So I have a vampire who's squeamish about blood and only drinks type AB, so he goes after hospital/blood bank bags to store. I imagine he would have some sort of system in place, but I need to know about countermeasures. What systems to hospitals have in place to stop blood thieves? Is it behind lock and key? Is there a person he would need to get past? Are there cameras? Do they check inventory and if some are missing, do they consult video recordings? Someone school me on how this guy would steal blood. Thanks.
Interesting concept. I work in a hospital. When someone requires blood the lab on site provides it. The lab is an unlabeled area in the building behind key code doors and is occupied by an employee 24/7. Everything is inventoried in a hospital. Blood banks and the actual courier who transports blood to the hospital would be an easier target me thinks. They come and go all hours of the day and night. I think you would defiantly need an inside contact to pull off blood theft consistently and getting a specific type of blood seems damn near impossible without an insiders access to records and inventory. And then there is the unfortunate issue of the blood shortage; people are not donating blood nearly as much as they used to. The shortage is not at emergency levels like it has been in the past but it's bad Best wishes.
Great notes. Thanks! So the blood type isn't labeled on the bag or anything? Surprising since I would think they'd need to know what they're giving the recipient. Do they have to log into the system and confirm before they give a person blood?
Keep in mind that in many/most states the transport of human blood without permit is a crime, and it is treated as a HAZMAT issue. In your scenario I would think that it would be easier for your vampire to locate a number of AB type people and pay them for blood, inferring some sort of fetish to explain why he/she is requesting it. This would likely involve your vamp with some rather sketchy people, which ought to be worth some word count/plot hook ideas.
I like the direction that @RWK is going, but I wouldn't do it as a fetish thing. They could pose as blood donor clinician from a vehicle retrofitted to appear 'normal', and screen out their prey without raising too much suspicion. Alternatively if you like the hospital angle, they could be or pose as a resident doctor to gain access to such places as the blood bank. Perhaps even have them work directly in the lab area. Though it could raise a few eyebrows when blood starts mysteriously vanishing. Hitting the couriers is another good idea, or even posing as one could word as well. Or if you want to get gritty, have him start a blood farm. Harvesting the blood in mass from the select individuals he lures in by whatever means they wish. People go in and they don't come back out. Adds a bit of something extra and a little more dark, than the old bite and suck approach. For extra fun, why not have them bound to a chair and he sucks their blood out of them with a really long crazy straw. No one would expect that.
I like the direction that @RWK is going, but I wouldn't do it as a fetish thing. They could pose as blood donor clinician from a vehicle retrofitted to appear 'normal', and screen out their prey without raising too much suspicion. Alternatively if you like the hospital angle, they could be or pose as a resident doctor to gain access to such places as the blood bank. Perhaps even have them work directly in the lab area. Though it could raise a few eyebrows when blood starts mysteriously vanishing. Hitting the couriers is another good idea, or even posing as one could word as well. Or if you want to get gritty, have him start a blood farm. Harvesting the blood in mass from the select individuals he lures in by whatever means they wish. People go in and they don't come back out. Adds a bit of something extra and a little more dark, than the old bite and suck approach. For extra fun, why not have them bound to a chair and he sucks their blood out of them with a really long crazy straw. No one would expect that.
You can't use a straw on a living subject. The blood pressure on the out-going cycle (I assume a vampire wants filtered oxygenated blood) is too high. A guy in Virginia tried it back in the 1990s, made a heck of a mess.
I'm sure they have a labeling system. I'm sure they know what blood type is in what bag. If a person is bleeding out in an emergency they use whatever blood they can get to keep oxygenated blood circulating. That's the only time I have seen emergency workers not fuss with blood types otherwise medical professionals make the applicable request to the lab. When lab runs low they get a courier to bring in the new blood from wherever. I assume a blood bank but I honestly don't know where the new blood comes from because I am not apart of that process
I have to imagine isn't not that hard to get hold of blood if you were suitably motivated. If you can find a doctor who will sell you percocet or oxycodone I bet you can find someone who will sell you bags of blood. It's definitely illegal to acquire random bags of blood but it's definitely nothing like as illegal a acquiring schedule one narcotics without a prescription. I dare say that blood is kept under lock and key but I suspect they haven't even thought about people stealing blood, I think it's much more likely to ensure that the blood is still safe and usable and hasn't been put on the wrong shelf etc. That's a different kind of security. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I doubt that if anyone with the right ID and a doctors coat walks into the blood storage, takes a bag and sods off, most people presume that they are supposed to be doing that. After all, why would you be just wandering around with a bag of blood anyway? Other than putting it in other people there's not a huge amount of uses for it. In fact, if your vampire is quite clever then he might find a bribable doctor and get himself diagnosed with something that requires frequent blood transfusions (I'm pretty sure there are some things; severe anemia or some types of leukemia I think) and this would mean that no-one would even notice that this is happening. The only difference is instead of the doctor sticking a needle in the guy, the vamp picks up his blood and discrete sods off. This would be my approach; it's quiet and even someone who is looking very hard at the records isn't going to see anything weird. No blood unaccounted for. Yeah, I have to guess there is a labeling system. And, indeed, I have to imagine that the blood that trauma teams etc use is all O- and so is universally usable which might explain why their blood isn't necessarily labeled and why they don't even look at it.
Stealing blood is out except for one-time hits as inventory control is universal; the computer will quickly pick up on units gone without being expended. MDs also do not usually pick up blood; that is a nurse or NA job, or in-house courier in larger establishments. People wandering around hospitals with bogus IDs go to jail frequently. Addicts come up with the idea of donning scrubs and trying to get dope. Buying is the simplest solution. You need not interact with the medical profession at all.
Really? Who do you buy from then? I mean, I'm open to the idea that someone could, in principle, send out for a couple of bags of blood, but that seems like the sort of thing where, absent a medical degree, you are going to be asked some pretty serious questions by the supply company surely? Not because they think you're a vampire; probably more because blood is typically in short supply and if you're going to throw blood filled water balloons at people that sort of thing really damages the supply companies reputation, surely? I mean, I agree that buying blood is the answer here, just I think it seems a bit more true to life if you buy it from a bent doctor rather than from BloodRUs
There are a number of options. When blood expires or is not suitable for transfusion it is picked up from the blood bank and taken to a medical waste disposal facility. That is one place that would be easier to intercept it. Researchers, both commercial and university, might contract with a plasma center or the blood bank to acquire blood products. Your vampire might have a deal with someone in research or at a university lab. If a blood bank or pharmacy that would manage blood were large enough to have the supply you'd need, they would have 24/7 staffing. Like embezzling, it would be difficult to obtain a regular supply of a rare blood type without being noticed. Or consider getting it from a blood bank just over the border in Mexico where regulations might plausibly be more lax. You are talking fiction. All you need is plausible.
I would use Craigslist were I on the market. There are various people who buy Human blood for non-medical purposes, and extraction isn't all that hard. Best of all, its basically legal so long as you do not expose anyone to disease and meet HAZMAT regs as to storage and movement, neither of which would be an issue for a vampire. There are a lot of strange people out there, including a lot of wannabe vampires who like the real stuff for display at parties.
Yeah, you can just have your vamp set up a bioresearch firm and order it bulk. Legally. From places like Cambridge Biosciences.
I bow to your greater experience. Although I will add that it may not quite set the mood that the OP was looking for. Just think for a second. "Where do you even get that blood from?" The intrepid reporter asked. "Oh I just go on Craigslist." Doesn't quite have the, er... Gothic overtones(?) I think this is a better idea. Presuming that this is actually a thing that you can reasonably do without answering too many questions (a vampire would probably fill out paperwork and/or set up a phony company) then I think this would work ok. It would give you proper blood bags without having to spend the time filling them, and it would give him the potential to have his supply cut off at some point. He can start out ordering blood like it's Tesco Online and end up chasing people around with a milkshake straw. Nice.
Definitely now on my reading list. ... I like the idea of your white-coated vampire wandering bed to bed, checking charts at the end of the bed, then when he locates his AB he opens a black box below her toes, 'Excuse me I need your blood,' he says, and 'thank you,' he says, places the most archaic steel syringe at the bottom of the bed, sniffs, inhales the aroma of his needle, locates a vein, gurgles with pleasure and drinks blood from the lance, all hot.
See now that would be cool, although I think that he meant more setting up a sham research place then ordering in outside blood, rather than setting up a genuine research facility and preying on the patients. Again, it's cool image that he is literally Dr Acula wandering between patients but running a legit research place with actual for real patients and a legit medical staff (at least nurses...) is a really expensive endeavor and very very time consuming too. It's not quite a 24/7 job to pretend to be the clinical head of a facility but it's close and it really does cover all of the daytime hours which is a bit sub-optimal in a building with lots of nice airy windows and a catering and cleaning staff nosing around. Why is he going to this much effort when blood is all he wants? But that doesn't mean it's not a cool idea and I think it's one with some real legs. How about this; he sets up a fake research organisation and has acquired three or four patients who are now in his basement that's made up to look like a hospital and kept in comas or otherwise drugged or crazy and constantly being milked for their blood. He can find a handful of people who are all old or crazy or crippled and who all have the right blood type for him and thus as long as he makes it home he has all the blood he could ever want and deliciously fresh too. Depending on the tone you can play this up as him being evil, since he's imprisoning people and telling them they are in a hospital while he steals their blood; him being pathetic because he can't face actually attacking people and would rather keep these abandoned old people alive as best he can, or just a bit of comedy business as he struggles to find the right wig and the comedy mustache that he now greatly regrets wearing the first time he woke them up. I appreciate that this is very dark but it's vampires for god's sake. You can play it however you need it to play off and it gives him some characters kicking around for him to go and talk to. I quite like the image of him just despondently playing droughts with an old lady is a rediculous doctors costume because it's day time and he has literally nothing better to do. Even more than this I like the idea of him becoming quite friendly with his prisoners and them giving him advice about his love life and similar. You know, while he drinks their blood. You may have first dibs on this idea but if you decide you don't want to use it, please let me know so I can write it
Well, that always happens to me, yes @1000 words to begin with... [I thought the 'secret scandal' was that hospital blood made absolutely no difference to survival - a radio documentary]
Perfect. "Paging Doctor Acula, paging Doctor Acula, you have a call on outside line seven." Yeah, I was thinking more just a research organization on paper. Could even set it up as a nonprofit to avoid attention from the IRS. This is creepy, and I love it.
You have a deal. I shall give up my valuable porn writing time tomorrow for the sake of writing sad vampires. Thank you. I do my best. Suffice to say; that grey area between funny, terrifying and depressing is very much my niche. Perhaps I can interest you in my earlier books about a teenage boy sleeping with his mother or a teenage girl pretending to have cancer? Edit for clarity; yes that is literally what my books are about. In surely unrelated news I have yet to find a publisher.
Mr. 1 and Mr. 4 are as still as stones. Miss 2 is a living veg, and well Mr.3 well lets just say he twitches when you stab him in the toes with electrified probes. Not really sure if Mr. 3 will be a good candidate, he was in that other room an awful long time. And nobody bothered to check on him. Best estimates it was four days ago, and I am not going to hose the smelly blighter down a sixth time. Granted rubbag collection is on Tuesday. And I had always wanted to get of the horrid gaudy rug Grandmummy left when she expired. (Whistling, early Tuesday Morn with a rolled rug over the shoulder.) Tough break there Mr. 3 old chummy. (Flips the body filled carpet into the dumpster, which responds with a dulled clang) I really do wish these things came with a use by date somewhere on them. (Whistling walking back to the house, as the neighbors watch on in confusion) Ah damn it...that old spinster might no somethin. Bout time I took her for ride to the woods she always wanted.
“Come on...” I gently disconnect the tube from her arm. “There we go.” I smile as I take the bag off the frame by her bed and drop it into the cooler box. She smiles. “You’re a good lad.” “See you at supper ok.” I glance around. “You’ve got the remote?” “Yeah.” “Alright. Have fun.” That’s Rosemary. And she has some kind of arthritis I think. I looked online and it said she might have Lupus, but apparently that’s really rare. So she’s probably not dying. I mean, she is really old, so in a sense I guess. But she’s not literally dying right now. I’d taste it. She lost her foot to diabetes and then when her husband died, well, no-one left to notice that she hadn’t left the house in a month. That was when we met. And we decided that she’d be better off living with me, with someone to look after her. I say we. But she is better off here. Always someone to talk to, three meals a day, someone to help her with her pills. It’s like live in care, like a nursing home, almost. I don’t have enough room for shuffle board or anything, and since Mr Hopkins died there isn’t enough to play bridge, but we’re happy here. The big doors swing behind me as I head up the stairs. I make sure they’ve closed behind me before I pull a plastic bag out of the cooler box. I smile as I feel that it’s still warm. I bite the top off and stick a straw into the bag. Makes making all those ready meal worthwhile. Not that I’m thrilled to be playing droughts all day long or nipping to the library to find Mrs Dennis big print Jilly Cooper novels. It turns out she wasn’t quite as old as I thought, she just couldn’t be bothered to get her greys touched up for a few months. And I don’t mind getting her stuff. Just that the woman at the check out counter keeps giving me really weird looks, coming in to check out lady porn and only when they’re open late. It’s not exactly ideal. But god knows the day is long. Trust me, you’d rather have someone to talk to, even if they are all dying. Everyone’s dying anyway, well almost everyone. Most of them would already be dead without me, rotting away in their sad little houses waiting for no-one to call. It’s better they’re here; somewhere nice to see out their last years. No-one’s going to notice. They are happier here. I know it’s a bit weird, having three pensioners in your basement. But it doesn’t really make much difference to them. Not like they were getting out of bed much anyway. We’re just a happy little family. They get some company. And I don’t have to tear someone’s throat out. It works for everyone. That’s why we all decided to live like this. I say we. I dab the corner of my mouth, tasting copper. Always a little bitter medical after taste. But that’s pretty much standard these days. It’s not as bad as the vitamin nutters anyway. And it’s fresh. Free range, you know? Right from the source. Fair trade. Certified organic, all that. And seriously, do you know how rare AB negative is?
