Charlie's Bar - The Phlebotomist

"I tell you Gil, in all my years as a phlebotomist...," he broke off, shaking his head and taking a healthy swallow of scotch. "I have never had that happen to me, never."

It was quiet at Charlie's Bar, especially for election Tuesday. Charlie had never had much patience for "electioneering" as he called it. He was as patriotic as they came, always voted, made sure his staff did too. He kept himself knowledgeable, not only on the current events but the positions of the major political figures as well as the local representatives, but he was not political. He did not trust politicians. He would not let either party use him or his reputation. Charlie's was neutral ground. That was the reason it was so quiet. Every regular knew better than to darken the door on election night if they were even tempted to think a political thought. It was the one night of the year when the televisions were off and the music was calm and soothing.

Toby Hansen, the phlebotomist, was a regular and politics were the last thing on his mind.

"She was my last customer of the day," he began, letting his mind drift back several hours.

---///---

It had been a long tiring day for Toby Hansen. Traffic had been terrible. He suspected the high number of people trying to find their polling place so they could cast their vote in this historic election was partially to blame. People that until today did not care one way or the other who was making decisions for them suddenly had an opinion and were shocked to discover they did not know where to go to have it heard. The rain was not helping the traffic. It never did. He could not understand why this area seemed to lose its collective mind, not to mention feeble driving skills, when the first dribble of water or flake of snow would fall from the sky. People seem to come completely unglued and it added an extra layer of chaos to his already fouled up day.

He worked for Allied Health Corp, a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a wholly owned partnership twice removed from anything he considered reality, but they paid him, regularly and on time and that was all that mattered. His job was to take blood from people who wanted AHC to give them life insurance. He had gone to University and flunked out of medical school, could not hack it as a registered nurse and barely passed the exams to be an emergency medical technician. When AHC had said they were looking for people to become phlebotomist and the pay was better than he was getting as a volunteer EMT, he jumped at the chance. That had been five years ago. AHC was different from most insurance companies. They had their own lab and medical staff and for the pre-screen blood work, they sent the phlebotomists to the customer. As such, Toby had, in any given day, a half-a-dozen customers to pull several vials of blood out of. Most only took a couple of minutes each, but the company scheduled it at 30 minutes a customer plus the required travel times. Sometimes he got lucky and could wrap up his customers in a couple of hours and then take in a movie or play a round of golf. Sometimes, like today, the day never seemed to end. It was well past six already and he was just leaving his next to last appointment. His last appointment was several miles in rush hour traffic away and he had already had to cancel her once this month because of scheduling screw-ups. As he sat in the front seat of his car, he pulled out the clipboard and flipped open his cell phone, fumbling with the two as he tried to dial the numbers.

"Hello?"

"Mrs. Helen Diggs?" he said, vaguely recognizing the voice, a soft alto.

"Ms. Yes?"

"Sorry. This is Toby Hansen with Allied Health Corp. I am just on my way to you. I do apologize for the late hour."

"That is all right Mr. Hansen. I only just got home myself. When should I expect you?"

Toby sighed inwardly. At least she did not sound upset. "I hope to be there within thirty minutes, but the traffic seems worse than ever."

"Yes, it took me twice as long as it normally does. I will be here."

"Thank you. I will see you shortly. Good-bye."

"Good-bye," she said, hanging up.

Toby sighed again and pulled the map book out of the pile of papers on his passenger seat, flipping to the paperclip that held Helen Diggs address and map page. He preferred paper maps to the GPS units that the rest of the technicians seemed to be in love with. Maybe it was because he liked seeing more than just a little window on where he was going, or perhaps, like now, he could plot a couple of alternate routes that might not be the most efficient or direct, but could get him around most of the foul traffic that the computer generated route the company provided him would force him to drive through.

Toby checked his directions again, started the car, turned out the dome light and after making sure the coast was clear, pulled into the flow of traffic and made his way across town to the apartment of Helen Diggs.

Forty-five very frustrating minutes later, Toby Hansen was pulling into a parking spot in a sparsely filled parking lot in front of the garden apartments that housed his last client of the day. The rain had intensified during his drive and he had narrowly missed being part of several accidents where people had misjudged either their speed or the speed of the person behind or beside them. It was the usual stuff but enough to have pushed Toby to near breaking point at the end of this very long day. He took a moment to calm his breathing before picking up the clipboard again and checking it. Routine blood work, all the stickers were there. Two vials. It would take him no more than ten minutes. One more deep breathe, pop the latch on the trunk, and he got out of the car and walked swiftly around to the back, pulled out the bag and closed the trunk and dashed for the awning over the entry way to the stairwell. Ms. Diggs was on the second floor and a short walk up the stairs found him knocking on her door.

"Who is it?" she called from behind the door.

"Toby Hansen, Allied Health," he responded.

The bolt was unlocked and the door opened. Helen Diggs was standing in front of him, and swiftly backed up, the foyer too small to hold two people and he took her invitation and walked into the main room of her small apartment while she stepped behind him and secured the door again.

"Ms. Diggs? I am Toby Hansen," he said, offering her his hand and his identification.

"Yes. Hello. Thank you," she said, handing his ID back to him. Where would you like me?"

Toby took a moment to look around and indicated the couch. Ms. Diggs was young. He had forgotten that, twenty-six, according to her paperwork, which he took a quick glance at as she moved to the sofa and she was quite attractive. She was short but not small, curvy with well developed breasts and ass. He could feel a slight stirring in his pants as he tried to get his mind back on business.

"I'm sorry. I will need to see your driver's license or similar ID please," he said, as he put his bag on the coffee table.

"Of course," she said, reversing course and walking back around the table towards the door. He watched her move and tried not to focus on the way her ass shifted under the lightweight pants she was wearing. He felt his cock twitch just a bit more and the room seemed to heat up. He did not often have clients this close to his age and it had been a long time since any of them looked as pretty as Helen Diggs.

"Here you go," she said, her pretty voice forcing him to look up, her ID in her hand. He was looking directly at her chest from his seat on the sofa, her round breasts clearly supported but under a heavy cotton sweatshirt he could tell little more about them, other than they looked to be a good size, full and round the way he liked them. He wondered if her nipples were hard, pressing against the material of her bra.

"Thank you," he said, clearing his throat and taking the proffered license, using the clipboard to shield his burgeoning hard-on, which was pressing uncomfortably against the material of his boxers.

He reviewed the license making sure her name, address and birth date matched the paperwork. He had never encountered a switch, where someone who was not the intended recipient of the policy tried to act as blood provider, but a couple of his coworkers had run into it before, which is why the company insisted on a license check every time. If the individual had no proof of identification, then he had a multipage document they had to fill in and submit to the insurance company as well as pay for the blood work out of their own pocket.

"Thank you very much," he said passing her back her license which she put in her wallet and then, bending slightly, put back into her purse. There was just enough room at the collar of her sweatshirt that when she bent over, Toby could just see the curve of her breasts disappearing into the darkness deeper in her sweatshirt. His cock lurched in his pants and he could feel the first hints of wetness at the tip.

"Damn," he thought, "pull it together man or you are going to get a complaint." To give himself a chance to relax, he pulled his bag over to himself while he watched Ms. Diggs move back to the other end of the couch.

"I will be taking two vials of blood, checking your pulse, blood pressure, and asking you a couple of basic health questions," he said, slipping into the spiel while his hands dug around in the bag for the tools he would need. "If you have any questions or concerns, please bring them to my attention. If I could get you to sign these three pages. The first is a consent to have me take your blood for the purposes of validating your level of health as indicated in your online application for insurance. The second one the self-health questionnaire you filled out online. Please verify the answers are correct and sign it. If you need to make changes, please initial them and then sign it. The third is consent to have your blood tested for various antigens, most notably HIV/AIDS and others listed on the page. If you do not consent to any of these, then we are done for this evening. I will give you a couple of minutes to look them all over."

He passed her the clipboard with all the forms on it and while she was reading he got out the rest of his equipment, labeled the vials and made sure he was ready. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she read over the legal mumbo jumbo in the forms, unconsciously gnawing a little at her lower lip as she did so. It made her look even sexier to him. Seen in profile, it did appear that she had nice large breasts and his hands ached to touch them and his cock just ached as it swelled back up to its full size, pressing almost painfully against the material of his pants.

"I'm sorry, what is this?" she asked, leaning towards him and causing him to start. He was not sure how it happened, but in the process of passing him the clipboard, her hand brushed his erection, causing him to sigh audibly. He hoped she had not heard.

"Ah, HPV is one of the viruses in herpes, a sexually transmitted disease and it has been linked to cervical cancer. Most of the population has it but if you have had the shot and we don't know about it, well, it messes up the tests."

"OK," she said, taking the clipboard back from him and quickly signing the third form and handing it all back to him.

"Thank you. Now, we will start with your blood pressure and temperature," he said as she opened her mouth he slipped the probe under her tongue and waited for it to beep, writing down the number on his paperwork when it did.

"Um, I will need you to roll up one of your sleeves please Ms. Diggs," he said and waited for her to do so. She pushed up the one on the left side, but it created such a bunch at the top of her elbow he could not get the cuff in the right position.

"Could I ask you to change into a t-shirt? It will also make taking the blood easier." He said, his mouth suddenly going dry.

Instead of excusing herself as he expected her to do and leaving the room, she grabbed the hem of her sweatshirt and in one smooth motion pulled it over her head, shaking her hair slightly afterwards. Toby was mesmerized. And stunned. She was wearing a lacy, filmy white bra that barely covered the areola, her nipples standing up, stiff and quite visible through the thin material. He wondered in passing how it maintained the weight of her breasts which were stunningly beautiful.

"Mr. Hansen?" Her voice broke through the haze surrounding his brain.

"Wha...oh, I am sorry, Ms. Diggs. My apologies. Never had that happen before. Your left arm please?" he said, forcing his mind into the routine of putting the cuff on her arms and trying to ignore how close his fingers were to her breast with every action. Was it his imagination or did her breathing seem a bit irregular and her heart seem to be beating a little stronger. He slipped the ends of the stethoscope into his ears and put the head of it on the inside of her elbow while he pumped up the cuff, making little adjustments and trying to stare at the gage, despite being able to see her chest rising and falling with each breath she was taking. He cock was as hard as one of the glass vials in his bag but considerably less fragile.

There was a final hiss as he released the pressure and wrote down her blood pressure on the form before he undid the cuff. Was he imagining or did she move her arm just so that the back of his hand brushed against the hard point of her nipple. He decided it was better to ignore it, rather than mention it in case it had just been his imagination.

"Would you please turn your hands palm up and put them in front of you?" He asked. This simple request put the bend of her elbow in direct alignment with her breasts. While that had not been his goal, he certainly enjoyed the view, brief as it was while he inspected her arms for a good vein, and not finding any that appeared easy to access. This was the part that he hated.

"You have deep veins," he said conversationally, reaching behind him for a length of surgical rubber.

"Yes, always have," she replied.

He tried to ignore the blue vein that seemed to flow away from her areole and would have been perfect, if not exactly permissible. He stood up and walked around the table. "Your right hand please? You are left handed right?"

"Yes," she said, offering up her hand.

He placed it on the arm of the couch and slipped the rubber around her bicep and tightened the knot over the bundle of vessels. "Now, if you would just squeeze your fist please?"

"Like this?" she asked, wrapping her hand around the outline of his cock, hiding behind his pants.

"Ms...Ms...Dooooohh," he sighed as she squeezed rhythmically three or four times. Toby tried to drag his mind back to the job at hand but it was a little difficult as she had brought her other hand up and was playing with her nipples under the edge of her bra.

"You have a very strong cock Toby," she whispered. "I think there is a vein I can work with." She licked her lips as she said it.

"I think so too," Toby replied, noticing that there was now a vein in her arm he could tap. Carefully, he reached over to his supplies, scooped up what he needed and put it in her lap. "I hate to ask this, but I need you to stop for a moment or I might injure you."

Helen stopped squeezing him and he picked up the needle, pulling the safety cap off with his teeth before pinching the skin and pushing the needle in. He released the pressure on the band and the first vial filled rapidly. He pulled it out and replaced it with the second one and slipped the needle out with the vial, placing the cotton ball over the wound and applying pressure.

"Put your fingers here please?" he said directing her fingers and elevating the arm over her head while he opened the band-aid and applied it. He stepped back and put the vials into another container and needle in the sharps box and made a note on her form, picking up the little pieces of garbage and dropping them into a small bag for that purpose.

"I think we are all done," he said, his cock still straining against his pant.

"Well, you might be done, but I haven't got my sample yet," she said. "Come here."

Toby walked back around to stand in front of her and she wasted no time in unbuckling his pants and fishing his hard cock out.

"Oh, I knew it would be wonderful," she cooed, licking and stroking it, her hands and tongue dancing over it in a rhythmic ballet. Toby was moaning, enjoying the view of her breasts moving up and down as she let them rub against his legs from time to time as her mouth engulfed his cock to the hilt and slowly sucked back to the tip before plunging down again.

"Come for me Toby," she whispered, "give me a taste." Her hands squeezed his balls and that pushed him over the edge, the muscles in his legs striving to keep him upright, the muscles in his groin squeezing blast after blast of come into her waiting mouth which only seemed to suck harder with each blast, a constant moaning causing more vibrations to rattle along his distended member

"Ms. Diggs, that was wonderful," he sighed out has her mouth popped off of his cock and he reached for the table to support himself.

"It was, wasn't it?" she asked, quirking her eyebrow sultrily up at him. "Unfortunately, that is all I have time for, I have to get dressed for another appointment and you have to get my blood to the lab." She stood up and gave him a quick kiss, pulling herself close against him before stepping away.

Toby managed to get his pants pulled up and finished picking up his things, his mind awhirl.

---///---

Toby paused in his retelling to take another drink, the scotch burning a path down his throat.

"So that's it?" Gil asked? You didn't even get to cop a feel?

"Well, no, I didn't," Toby said slowly. "But we are having dinner tomorrow night, so there is always hope."