Vampires, Psychic and Otherwise

But I thought he'd just send me across the street to the hospital to have my blood drawn. I wasn't expecting to be handed a sheaf of papers and told to report to a place called... "LabCorp."

LabCorp.

It sounded just a little too much like something David Cronenberg would come up with, like Spectradyne. A place that was conducting evil and insidious psychoplasmic experiments on the unwary. Who knows what more could be wrong with me by the time I left? Sure, I might get lucky, and after a visit there, my rage might start giving rise to wrinkly killer midgets who would dispose of all of my enemies, one by one, in the most brutal of fashions. It might be worth it.

"So," I asked the doctor, "should I, uh, call and make an appointment, or...?"

"Oh, no need," he said. "Just stop on by, whenever."

With a name like "LabCorp," I was expecting something cold and sterile, bright white walls and polished stainless-steel furniture. Certainly not a grimy walk-up on 5th Ave. just off 10th St. in Brooklyn.

The sheet I'd been given told me they opened at 8, so I swung by around 10 after on a Wednesday morning. I was told I had to go in before I ate anything that day, so the earlier, the better. The place, squeezed between a drugstore and (I believe) another drugstore, looked more like an apartment building than a professional office complex, but there I was. So I hit the buzzer and waited. Nothing. Funny, but on the way there, that's pretty much what I had come to expect.

So I took a pleasant stroll around the block, had a couple more smokes. I hadn't spent much time in that little corner of Brooklyn, but I'd been around plenty that were exactly like it. So I kept my head down and my feet moving.

When I arrived back at LabCorp's door?by now it was about 8:20?I hit the buzzer again and waited.

Eventually, long after any saner man would've gone home, poured himself a cup of coffee, maybe flipped through a newspaper, there was a buzz and a click, and I pulled the door open. I stepped inside, praying the office would make itself obvious.

It didn't. There was no indication of anything. Just a staircase to the left and a short hallway to the right leading to an unmarked door. Stuck to the wall was a piece of colored paper, upon which was printed, "No Smoking in the Lobby."

I guess this is the lobby.

So I started walking up the stairs slowly, eyes scanning for anything that might give me any indication whatsoever where I should be heading, ears peeled for the sound of human screams. Everything was silent.

I hit the second floor and began wandering the corridor, looking for signs. The floors were dirty tile, the walls gray and smoke-stained. Finally, after three passes up and down the hall, just when I'd reached the point of deciding to try the third floor, I noticed another piece of pale yellow paper taped to the wall. "LabCorp" was printed on this one, and beneath it someone had drawn an arrow pointing back down the hallway.

At the end of the hall, another sign, and another arrow. Then another.

I followed the arrows until I finally came to a door. The tiny LabCorp sticker told me I'd found what I was looking for. Christ, it was like the plastic surgeon's office in Dark Passage. I turned the knob and went inside.

There were a few chairs, a few sad cases sitting around, waiting. The floors and walls were as gray as they were in the hallway. Not the most comforting thing to notice in a place that's going to be sticking needles into your flesh.

At the window, the receptionist looked up and asked, "Drug test or blood work?"

"Gee whiz," I almost said, "I didn't know I had a choice."

Despite the possibilities, I signed the "blood" sheet, noticing I was the first name of the day?and that the list of names on the "drug" sheet corresponded with the number of people sitting behind me.

I found an empty chair and waited with them. It soon became apparent that the man behind the reception desk was the only one working there. He signed them in, took them to the back and did whatever heinous experiments LabCorp was up to, all by himself.

Yeah, just like Dark Passage, I kept thinking.

Maybe that's why I was so hesitant when the receptionist finally called my name, then led me to the back and told me to sit in "the big chair."

The bleeding room was, if possible, even grimier than the waiting room. When I used to sell my blood to pay the rent when I was 20, I expected the plasma center to be grimy. It was all part of the ambience, just one more thing carefully orchestrated to drive home the point that I was a loser. But here? At LabCorp? I was there for a high-tech, 21st-century medical procedure!

He took my left arm and laid it flat. I listened carefully for the crinkle of paper, to make sure he was at least unwrapping a new needle, and not just, you know, economizing.

When he was finished bleeding me, he handed me a small vial and sent me to the bathroom. On the way there, I began to suspect that my internist?a doctor I'd never seen before?had also arranged a drug test. He did seem a little suspicious when I told him I hadn't done anything in many a year.

Oh well.

I left the LabCorp office drained and suspicious. Who knows what my blood and piss were going to be used for? And even if they did come back with some "results," I was determined not to trust them. Hell, I could've done that much in my kitchen (and, in my own way, I have). What's more?my kitchen's cleaner.