The next and last part of the ritual involves her blood. She’s going to be a doctor, so of course she isn’t squeamish, but it does take a lot of deep breathing before she can work up enough fortitude to willingly drive a sharpened pencil through her thumb. She wonders what it says about her that she could bring herself to self-mutilate in pursuit of a totally futile goal, then the pain drives the thought from her mind. She hisses as she squeezes out a few anaemic drops of blood from her thumb to fall on the pencilled lines of the diamond. There are supposed to be seven drops, but she isn’t going to stab herself again just to get them.