Paddy's Day

At a quarter to six, I put the kettle on and throw teabags into two mugs. I leave them to brew and watch the clock. The minute hand ticks to ten to and the doorbell rings. Right on time.

Sara is unnaturally good at timekeeping. I honestly don't know how she does it but if you arrange to meet her at a specific time she always arrives at exactly the right time.

The right time by your clock.

It's uncanny. I've tried winding the clock forwards by as much as twenty minutes, she simply arrives twenty minutes early. Wind the clock back and she arrives late. Test her with more than one timepiece and she splits the difference. It's like magic, but no magic I know.

I open the door to an angry young woman. Sara bustles past me, straight down the corridor and into the living room, cradling her handbag in both arms. I push the door closed and go back to the kitchen to finish making the tea.

Sara is a hardened tea drinker. The bag has to have at least five minutes to brew and she drinks it without frivolous luxuries like milk or sugar. Like I say, hard-core. I mean, I like mine strong but even I need a splash of milk in there to take the edge off.

I carry the tea through to the living room where Sara is still unwrapping herself from her scarf, huffing and puffing in irritation. I don't ask, I just put the mugs on the coffee table, next to the needles and tubing, and go over to the telly and flick it on.

"God!" Sara exclaims as she slumps into an armchair.

"Everything alright?" I ask as I lay down on the couch and roll up my sleeve.

"Not exactly," she says and then comes over to me and takes my arm. She moans about her boyfriend, Richard, while she ties off my arm. I look away while she messes with the needles and the tubing and don't look back until I can feel the rubber against my arm.

Sara is a nurse. And an absolute natural at finding veins - this time I didn't even feel the needle going in, but there it is and my dark red blood is flowing nicely into the bag.

"There you go," she says as she holds the tube in place with a strip of tape. I can feel it vibrating against my skin in unison with my own pulse.

She sits back in the chair and fishes in her vast, amorphous handbag for her cigarettes. She lights one and picks up her cuppa.

Twenty minutes of bitching and another round of tea later, Sara clamps off the tubes, takes the needle out of my arm and seals the bag of blood she's just drained from me. I sit holding a wad of gauze in the crook of my arm.

"It's Paddy's Day today," she says as she passes me my warm blood pack. She's much calmer now, the venting has done her good.

"I had heard." I go through to the kitchen, chuck the pack in the fridge and grab a plaster from the drawer in the corner.

"Fancy a pint?" she calls through to me. And I do.

We head into town together and wind up at the Wetherspoons by Barkers Pool, where we both drink several pints of Guinness. Sara never ceases to amaze me - I've never seen a girl down the black stuff with such relish. "Irish roots," she tells me with a nod and a wink.

I'm tipsy quickly. After my fourth pint I fall over and crack my head on a bench. Sara can't stop laughing, even while blood I can ill-afford to lose trickles down my face. Her laughter is infectious though and soon has me giggling like an idiot.

Then the bar staff politely ask us to leave.