This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual places is purely coincidental.

For the lovers of midnight fantasy.

1 - Yasmin

New York, USA

A STRANGER SAVED my life. Someone determined to remain a mystery.

The thought had been haunting Yasmin Silver more and more lately. It seemed the stronger she became, here in the recovery ward at Bellevue, the greater her curiosity.

Mrs. Hudson was snoring in the next bed. Yasmin smiled and switched off the elderly woman’s game show. She’d gotten to know her neighbor fairly well over the last few months. Triple bypass heart surgery. No small thing. Yasmin would miss their philosophical chats. After all, both of them had cheated death. That fact set them apart from most of the living.

Yasmin yawned, but there wasn’t much conviction in it. Another night without sleep beckoned. Her insomnia had gotten worse even as she regained her health. The easy explanation was that all her blood transfusions had thrown her body out of sync.

But deep down she knew what her problem was.

She had to
know
.

Shaking the thought from her mind, Yasmin Silver looked at her reflection in the window. She had certainly regained color and glow in the last few weeks. She almost looked pretty again. He long, platinum hair had regained its silk - always a good sign. Her almond-shaped brown eyes no longer looked puffy and tired.

She had been born into a poor, migrant family. Her parents had emigrated to New York from Hungary and taken over a Harlem laundromat. Her childhood was full of adventure but not much in the way of material wealth.

Her parents never earned enough money to feel secure. They worked such long hours Yasmin never got to bask in their love. She learned from an early age that nothing came for free, not even a parent’s affection. It was a bitter lesson, and she held it close to her heart like a shield.

Which made a stranger’s kindness so perplexing.

Yasmin’s 20th birthday was what landed her in hospital. She’d allowed some friends to take her out to dinner in the village. Of course her boyfriend Hugo insisted on cocktail after cocktail. All the alcohol triggered one of her ‘episodes’. An episode was usually ten minutes of unconsciousness. This one was far worse. Yasmin woke in hospital, surrounded by a gaggle of frowning doctors.

They said she had a blood condition. That wasn’t news to Yasmin. The doctors also told her that she wouldn’t live to see her 21st birthday. The condition was so rare, so cryptic they couldn’t even give it an English name.

Yasmin had always known she had a blood disorder. As a child she was advised to take it easy, not to overdo things. Of course, she ignored all that, but apart from maybe one episode a year she felt normal. She would never have believed that she was on borrowed time. Certainly not that she would be dead before she’d been able to see the world.

Growing up in Harlem, shaped by her family’s financial hardship, she had always promised herself that she would explore as much of the planet as she could. Do everything that her parents couldn’t.

Which is why she made plans to be a nature photographer for one of the big travel magazines. Against the odds she scored a scholarship at Columbia University and built a darkroom in her apartment. Until that fateful night down in the village, where she passed out and didn’t wake for days, Yasmin Silver had a future that made her smile.

To have that future taken away by a bunch of white-coated doctors was a bitter pill to swallow. She knew it wasn’t their fault, but she found comfort in blaming
someone
.

Yasmin cried herself to sleep for weeks after the news. To make matters worse, she was moved to a ward for terminally ill patients. The nurses never admitted that, but an awful lot of Yasmin’s new neighbors were dying.

Her life became a series of depressing visits from friends and family. Hugo was the worst. Her boyfriend would kneel by the bed and cry on her stomach for hours.

Maybe he felt guilty for causing the episode that landed her in hospital. For some reason Yasmin didn’t have the energy to appease his guilt, nor did she ever join in his grief.

Yasmin’s tears were hers alone.

Just as every dream she’d ever had began to rot and wither on the vine, the first miracle occurred.

It came in the form of a small cool box delivered by courier and addressed specifically to her. The cool box contained a quart of blood in a sealed pack.

Perplexed, the doctors ran tests on the blood and found it to be clear of all known pathogens and viruses. In fact, the blood was so good it was regarded with extreme suspicion.

The blood had antibodies that stumped all the specialists called in to make an assessment. For this reason Yasmin’s doctors decided to withhold it.

A fresh quart of blood arrived by courier every day. Yasmin could only look on in bemusement as the cool box was whisked away by cautious doctors. It gave her a secret thrill to see them as confused as she was. They confirmed that the blood was coming from a single source, but to harvest so much of it each day would likely be putting the donor at severe risk of heart failure.

Yasmin didn’t know what to make of all this. All she knew was that desperate times called for desperate measures. Her health deteriorated to a point where she demanded the mysterious blood be used as it was intended - to replace her own.

The hospital authorities made Yasmin sign a form. From that moment the rest of her life beckoned. The nurses began transfusing the strange blood and her outlook improved almost immediately. The doctors fell over themselves to study Yasmin’s miraculous recovery, but none could determine how the blood was bringing her back from death.

Yasmin found it hard to trust people. Too many had let her down in life.

So she went about her usual routines, not daring to believe that she was getting stronger, hungrier, fitter. She couldn’t remember feeling so alert, so precise in her thoughts.

She began to notice small details in the ward that she would never have noticed before, such as the subtle smell of disease and the structural weaknesses in the walls. She heard people approaching from several corridors away. In essence, her senses were alive to anything that might harm her.

As the days slipped by Yasmin couldn’t deny that she began to feel better than ever before. She knew her survival depended on the arrival of that little blood pack every morning. She developed a phobia that perhaps it would stop coming, and that she would slip back into terminal illness. Back into the arms of death.

But the blood came like clockwork, a quart delivered right on nine in the morning. The doctors now accepted the routine with baffled resignation, saying the donor should be dead by now. No human could lose that much blood so quickly. For several weeks Yasmin swapped her own ailing blood for the fresh batch of an unknown savior.

First she grew obsessed with the courier. It was only natural, stuck in bed all day with nothing but the speculation to keep her company.

The boy seemed normal enough, shortish with straggly blond hair and pimples. He shrugged off her every question with a faint smile. He gave nothing to the doctors either, saying only that he was told where to pickup and where to deliver.

But
where
was the pickup exactly?

“The James A. Farley Post Office, of course.”

But
who
is your client?

“A dude.”

Well, that hardly narrowed it down. Yasmin tried to focus just on the fact that she was getting better. Where the blood came from didn’t matter right? It was no good.

The idea of this man, someone who would sacrifice himself in order to save her life, was like a cancer in her mind. She analyzed his potential motives from every angle and always came up with nothing. She
hated
not knowing
why
.

To understand this strange man’s motive was to understand her place in the world. Why had she, of all people, been given a second chance?

Yasmin sighed, watching winter rain lash the hospital window and collect into rivulets that zig-zagged down the pane. Her mind was behaving in the same way. In the last few days alone she’d had a hundred ideas on what she would do when she was discharged.

Two things she knew for sure. One - she couldn’t go back to her old life. Two - she had to know who had saved her.

These two realizations didn’t help Yasmin sleep any better. Things only got worse when she woke one morning, eager as usual for her precious blood pack. It never arrived. Panicking, she called for a doctor. He seemed to think that the donor was either satisfied she could now recover on her own, or dead.

However much Yasmin wanted to believe the first scenario, it was the second that clawed at her mind. Despite her concerns, her condition didn’t deteriorate. After three more days without blood transfusions Yasmin was bouncing around like any twenty year old should.

Her doctors announced she would be discharged within days. Now it was official, Yasmin felt a mixture of fear and excitement. She wasn’t going back to her old life - she was about to leap into the unknown.

On Tuesday morning she woke to a gaggle of smiling faces around her bed. Her parents and boyfriend, elated to see her finally released. Yasmin appreciated the concern but felt a little annoyed that she couldn’t immediately begin searching for her lifesaving donor.

There was one thing she had to do before she left. Extracting herself from Hugo’s grip, she pulled one of her doctors aside. Dr. Hardy had a kind, sympathetic face.

“Before I go,” she said firmly. “I need to know.”

Dr. Hardy winced, knowing exactly what Yasmin wanted. “All I can tell you is that the donor is accredited and the blood was clean.”

“Your tests found other things,” Yasmin said. “Antibodies, strange white cells.”

“We did,” the doctor admitted. “But I can assure you there was nothing wrong with that blood.”

“That’s not what I’m asking,” Yasmin said, losing a little patience. “What was your
opinion
?”

Dr. Hardy could see she wasn’t about to let it go. He pulled Yasmin in close, making sure no one else was within earshot.

“Listen,” he said. “I took that blood to a few people I know. It’s human, but unlike any I’ve seen. It had qualities …”

“Yes?” Yasmin prodded, heart in her mouth.

Dr. Hardy’s shoulders slumped. He’d passed the point of no return.

“The blood’s makeup was very similar to a wolf’s,” he said, almost embarrassed.

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