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Before classes have officially started, Jay-Den is already learning about blood. Lura Thok, Cadet Master and Klingon-Jem'Hadar, bleeds a milky white substance that feels abnormally cool to his hands as he tries desperately to keep her alive, something she must have inherited from the Jem'Hadar, he thinks, because Klingon blood is always hot, even his, even now with the cold dread settling into his stomach.
Blood is inescapable in Klingon poetry and song, and not long after they reach San Francisco Jay-Den learns that it is almost as common in Earth verse. Blood is thicker than water, a need for violence is called bloodlust, a demand on resources is bleeding you dry, the result of hard work contains blood, sweat, and tears. Ink bleeds, lovers in anguish bleed too, accounts haemorrhage. When something is not relinquished easily it is like getting blood from a stone. Blood seems to be in every metaphor here on Earth, yet there is never any readily available to put on his food.
The human heart is four-chambered, left and right, atrium and ventricle. He learns about tricuspid valves and papillary muscles, about the vena cava and pulmonary veins and the branches off the aortic arch. The human heart is in the thoracic cavity, deep to the sternum, superior to the diaphragm, nestled between the lungs. The Vulcan heart is anchored to the abdominal wall, wrapped in layers of the greater omentum. The Klingon heart is eight-chambered and beats hard and fast like a hunted targ when asked to recite the arteries of the upper limb in front of the class. It thrums steadily over lunch with friends and quickens at a loud laugh or unexpected question, it pounds til it aches the night before a test, it hammers like it's trying to escape til every muscle fiber aches from exertion, but it never slows down.
Caleb doesn't understand his complaints at the lack of blood in the human diet. 'Tastes gross,' he says, nose wrinkling. 'Too metallic.' Jay-Den asks what blood he's been tasting and Caleb says his own, mostly. In his opinion there's nothing worse than when your nose is busted in and bleeding and some of it runs down the back of your throat. Jay-Den suddenly feels foolish for lamenting about rokeg pie, feels that anything he says now will be inadequate. When he was young and scraped his knees on rocks he would run to his brother and he'd wipe the blood away with his sleeve, and fathers would tell him he had earned a battle scar and grab a hand each and swing him in the air. Nothing Jay-Den can do will reach back and wipe the blood from Caleb's nose. In Jay-Den's classes they tell him about the circulatory system but he knows blood really only flows one way: out.
The chemical composition of human blood contains more iron than that of Klingons, which is why human blood appears more orange in colour, especially when smeared or dried, though the difference can be negligible especially in low light. Romulans and Vulcans share the same coppery green blood, but in some emergency situations Klingon ribosomes are compatible with Romulans and can be donated. The same can be said of Andorian platelets for Bajorans with immune disorders. There is a holoimage of a Tarkalean child who recovered from a terminal illness after a heart transplant from a Benzite, a solution no one would have suspected possible if both hadn't been injured in the same shuttle crash. Before the Benzite died he had given full permission to take anything the child needed. 'I only wish,' he'd said 'they could keep me awake long enough to see if it works.' Jay-Den wonders what it would be like to know it is someone else's organs keeping you alive, to know you have this chance only because of someone else who gave theirs up. Unbidden, he thinks of his brother, and realises he knows exactly what it is like.
''Iw HIq,' Sam announces, setting a cup down before him in the cafeteria. 'Bloodwine. Better, or worse than the raktajino?' He samples it carefully, and while much less disgusting than her previous offering, it still tastes nothing like it should. He advises her such, but she doesn't seem discouraged, only curious. 'I used pretty much all the right ingredients,' she says. 'I even specified targ blood to the replicator!'
'Replicated,' he says. 'That will be the problem.'
'Jay-Den likes it fresher than that, uh "tear-it-to-pieces" fresh I think he said?' Caleb wiggles his eyebrows and Genesis laughs, but Sam is still confused.
'It is not a matter of preference,' he cuts in, and the laughing abruptly stops. 'It is a matter of life: blood is the substance which keeps living things living, replicated blood has never been alive. You cannot taste the hard winter it had where it ate nothing but ground nuts or how hard it ran as it was hunted. You cannot taste its fear or its desire to live, and therefore drinking it does not remind you that you are alive.'
Everyone is looking at him now, and he feels, with ironic self-awareness, heat bloom in his face as blood rushes to his cheeks.
'I... guess that makes sense,' Sam says, breaking the silence. 'But since I don't exactly have blood, I wouldn't know.'
Jay-Den lets himself fall into the background as the conversation moves to a heated debate over replicated vs non-replicated food (Darem claims non-replicated is better, so naturally Caleb insists there's no difference), and in the reprieve he finds himself back in the refugee camp before they settled on Krios Prime, when he was just a child.
In close quarters with limited resources, diseases jumped the species barrier and ran rampant. He had caught one in winter, and remembered little other than the shivering and the fear in his family's eyes, and one night, his mother bringing home something she must've traded all their savings for: a live bird from the market in the neighbouring city, well-fed and thick-feathered, and she'd slit its throat and held it still under one strong arm while she drained the blood into a cup and fed it to him. He'd felt warm for the first time he could remember, warm right through to his heart, and he'd cried as he drank. The next day, he started to recover. Looking back, Jay-Den knows it was because the ration bars they'd been given at the aid distribution centre were far too low in iron and protein for the Klingon diet, and the blood contained nutrients his young body was severely lacking - but he knows really it was the bird's sacrifice that saved him, and he thanks every animal he eats to this day.
Klingons fear nothing more than a bloodless death. For most Klingons, wasting away from infection, disease, internal injury that takes days, weeks, years to leech the life from their bones is a source of terror unlike any other. For Jay-Den, it has never made sense not to face that fear. The other Klingon family in that camp were not as lucky as House Kraag had been - they lost the head of their house, an injury from a fight that succumbed to infection, spread throughout her systems faster than they knew how to react. One night they were asking if his parents would look after their children for a night or two, so they wouldn't have to see their mother in a weakened state, and two nights later she was ashen-faced and silent, too weak to move, too weak to hold a blade. They had lit precious incense and prayed for her recovery, and Jay-Den hadn't understood why they didn't give her medicine, even when his father explained to him that there was not enough to go around at the aid centre, he had asked why they don't beg, or steal, or make their own. 'It is not the Klingon way,' he'd said, 'to go crawling to others for aid. She will die with honour, or she will live to fight again.' He'd tried to interject but his father had cut him off - that was all that would be said on the matter.
Jay-Den had stormed out, frustrated to the point of tears, and he knew better than to cry in front of his family if he could help it. The people who taught him courage above everything were being cowed into silence, silence that hung like a specter over the sickbed, they were afraid to invoke the name of that which scared them so. None of them would lift a hand to fight - was her life not precious to them? He wandered as far as the woods on the edge of the camp, vision blurred with hot tears, til he stopped in a clearing and his knees gave out. He didn't know how long he sat there sobbing for. Some weeks ago he and Thar had played near here, and the moss on the logs had soaked up the silvery morning dew as the sun rose - stumbling a little in the dark, he found a patch of it and pressed his face into it and a cool sweet relief burst against his tear-streaked skin, and he knew, knew with a calm certainty he'd thought he'd never possess, he knew that he would not let things continue as they were.
He'd torn out handfuls of the moss and brought it to the youngest daughter of that house - as her mother's life had faded, she'd been washing the cloths they'd been using to mop the sweat from her face, and her hands were raw from the chemicals at the cleaning tent. He'd pressed the moss into the red rash on her palm and watched the irritation recede, just a little, and felt something harden irrevocably inside him.
In class they are talking about emergency medicine. 'The first concern with these kinds of wounds,' the teacher says, gesturing to the hologram behind her, 'is preventing exsanguination. How can we achieve that without access to a dermal re-generator?' she adds with a pointed look at a human, who lowers their hand.
'Apply pressure to the wound,' he volunteers, without thinking. The teacher likes his answer, which means he is called up in front of the class to elaborate, and his heart begins to pound.
'If you have nothing to seal the wound with, some- someone must apply pressure to slow the bleeding until-til help arrives...'
'How much pressure?' the teacher prompts.
'As much as it takes,' he replies, and thinks about Thar, and the trader's poisoned dagger. 'For as long as it takes. You may cause more pain, but you cannot be afraid - you have to hold fast, because your hands are the only thing keeping their life inside their body.'
'Well said,' the teacher releases him, and he sits down heavily, avoiding the eyes of the other students. 'Jay-Den is right - many of you will have grown up with access to Federation healthcare and medical technology, but as future Starfleet medics you will need to be prepared for emergency situations. The difference between life and death for a patient can be as simple as whether you are willing to get your hands dirty.'
Jay-Den thinks back to Lura Thok's milky white blood, how hesitant he'd been, but his breath doesn't quicken at the memory. Instead, he feels the pressure ease as he comes to rest on that hard, solid stone of certainty - he had hesitated, but he'd done it. All those years he had held back from weapons, from shedding others' blood, he had been no coward; his battle was with an enemy every Klingon feared, he had known it as a child and now he had proven it. He knew what his hands were for. For holding life inside the body. For holding back death.