Roofs

“No houses on our joint income. Amasa pays me something, but it isn’t much above the minimum hourly wage, which doesn’t buy you much in the Bay Area. I should become a programmer for Facebook, but the schedule for dialysis is getting in the way.”

“You could change to a night dialysis, right?”

“If we were just patients, yes. But we don’t have that flexibility: the clinics puts us in whatever shift they need us, not what works for us. I thought the stipend would help, but the relationship is actually costing me money. And freedom. For both me and my family.”

“I am sorry to hear that. I hadn’t thought that through… everything is so new”

“Not for long”

ROOFS

After leaving Boronne I drive to Home Depot to talk with David about a mass purchase of siding, lumber, bolts, etc. My goal is to make twenty very small houses. I recently acquired a light-industrial unit off Old Middlefield road, and believe we can build twenty units in about a week. Probably two weeks, but the target is one.

There is no problem with the order, and the price is fine: about half of what Virginia gave me for the units, so the other half can be used to pay for the labor involved. If we get it done in two weeks, that will be fine. We might sell some of the units to defray costs, but the bulk will be donated to people living in tents or worse.

By the time I am done it is noon, so I head to dialysis. My clinic is in Menlo Park, almost within the Facebook 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 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 in a control room somewhere, regulating the flows between patients and vampires so nobody runs out of blood and patients get their own (cleaned) blood back. I feel like the RNs know something is unusual, but they keep their concerns and questions to themselves.

Josephine hooks me up, and for the next four hours I am trapped. Dialysis can be very draining for normal patients: cramps, sleepiness, etc. During the process it is draining for me also. I commonly need to sleep for most of it, but by the end I feel rested and energetic. Given my dialysis shift starts at noon while the sun is high, this aspect is somewhat ironic. I need to sleep for a while at night too, so maybe I am just half-vampire?

April

“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 an Amasaapproved clinic.”

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

“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, 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, having a 21 (out of 40) MELD score 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 Amasa, so she does not know anything is unusual about me… except for the story of catastrophic liver and kidney failure.

May

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 Amasa, I am in worse shape than I was before going into the ER in March, let alone the years before when I was fairly athletic. 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