies are to keep vampires relatively secret. My normal doctor (Dr. J), is outside Stanford, so she does not know anything is unusual… except for the story of catastrophic liver and kidney failure.

I am not allowed on roofs — because — in spite of being a ‘vampire’ — I am not particularly coordinated, strong, fast, or anything special. When I am discharged from V5 and Stanford, I am in worse shape than I was before going into the ER in March, let alone the years before when I was in pretty good shape. I get up and move very slowly, and I can’t get up at all without help if I sit on a couch or the floor… or fall. I can make sudden movements sideways, when I had no intention of doing so. I am not a ninja vampire. This is common for people who spend a month in the hospital: your body atrophies every day you spend in that comfortable bed. So my physical condition is consistent with my hospital stay. If I did fall off the roof, a lot of inconvenient questions would come from to those who saw it… or me after it.

But I am recovering very quickly. My physical therapy sessions end after only three of them. I shuffle along faster in my walkers: I have both two-wheeled (for inside) and four-wheeled (to go the

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distance and bring a chair to boot) walkers that I need less and less every day. Hemodialysis is very draining initially, but within a month I can drive myself to the sessions. My family is freed from watching and helping me 24x7, and they can get on with their lives as I get on with mine.

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