One of the strangest policies that the hospital had started following was that concerned with patients who had no medical insurance and was willing to pay in cash... The policy was simply squeezing the money out of them! Expensive medications, multivitamins, unnecessary laboratory tests and so... I didn`t think it was a good medical practice, and I thought it would bring troubles to Dr. Aiden and to the whole hospital sooner or later, "but until it happens...", I thought, "I`ll be doing my job"..

For example we can talk about that patient who came in asking for blood transfusion… It was a strange request… Well sir do you have medical insurance? No, I`ll pay for it… Why is it that you want blood transfusion? Because I have anemia… How do you know that you have anemia? Just do the test and you will find out… We complied… Actually we didn`t do only anemia test, but a whole blood count, and a dozen of other blood tests… The man didn`t complain, he was almost saying: "Just give me the blood."!

It was Dr. Jose`s case, but it was not really much of a case, so he decided to leave it to me… I was not a friend of Dr. Jose, but we knew each other fairly well, and he trusted me not to kill the patient…

After the blood typing and some heart and lung checks, the nurse went to start giving him the blood… All nurses hated me so I did not follow her directly to the patient`s room… Just stayed at the office, checking tests results, which seemed eccentric to me!

The man was horribly anemic! I would not believe such a test result if I did not see it myself, because it looked like a test result of a corpse! Very low blood pressure, and yet high sugar level… Heart rate was normal, which was strange because he was supposed to have some tachycardia due to low blood pressure… I could wrap my head around his results except for the RBCs count, according to which the patient`s face should be as white as a paper! "I cant miss that!" I thought…

With the report in my hand, I went to the patient`s room… I stepped in where the nurse was connecting the blood bag to his IV line… That was the first time for me to set eyes on him, because, as I have said, it was Dr. Jose`s case…

He was a white male, may be forty years old… Blonde… His hair was long and messy… The dark skin below his eyes and the nervous looks he kept throwing at the blood bag, and at me when I came in, well they gave me the impression that he was a junky! Yes… The urge he could barely stifle suggested that he had missed his last dose! He stared at me for seconds, then blood started flowing in through his veins… At that point, he closed his eyes in a mixture of pleasure and pain, exactly like an addict having his dose! I kept my eyes on him while he relaxed, sinking into the pillow behind his head…That was the moment he was aiming at,, willing to pay for… But it was just confusing, as no one could be addicted to blood… "Oh, wait", I thought… "Could be some iron metabolism disorder.. .Yeah… This results in reduced level of haem in blood and the patient tends to compensate that even by sucking blood! A human vampire!"… I thought about that, and smiled, that was when the nurse, after finishing her job, passing by me… She gave me a look and left… I hoped she had not thought that I was smiling at her…

The patient opened his eyes, and stared at me, alerted… I looked at him, puzzled, then felt someone was behind me… I looked and found it was Dr. Bowen… He was staring at the patient and the patient was staring back… I greeted:

"Hey, Dr. John…"

"Hey", Dr. Bowen said, dismissively… I moved my eyes between them.. John was searching the man in suspicion.. I thought he might have heard of the case, but no… I knew that look… John, as usual, had noticed something odd about the patient… I looked back at the patient, trying to find out what had caught Dr. John`s attention, but I could not… I thought it could be the…

"Do we smell that bad?", John said, sharply, to the patient… I did not understand what he meant by that… The patient also looked confused for a few seconds, then suddenly something changed in the picture… The patient`s chest started moving up and down… He had just started breathing!

I looked at Dr. Bowen, then at the patient, wondering, unbelieving:

"He wasn`t breathing? Why? Why were you holding your breath?

And how could Dr. Bowen notice that? It felt like there was a big story going on, but unfortunately I was not a part of it… They both kept staring and staring back, but I could see tension and worry in the patient`s eyes… Of course… No one could beat Dr. Bowen in eye contact

"I wanna have a word with you", Dr. Bowen said, not looking at me, but at the patient instead… He then left, and I followed him… I followed him all the way back to my office, feeling like there was something going to happen that would change my life… I was not sure whether Dr. Bowen had really worked for the CIA or not, but my best guess was that he had not.. . At most it might have been an assignment with them and it was over, like working on a super soldier project or something, but who knew?

We reached my office without having a word… In there, Dr. Bowen turned to me, preparing to say something huge… I tried to stay cool…

"So what was that?", I asked casually…

He did not answer directly, but instead he got two pieces of paper out of his pocket and offered them to me… I looked, hesitantly, then took them, with a stupid idea in my head: "Tickets to the moon! Tickets to the moon! Does NASA provide this kind of service?" I was silly!

"What are these?" I asked, examining them, trying to find out what these thing were…

"Tickets… Concert… Tomorrow night…"

"Tickets?"

"Yeah", he said, searching my face, while I was trying to figure out what were those tickets for… They were for a concert.. A singing concert near where I lived… I was skimming the tickets` fine print when I suddenly saw the name and the logo of the singer… Not a singer, but (the) singer! The female singer t=who I was used to… "Oh my God, I am not going back to that again…"

"What the…", I wondered, almost whispering… Dr. Bowen obviously was having a lot of fun examining my expressions… He said:

"I`ve kept these things on me for a month by now…"

I swallowed, not knowing what to say… My heart, of course, was racing… "Will I finally meet her?"… I didn't actually know what a concert looked like, because I had never been to one before… I tried to picture it… "Me among the crowd, screaming… Hot, thrilled, overwhelmed by the atmosphere, and she there… Bad loud sound, bright lights on the stage and dim light where we are… Excitement… Screaming… Old dreams coming back to life, then… Thank you, have a good night… And then back to work the next morning…"... Well, that was not exactly appealing…

"Very smart, Dr. Bowen, aren`t you?" , I thought, "You know everything about me… Well, I`ve got a surprise for you…"…

"I`m sorry but I can`t do that", I said, handing him the two tickets back… He took them, in confidence, trying to talk me into it:

"You would finally have the chance to meet her…"

"Thank you, I`m not a fan…"

"You don`t understand, do you? You would meet her, say hi, and see if she remembers you…"

"Say what?"

I did not act typically and ask him how he knew we had contacted before, God only knows how he managed to know everything like that… The month before we were used to hang around each other a lot, and that was a dangerous thing… I guessed he knew how often I went to the bathroom!

"Yeah", he said, nodding his head, then added:

"There`s CD signing after the concert… One hour… You`ll get to meet her, face to face… If it`s half of what you think, she will remember you… After that you will be able to go on with your life!"

I was in a bind, lost for words… Dr. Bowen, with a smile, shoved the two tickets into my chest.. I held them while he was adding:

"The CD signing attendance is for one hundred dollars more, you`ll have to pay for that… Tomorrow night, I`ll pick you up by seven… Happy birthday…"

"My birthday was four months ago!"

"I know…"…