He shifts his gaze from the faded green chewing gum stuck to the underbelly of an ill-fated bench as he hears a name being called. At last, one out of the many names to emerge from the dark mouth of the loudspeaker is familiar to him. He sniffs, more out of habit than any discomfort due to the weather. As an afterthought, for good effect, he lightly rubs the tip of his nose with the back of his knuckles. Cold. The two boys sitting next to him swapping stories of oft-told conquests glance at him, suspicious. He ignores them and rises from his own warm, indented seat reluctantly. Not for the first time, he has doubts. As he walks to the see-through swinging doors, he imagines a needle penetrating his flesh, then his vein, a tiny speck of blood creeps out the sides of the puncture wound. He tries to suppress the shudder, pass it off as a tic. An old man wrapped in a dirty woolen shawl peers up at him. Once again, he deliberately ignores a curious bystander. It's important to him to believe that there are no witnesses.

As he touches the glass doors, he feels a sudden paranoia. Theycouldhavemyprintstheyhavemyprints. He forces himself to leave the barely noticable prints on the door and shuts its behind him resolutely. It takes him a scond to remember that there is no CSI in Pakistan. He finally looks up. White everywhere. Lab coats, the desks, the walls, all white. An antiseptic heaven. An Antiseptic St. Peter greets him with his name and motions to a chair, probably the only object in the room with any real richness of color. How appropriate, he thinks, and tosses himself into the chair with apathy of someone tossing keys onto a desk at the end of the day.

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The Antiseptic St. Peter held the empty syringe up to the light for a brief moment, then looked at the boy in front of him. He was repeatedly muttering something under his breath, a sure sign of dementia, according to his late father. St Peter was actually named Dr. Afzal and it was his job to sit at the front desk of this particular blood bank for ten hours a day and take blood samples from people who walked in the door. For all he knew, they could be carrying anything, from the HIV virus to Tuberculosis, and it was his job to ferret out which ones were innocently hopong to give some uninfected, pure blood to loved ones in hospitals and which ones were just troublemakers. This boy, "Ali Khan", the desi equivalent of John Smith, had the look of a troublemaker, which is why the good doctor now hesitated and looked warily at the scrawny boy.

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The mental mantras were bullshit. He sat in his brown chair and suddenly realised that the systematically soothing phrases he kept repeating to himself over and over in situations that were, to put it mildly, tense, were nothing but a mind trick. The doctor in the white lab coat paused as he held up the enpty syringe. Held it up for what? To check if it was empty enough? If there was any space, any deadly air bubbles within? The doctor (he was no St. Peter) moved closer, his head blocking out the spotless white bulb behind it and paused for a fraction of a second to squint at the patient. Impatience rose up from the base of his spine. Almost subconsciously he resumed his mental mantras. Justdoitjustdoitjustdoit. The matras stopped absuptly as the needle made contact with the skin and a slight prick followed. It was that easy, but he would never have had the guts to make the puncture himself. He knew what the prelimenaries would show, but he waited, this time with all the patience in the world.

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