The Best Roses in the World
#1 — The Rose Farm Trilogy — Short Story
Only after the tourists had visited the gift ship was when they were asked whether or not they wanted to donate blood.
“What for?” they would ask, in dozens of different languages or some butchered Bulgarian.
The gift shop operators, always a small, attractive girl and similarly pretty man, would then regale their visitors with stories of blood shortages in Bulgaria. As one of the nation’s largest exporters of rose and rose derivatives, like rose water and rose oil, as well as being one of the more popular tourist destinations, why should they not use their popularity to help out?
Families were often in a hurry to sate the short attention spans of their children, so they often declined. It was the same with the geriatrics, who usually headed straight for the tour buses. It was the younger travellers, especially the single ones, that the two gift shop operators had the most luck with.
Sure, it might take a flirtatious wink or a flattering comment, but at the end of the day, it only took fifteen minutes, there was food afterwards, and there was nothing dangerous about it.
A streak-free glass door — to give the illusion of sterility — was shown to the willing tourists. Beyond, lay a hallway. Large, permanent installations extolled the efforts of the clinic, and the contributions made by these saint-like travellers, such as themselves.
At the end of the corridor sat a nurse in the expected white uniform. The form she handed them to fill out had all the usual questions: whether they smoked, what their blood type was, had they any of the listed diseases, were they currently pregnant or whether they were feeling well enough to donate.
Forms handed back over at completion, the tourists were given a quick haemoglobin and blood pressure test, before being led off to a sterile white room, containing a row of six automated chairs. They chose which arm they’d like to give blood out of; this dictated their seat.
Another nurse set up the machines, the bags, and found the willing veins — plump now thanks to armbands inflated around their upper arms — and slipped the needles in.
For fifteen minutes, the tourists occupied themselves with free Wi-Fi and phones in their free hand, with brochures from the gift shop, or for a select few, read tattered, travel-beaten paperbacks.
Once the bags were filled to the brim, the machine beeped loudly, and the nurse returned to free them.
The tourists, some a little light-headed, though proud of their charitable efforts, where herded to a small cafe, where they were given sugary foods and drink. Once they’d regained their strength and composure after gorging themselves, and felt strong enough to march back into Bulgaria, the tourists were each given a rose. They left with the de-thorned rose, being showered with thanks and best wishes for their trips ahead. The tourists would be glad of their contributions, proud that they’d been able to give back to a country that had been so good to them.
Except their blood never made it to the hospitals, to be pumped into the bodies of those in need of it.
The bags didn’t even make it off the farm.
In the morning, when the night was slowly being shed from the sky, though with sunrise yet to break, the farmhands got to work with watering the roses.
In their brochures, the rose farm advertised that they used only pure mountain water to hand water their roses. This, they said, was the key to their roses having an unusual vibrancy and size.
But the secret lay in the fridge of the clinic.
A bag of blood for every one hundred litres of water was the measurement.
The farmhands would finish their watering just as the sun was beginning to rise over the horizon.
And the best roses in Bulgaria, nourished by water, blood and sun, grew fatter and further toward the heavens.
