When I woke up this morning I was fairly certain that it was going to be another Ho-hum day. The sun was shining, the birds were doing that bird thing that they do, and my eyes were barely open. A Friday, which followed a Thursday night spent between computer screen and television screen at different intervals until half past twelve. I woke up unprepared to take on even the monotony of the day. And then, in the midst of my backward and forward shuffling my roommate awoke. He came out of his room equally blurry eyed and stared at me for a while. Then he asked me to donate blood.
His aunt was in the hospital and they needed more blood than she'd already been given. The hospital did have blood, but they ration it in most cases. You get a certain amount, but because they have to share with the rest of their present and potential patients, they can only give you so much. They don't get paid for it Unless, that is, someone decides to replenish the stock with a donation. This was what Alexis was asking me to do.
People around here aren't in the habit of giving blood. I don' t know if they're afraid of the needle, of the tests, or of the nurses. Maybe they think they haven't got a pint to spare. And that's all you have to give. A pint. Many Belizeans today who are in the prime donor group, the healthy, able-bodied young men and women, can't quite conceptualize what a pint is. They see it as some amorphous amount that they might need, just in case they have to balance their
humors or accidentally swallow some
poisonous love apples. In reality, we have a very clear reference for how puny a pint is. Its a coke. You're taking thirty minutes out of your day to donate a coke. And it may save someone's life.
Mind you, I knew all of this in advance, but that didn't stop me from being more than a little nervous. i was in auto pilot driving up to the hospital. My body was going through the motions of pulling up, finding parking, listening to the last few bars in whatever was on the radio while I rolled up the windows. All the while I was thinking 'Really? Is this really happening? I'm really gonna do this?" I tried to play it cool, walking through the corridors of the hospital, saying good afternoon to everyone I went by. All the while I was thinking of reasons to stop. To turn back. To just go have lunch and later tell my roommate 'Yeah, I went by. We're good to go.'
I walked by a lady, old and wrinkled and perpetually frowning. She had her hands on her lips as if she were holding them shut, as if any moment now she'd start screaming in pain. 'Good Afternoon.' I said, and I thought of my roomie's Aunt. I'd never met her, had only heard about her the weekend before this for the very first time.
I went by a duo of girls more lazing than waiting. They were wearing...lets call it casual clothing. One of them folded her legs as she saw me coming. The other one was reclined on a wooden bench. In a spaghetti strap tank top. I tried my best to let my eyes go to her eyes and not her c-cups when I said "Good afternoon." They both smiled knowingly. I wondered, after I'd gone past them, what they were here for. Why were they waiting outside a doctor or nurse's office? I wondered how long it had really been since my last Aids test and my mind went to the same thought I'd had at my first Aids test, and every test after that, actually. What if I had something. I thought I was healthy, felt healthy but...what if?
Maybe I'll have a nice nurse, I thought. Someone that could keep me distracted. Maybe Id get turned down or turned away. That, somehow, seemed even worse than not going at all. When I finally got to the little room there was someone sitting in an odd sort of recliner, eating out of a Styrofoam container. I told him I was here to donate blood and he hopped up out of the seat, brushed it off, and told me to sit down. The nurse that he called to attend to me must have been younger than I am. "Twenty...three." I'd guessed later. They all laughed. The young man I saw before, A volunteer named Bryan, said "Tell the truth, you said that because of her shoes, right?" She was wearing these round toed flats with a thin buckle strap. The kind my little sister used to wear in primary school. And pink cotton socks with puppies on them.
So, she wasn't the bombshell nurse I was expecting, but she did a really good job of making me feel comfortable. We ran through the questions fairly quickly. Simple questions like when was my last meal, had I ever given blood before. Yadda Yadda. She took a test sample first, giving me a stress ball to squeeze until my vein protruded slightly. Of course, I only saw a stress ball and heard my own heart and started squeezing maniacally. So concerned was I that I didn't even notice when she slid the needle in. I just caught a sudden flash of red in the corner of my eye and suddenly she was filling a small vial with my blood.
Moment later she told me some aspect of my blood that I can't remember now, but she did break it down to me in Layman's terms. "You're juicy, but not too juicy. You're just juicy enough." I smiled at the metaphor. She laughed at her own joke.
Then she brought out a larger needle, loomed over my vein and said "Just relax." of course I immediately tensed ever muscle in my body, including certain unmentionable orifices. She pulled the needle back again, saying 'Seriously, if you don't relax I might mis the vein, then I have to stick you again." This made me tense up once again, and laugh nervously. She took a step back, showing me an even, unimpressed face. I sighed, relaxed my arm, and closed my eyes.
There was pressure against my arm. I was waiting for her to break the skin, waiting for the sudden pinch. i was telling myself that I could take it. I played sports. I've fallen and scraped skin away from my own flesh. I've banged my knees and shins into nearly every hard surface imaginable. I've been hit in the teeth and eyes and nose more times than I'd ever care to. Every time that pain lasted longer than this one fleeting moment would. if I could take all that, then I can be a man for this. And I wanted to see it. Wanted to look at it in my flesh before she hid everything under a band aid.
But that pressure was the needle. When I opened my eyes it was because she was adhering sticky, cold band aids on my skin.
"That's it?" I asked.
"Of course not." She answered, and showed me a flat square of plastic attached to a hose, attached to my arms. The blood was creeping through it all. "We'll see how long it takes you to fill the bag", she said.
In the meantime we talked. It was the Taiwanese intern who's name sounded close enough to
Susan; Bryan, the volunteer; And Rachel, the nurse, who'd been a nurse at the Western Regional Hospital for as long as I've been living in Belmopan.
"So you're not twenty three?" I asked. She smiled and said "Nope" in a way that let me know that's all she planned to say on the matter. I asked how many times a day they had to do this. It seemed like it was routine for them, but they also seemed pretty relaxed, like they had all the time in the world. "Every so often" She said. "Usually when there's an accident or someone's sick." I remembered that she had indeed asked who I'd be donating to. For a second I thought she'd be wheeling the woman in and hooking us up to some fluid transfer do-dad. That didn't happen. A lot of the time, in fact, the blood wouldn't go directly to the receiver. "Well we have to screen it first, obviously" she said. "Your blood, along with the sample I took earlier, goes to Belize City. They do the testing and the storing and everything else, and they send extra blood here to give to the receiver. Sometimes we get low on a specific type. That's the only reason we'd ask for a specific blood type."
I wanted to ask more. I wanted to find out about her wildest story. Had anyone ever completely lost it at the sight of their own blood? What was her most difficult donor like? Why did she become a nurse? Why was Bryan here just as a volunteer? No one volunteers in such a specialized area for no reason at all. For some reason I'd gotten into a storytelling mood, I wanted to know more so that I could share it. Rachel had just finished telling me about the journey my blood was going to make, and that I could come back in a couple weeks to find out the results of the screening, when she looked over and her eyebrows raised.
"Wow, you already" She said, and came over, going through the process of tying off the IV holding up the now distended plastic bag. She must have seen the amazement in my face because she let me hold it. I was too busy marveling at the deep, dark red cushion of blood in my hand to watch her slide the needle out of my arm and fix a cotton ball to the hole, then a band aid. "Hold your arm like this for a while" she said, bending my arm at the elbow. I looked down, surprised to see she'd finished up already. "Damn your good" I said. She smiled and took the pouch stuffed with my blood from me.
"Go get lunch." She advised. "Usually we'd give you a cookie or something, but we're all out."
"I knew this was too good to be true." I said jokingly. I said good bye to my new twenty minute friends, relieved. Not bad, this giving blood business. I might try it again some day.
