The Extraction of Blood
Last week, I went down to my local donor center to give blood. When I walked in, two of the clinicians, a man and a woman, were arguing over which of them was faster at doing donor interviews. The woman was especially vehement. “You think you can beat me?” she said, finally. “Prove it!” She scurried over to the one of the interview rooms and banged on the door until it opened and a third clinician peered out. “Move,” said the woman. “Jerry’s taking over.”
Clinician #3 came out (smiling), Jerry went in, the door closed. “I’m even giving you a head start,” bellowed the woman, then turned to the assembled donors. “Ok! Number 46! Let’s go! LET’S GO!”
Please don’t let me be 46, I thought. Please please. Not 46. Please. I looked down at my number, which was 46. I looked up. The woman was glaring at me. I rose. She pointed at an open interview room and said: “Go! In! Now!“
I went in, and sat down. There was a great wind, and a blur, and the woman was sitting beside me, pulling out the donor questionnaire, a series of deeply personal questions about your sex life, your medical history, your past experience with drugs, your current health, etc. It is generally administered with the utmost sensitivity and discretion.
“Haveyoueverhadsexwithaman?” shouted the woman, her lips moving so fast that the question disappeared behind a little sonic boom.
I paused, trying to decipher. Couldn’t. “Excuse me?”
“Haveyoueversharedaneedlewithamadcow?” she said, putting a little tic in the first question’s “yes” column. She was going too fast, burning consonants like rubber. My mind couldn’t process it.
“What?”
She marked the “no” column, and said: “Haveyoueverusedebolacologne?”
“I’m sorry … I can’t understand …”
She marked the next twelve questions yes, then grabbed my arm and wrapped a blood pressure cuff around it and started pumping. She asked another question; something about badgers, maybe. Whether I’d ever snorted any powdered badgers, is what I heard. I said no.
She marked the question yes, continuing to inflate. I watched my upper arm bend inward like an hourglass. She asked me a question that sounded like have you ever had a threesome with any transsexual sumerian window washers. My upper arm had shrunk to the radius of a capillary tube. I let out a little gasp of pain. She marked the yes column.
Finally, she released the pressure, and jammed a thermometer in my mouth and asked whether I’d ever eaten monkey testicles. “Please,” I said, my words muffled by the thermometer and the pain emanating from my reinflating arm. “Let me go.” She marked the yes column, yanked out the thermometer, threw it over her shoulder, and took out the tiny needle they use to draw blood for the anemia test. She grabbed my hand, and twisted it around, and stabbed me.
I screamed. A geyser of blood rose out of my palm; she darted a cup under the plume and dumped it into the test solution, then marked me passed without waiting for the result.
There were about fifty question left. She glanced at the page, made an impatient sound, then showed it to me. “Have you done any of these?” she said.
I looked helplessly at the tiny print. “I’m not sure,” I said. “I …”
“Good.” She marked the rest of them no, then stood up, grabbed me by my misshapen bleeding arm and slung me out of the room, then followed, hands extended to the ceiling, head thrown back in triumph. “That’s RIGHT!” she yelled, turning toward the still-closed door of the other interview room. “Nobody’s faster than me! You got that Jimmy? Nobody!“
There was a smattering of applause from some of the other whitecoats.
I dragged myself to the nearest chair and sat down, tore off a piece of my shirt and began to fashion a tourniquet for my hemorrhaging palm. I was almost done when she came up to me and dropped a plastic bladder in my lap, for the actual donation of whatever blood I had left, along with a pamphlet detailing the center’s exhaustive safety procedures. “Thankyouandhaveaniceday,” she said, and spun toward the interview area and shouted: “DOUBLE OR NOTHING, BABY!” Then turned back. “NEXT!”
The man beside me, a large rugby-player-looking guy with cannonball muscles and an anvil head, stood up, dropped his number in my lap, and ran.
I sat staring at the little card. It said number 47. I was too weak from loss of blood to move or protest. I looked up. The woman was staring at me. “WELL?”
I whimpered.
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