Blood Money

I meet Valerie when I go to work on our first live body.

Coincidentally, this is also my first time proving myself as the newest member of The Vultures. They’re letting me do the honors of slicing out some poor guy’s kidney. This is my initiation.

I’m extremely nervous, not just because I’ve never touched a scalpel to human skin before (that I can remember), but because we’re not dealing with lifeless bodies anymore. If we take a wrong turn, fuck up something dire, we’re screwed. Once the anesthesia wears off and he finds out I accidentally sliced his goddamn trachea open or something, we’re done for.

“Don’t be stupid, Opal,” Ruby says with a roll of her eyes, “The trachea is nowhere near the kidneys. You’d have to be an idiot to fuck that up.”

Oh, yeah. No sweat.

Jonesy, the hospital friend (who I find out is actually the only “friend” of theirs who isn’t being blackmailed by them, just “stupid enough to agree to work with us”, as Jasper puts it) has set us up with a new line of work. He knows people who know people who know people who are desperate to give up their valuable bodily organs to support their families. Or their drug addictions, who knows.

And so it begins.

For the most part, we stop taking in dead people, which pisses Chu off (I still haven’t met him, for the record) because the Red Market has become a large portion of the profits aside from his funeral services. Apparently his business is going down the tubes and he’s become too reliant on our illegal services. We still occasionally let him drain the blood from his bodies and give it to us to sell, however, which seems to keep his discord with us at bay.

For now, at least.

“Oh, que c’est beau!” are the first words that Valerie breathes when she sees the short, balding man lying unconscious on the metal table in Chu’s basement. I turn to Jasper, raising my eyebrows.

“Valerie?”

He nods.

“Valerie.”

I turn to Ruby-Valerie and decide to humor her. I know how her mental disorder operates by now.

“Nice to meet you, Valerie,” I tell her, trying not to laugh.

“Enchanté,” she replies, batting her eyelashes. Jasper snorts from behind me and I can’t help but think she has the most beautiful mannerisms. I’m getting distracted.

Jasper walks me through the process, giving me advice as he traces his fingers over our patient’s skin and points to each grotesque body part I’m supposed to weave through and cut and move aside to get that precious kidney out. I feel like I’m hunting for a treasure chest. X marks the spot.

Valerie narrates what I’m doing, step by step, in French, as she twirls around the room, lost in a dream. The whole process feels beautiful and majestic despite the actual cringe-worthiness of it all. I operate the tools with such swiftness that I feel like a dancer in Swan Lake. This is our ballet. One, two, three, one, two, three, incision just below the renal artery.

“D'abord, vous mettez le corps de son côté.”

First, you put the body on its side.

“Couper, couper, couper,” she sings, “douze pouces de long!”

Cut, cut, cut, twelve inches long.

“Couper le muscle, couper dans le gras, couper le tissu.”

Cut the muscle, cut the fat, cut the tissue.

“Couper le tube d'urine!”

Cut the piss tube that carries urine to the bladder.

“Maintenant vous retirez le rein.”

Now you remove the kidney.

“Point fermé.”

Stitch it closed.

“And there you have it,” Jasper says, “Our ticket to one percent living.”

I hold the gross pink bean-shaped organ in my gloved hands. Blood leaks off of it, towards the center of my palms, and through the crack where my two hands meet. The bodily fluid crawls down my arms and stains my skin, but I don’t care. It’s beautiful. I’m hooked.

“Magnifique,” Valerie whispers, gazing at it in awe. “ça me rappelle ma sœur…”

“She’s talking about her sister again,” Jasper rolls his eyes.

“I wonder where she ees right now,” Valerie speaks in broken English, “I miss her oh so much.”

I watch as she stares at this man’s kidney lying in my hands, soft tissue lying around its membranes in varying pink shades. She spaces out and blinks, just like she always does when she’s snapping back into reality and turning into Ruby again.

Except this time, she doesn’t turn into Ruby. She turns into someone I’ve never met before.

She lifts her head to look at me and cocks it to the right, gazing at me curiously. Instantly, a vision of a beautiful pinup movie star dame fills my head and replaces Ruby’s figure in front of me. Her dark skin blanches, her black eyes fade to deep ocean blue, and her hair elongates, turning a soft brown color. It’s funny how fast I’m able to make up a face to match her voice.

I’m already in love with her before she even says her name.

“Hey, sugar,” she speaks to me in a gentle, airy way, almost like she’s caressing me with her breath. I can’t stop staring at her, this made up character invading my mind. I don’t see Ruby anymore. All I can see is this ethereal woman in front of me, and I half expect her to start singing, “Happy birthday, Mister President” to me in a hushed and sultry tone.

“I’m Lily,” she says, “Lily of the Valley. And you are?”