((Compelling aspect: Hippocratic oath in peril))
After a long day at the clinic Kyra is getting ready to punch out, go home, put up her feet and watch a few episodes of Big Bang Theory with a nice bowl of vanilla ice cream and hot fudge. The stress of the job has been getting to her more and more recently. With her unholy thirst rearing its ugly head at the sight of blood working with injured patients and not eating them takes almost all her will power. At times the thirst is literally dizzying, and the odd cold blood pack she steals from the clinic’s reserves does almost nothing to quench it.
She gulps down a cup of cool water from the cooler but the dry, cottony feeling in her throat lingers, along with the hunger in her empty belly. At the moment she just wants blood so badly she could cry, when suddenly a man stumbles through the doors yelling for a doctor. The man is clutching his neck as blood gushes from between his fingers. His shirt is already soaked with so much blood the entire front of it is stained dark red.
“Help me!” he cries desperately, turning to Kyra. He reaches out for her and she instinctually holds out her arms. His legs crumble and the man just collapses into her embrace. He is heavy and warm and wet. The scent of the blood is more than she can take. She can feel her fangs push down beneath her clenched lips. She looks down at the man, breathing heavily through her knows and sees his neck wound, which is clearly a bite of a very familiar type.
The man has already been bitten, which means he is also infected, and if he survives he will likely become a vampire himself. She could do the world a favor by finishing him off. It would be so easy to take him into one of the empty patient rooms and just gorge herself. Then she remembers what killing this man would mean. Thomas had told her she could retain her humanity only as long she resisted the urge to drain a human being. Perhaps she could feed just a little, just to quench her thirst. But would she be able to stop once she started? Even if she did he would almost certainly become a vampire if he survived; how could she be sure letting him live is even the right choice?
While she stands there holding the man’s limp body using all her strength and concentration to just keep her mouth closed one of the orderlies finally notices her predicament and comes over with a stretcher, which he helps her pull the man up onto. A nurse rushes over with bandages and gauze that she immediately applies to the man’s neck to try and stop the flow while Kyra remains paralyzed; unable to move because if she did she would certainly attack the blood-covered patient. The nurse tries in vain to get Kyra’s attention, calling to her, asking her what they should do.
It seems to Kyra that the woman’s voice is coming from a thousand miles away; all she can really hear is her pulse, and the pulse of the bleeding man in front of her. Everything seems to be going in slow motion and it is an eternity before the nurse finally gives up and with the orderly’s help wheels the stretcher toward an empty room. “We’re going to need a transfusion,” she calls out to another nurse. The words echo in Kyra’s ears, but she can’t hear them. There is only one thing on her mind. She has to feed, now.
Subject: Do No Harm (ATTN Kyra) 
Mon Mar 11, 2013 8:51 pm
