The following short story is based on reality.


Bad Donation

I regularly donate blood. I do it because I enjoy knowing that I'm helping someone, if only in a small way. I like the sense of civic pride. I started donating while in high school, the first time the blood mobile came around and I was old enough to go inside. My initial motivation was a mixture of curiosity and the desire to skip a period of school, but that soon evolved into a true sense of enjoyment, knowing I was helping people.  

After the first time I donated I would do my best to catch the blood mobile or even go to a donation center as soon as I was allowed. Mostly I made use of the blood mobiles, but during summers I would go to the centers to donate. I continued to donate blood through high school and beyond. The same routine, the mobile would show up and I'd donate. Simple.

The people (mostly women) who manned the blood mobiles and the donation centers had always been really pleasant and nice. They cared whether they were doing a good job and they truly appreciated the fact that you took the time to go and donate. They treated everyone with great kindness, because they knew you were there to help. I always left from donating blood with a high level of happiness and contentment, a pair of feelings I recommend everyone make an effort to experience as much as possible.

In the past I've never left from donating blood without that sense of accomplishment. But, then I donated blood the other day. It was the first time I've ever felt like a whore when I walked out the door.

I'd recently been living in Arkansas, and the area that I lived in didn't have any donation sites nearby. So, I had to wait until my next visit to see my parents in Florida to donate blood. I hadn't been able to visit as recently as I'd like so it'd been awhile since I had donated. Then my dad had to be in Memphis for his job, and since it was only a two hour drive away I made the trip to the naval base his classes were at (the same naval base that I was conceived on) and we spent a few days hanging out. When I first drove to the base, I noticed a blood donation center not too far down the road, which advertised that it paid "fees" to donors (you can't sell blood, but you can get a fee for your time), so I made a mental note to donate while I was here. I not only wanted to donate, but hey, if they were going to give me money for something I'd do for free then why not? It's not a crazy thought to have. I swear here and now to never again take money for donating blood ever again.

On the first day that my dad had to work and I was on my own and had time to kill I decided it was the perfect time to go and donate. So, I drove down the street and went to the blood bank. This is where my previous experience with donating blood severely diverges from what I experienced at that blood bank. The only other blood bank (non-bloodmobile) that I have had any interaction with is a nice place in my home town. The girls that work there are pleasant and always happy to see me. The place is clean, and they normally have the radio on while we go through the pleasantries of the paperwork and getting my vitals. The place I walked into that day was more like an intercity free clinic then the family doctor's office atmosphere I was accustomed to. The wall was covered in rules and STD information, for every newspaper there were two pamphlets for AID's or Syphilis. When I walked through the door the woman at the front counter gave me a grunt of acknowledgement and told me to sign in. Once I had signed in she told me to wait. About ten minutes later she called me forward and I had to show her my driver's license. Which makes sense, I had expected I need some I.D. with me, but then she asked for my social security card, which I just happened to have on me. After she took my information I sat down again. She preceded to call multiple hospitals and other clinics giving them my SSN to check if I had donated anytime recently or gone in for an STD or something like that (I'm guessing here) then she had me walk around the counter and told me to read two lamented signs with more information about AID's and also about what they were about to perform on me to take my blood. I've donated nearly two gallons of blood in my life, so I'm pretty clear on the normal procedures. I gave the signs a cursory look before signing something else that stated I understood what I read.

Now that she had made her calls and had my signature saying that I didn't have anything in my blood to hurt anyone, she only had to go through the last few checks herself to make sure I was clean and ready to head into the back room, for what awaited me. She had me take off my coat and pull up my sleeves to show her my arms, I would venture to guess she was checking for track marks from shooting up. Then she rubbed this clear stain on my left index finger and then checked both hands under a black light to see if I had other stains that would indicate I'd donated at any of the other Memphis area blood banks. All of that alone should tell you the type of place this was. This is the place that people desperate for money go to give away their life blood in exchange for a twenty dollar bill.  People who would go to every other blood bank in the city and give until their veins were dried of blood just for that twenty so they could buy their drug of choice to fill those veins back up again.
    
Now we were finally at the vital signs stage. Surprisingly, she had better equipment to work with then any of the other places I'd donated at. She had an automatic blood pressure cuff, which either means they have some better funding (if so the rest of the place didn't reflect it) or the workers there weren't trusted enough to perform the task themselves. She took my temperature, then she pulled out a little plastic device that I knew cased a little sharp point meant to jab into my skin so a sample of my blood could be tested for iron content. In my opinion this is usually the most painful part of the whole process of donating blood and even then not so much. Apparently, 'not so much' isn't always the case. The first time I ever donated blood the girl who did this procedure had the point go into the pad of my right middle finger, where the skin is softest and you have the most nerve receptors. Needless to say it hurt. Since then, I've had really good treatment, and the women have always made sure to hit more to the side of the finger, where the skin is tougher. It hurts much less. Not this woman though, she went straight for the center, as if she were trying for a high score. If so, she won and I lost.
    
Finally, I was finished with the preliminaries and was allowed to enter the back room, where the beds where and where the woman was that I was going to be giving my blood to. She never gave me her name, and she had no name tag, so her identity will forever be a mystery. She didn't say a word to me as I walked in the room. I stood in the center of the room looking at the beds and wondering which one she wanted me in. She ignored me, too busy using a syringe to push a small amount of saline into empty blood-bags. I stood there for a few minutes before she turned from what she was doing. "Which arm?" she asked. I lifted up my left arm, the one that I always donate with, and she pointed to a bed, "Get in that one then". Then she returned to what she was doing. I wasn't a person, I was just a container.
    
I got into the bed and laid there for what seemed like twenty minutes before she finally set aside what she was doing and turned to face me. "Which arm did you say again?" I lifted my left arm again. "Get in this bed then" she pointed to the one closer to her. I got up and laid down in the new bed. She turned around and grabbed what she needed off of the counters in front of me and then walked to my side. I had unconsciously crossed my legs when I had laid down, she looked at my legs in disdain, "Uncross your legs" it was nearly a growl when it came from her mouth. I lifted my left leg off of my right and set it down. I started to wonder if there was a medical reason for uncrossing them, or whether she just wanted to exert her control.

She grabbed a scale that was in front of the bed and rolled it beside her on my left side. If I remember correctly a pint of blood should weigh a pound. (A pint is a pound, the world around.) I assume the scale was to tell her when I was done. I stared at the scale for a minute, it conjured up an image of a butcher's shop and a man in a blood-stained apron weighing a cut of meat. When I looked back towards her she had a length of rubber in her hands. "Lift your arm" she said to me as if I should have been reading her mind, and why hadn't I done it already? I lifted myself and she wrapped the rubber around my flesh, it was tighter then I was used to. The constriction hurt. She slapped my lower arm a few times, looking for a vein. It should have been an idle gesture. I have a little round scar on the inside of my elbow where I always gave from. It was a perfect indicator for where she should stick her needle. She had my arm in her hand and she turned it around staring at it as if trying to burn a whole in my skin and have the blood spurt out on its own accord. Her hands were rough as she moved my arm around before finally out of the corner of my eye (I felt uncomfortable looking her directly in the eye) I saw her give a small nod. She knew where she wanted to put her needle in me.
    
She placed the empty bag on the scale and made sure her tubing was in order. Finally she had her needle in hand. It was big. I was used to big needles and wasn't normally afraid of them; but in this place with it in her hands I felt my heart start to pound. She pushed my arm into the cushion of the bed, and held me in place as she moved to shove her big needle in me. I normally watch when they put their needles in, but I couldn't this time. I couldn't watch her penetrate me. My head was turned to the side when I felt her needle slide inside of me, and it hurt. More then I was used to or was expecting. I was used to the strange sensation that came along with the needle being pushed into my waiting vein, but this time felt different. I finally looked at my arm, and I saw why it hurt like it had. She and her big needle had ignored the obvious opening of my scar, and had instead forced themselves in a lower spot, where I had never had a needle in before. She had pushed in at an angle and it looked like she had ripped the skin a little bit. I didn't even get enough time to process it all in my head, before she grabbed hold of her rubber wrapped around me and pulled on it and reset it so it was looser, but still tighter then I was used to. She reached around to the counter and grabbed a red-colored object and she practically ground it into my hand. "Squeeze this. Open your fist wider and then close it tighter every few seconds. It'll make this quicker." I grabbed the squishy thing in my hand and squeezed it as hard as I could.
    
I looked down to where she was pumping me, of my blood. The bag was slowly filling with red. Every other time that I had given blood the bag was kept on a hook. It was always out of sight. I'm quite sure that was done on purpose. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the bag. I stared at it for a few minutes watching the red gradually spread inside the plastic. Suddenly she grabbed the bag and shook it. The red swished back and forth, and I could see it start to froth before she put it back on the scale. The red seemed to enter the bag so slowly, even though I kept tightening my fist, trying to get her to finish as quickly as possible.  
    
She paid no mind to me, in fact she had gone back to what she was doing before. So, as she was pumping me she kept herself busy shooting her saline into bag after bag, the only break in her task was to glance down at the slowly expanding bag of red. It seemed to be taking an eternity. I kept staring at the bag, willing it fill quicker. By this time I started to notice that my arm was going numb. I laid there, watching the bag fill with my red blood, as my arm turned blue and I continued to lose sensation. I know she knew my arm was going numb, because when she shook the bag again she looked directly at my hand, which had noticeably changed in color. She didn't care.

The bag seemed full to me now, but every time she looked down at it and got my hopes up, she just turned back again. I was desperate for the end. The silence was starting to get to me. I was another minute away from madness when she looked at the bag again and finally moved towards her needle. She tore off the tape she had used to keep it place, but instead of pulling her needle out she put a new piece of tape on. She grabbed the bag and shook it once more, and set in back on the scale. She seemed satisfied with what she saw. Her arm moved and she grabbed two instruments from the counter. First she pulled tight a knot in the tubing and then used one instrument to clamp the tubing at about midway, the other instrument was used to cut the tubing. She grabbed a third implement that resembled a hand-held hole-puncher which wrapped around the tubing and was used to force the blood still inside the tubing that was attached to the bag all the way into the bag. The clamp was on the length still connected to my arm and thus to my vein.
    
Again she reached to the counter, this time she took away four plastic vials, the type that are used to test blood for anything that would make it dangerous to give someone, normally they are filled at the beginning of the blood donation process. Obviously this time was far from normal. She took the top off each vial with a pop. She put her fingers into the handle of the clamp and brought the end of the tubing to the first vial. She unclamped the tubing and poured my blood into the first vial, and like a good bartender she moved to the next vial without spilling a drop, briefly raising the tubing so none of the red liquid was wasted. Obviously she was done pumping me, and now she was just needed to get her post-action shots, in lieu of a cigarette. Once she was finished with the vials and had recapped each one, she finally reached for her needle.
    
She ripped off the second piece of tape, but this time she took hold of her needle and pulled it out. She pushed a piece of gauze down on the hole, "Hold this here" I took hold of the gauze and pushed down on the hole, making sure I didn't spill out on the bed. "You can sit up, but don't get up" she took the rubber off, and I could feel my blood rushing back into my numb extremity. She wrapped some bandage around my exposed arm and the gauze. I sat up and hung my hand low, trying to get as much blood into my arm as possible. She was too busy marking the spoils of her conquest with a marker to care what I was doing. I finally started to feel a prickling sensation in my fingertips, the tiny little pains welcome, as they heralded the return of blood, and signalled it was nearly time to leave.

I sat there for another ten minutes before she spoke again, "You can leave now." I stood up. She pointed to a sheet of paper and gestured to me to sign it, I assume my signature was to make it known that I was a consenting adult. As I signed, she started speaking, and as she spoke she pulled out a roll of twenty dollar bills from her pocket. I looked up as she kept speaking, her words were directed at me but her eyes weren't, I guess looking me in the eyes would signify I was a person and she wasn't willing to make that distinction. After a moment she peeled off a single bill from the roll in her hand and pushed it at me while still speaking. I don't know what she was saying to me, but I can guess. Perhaps it was something along the lines of "You were good. Come again in eight weeks," or maybe, "Here's your cash, now get out." It wouldn't matter either way. I had my blood money in hand and I was done with the place. I grabbed my discarded coat and wrapped it around me as I hurried out of the building. It was raining outside. I stood there for a second, hoping that the icy rain might cleanse me, but when I eventually got into my car I felt dirty. I still do.   

I think the entire experience has left a scar on my psyche, but I'll get over it. One bad experience isn't enough to turn me off of the concept of donating blood. But, never again will I take money for donating blood, nor will I go into a place that gives money for it. It's something that should be done for the afterglow of fulfillment, not to fill your pockets. It's the difference between a good romp in bed and whoring yourself out. It may be the same basic act, but in the end the two experiences are nothing alike, and never can be.     

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Some random writings

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Words. They take me from the now, to worlds only I or others have dreamed of. To worlds beyond our own. Either mirrors of this one or others never seen but deeply felt. They take me away and that is enough. Words are the basis of my sanity and without them the world would tremble at my ragings. They soothe and excite me, they comfort and enrage, they quell the anger inside and bring tears to my eyes. What words would you offer me?

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Sometimes I wonder, am I missing some part of my tastebuds that makes eating chocolate as orgasmic as it is for everyone else? Sure, chocolate is okay, but I can not for the life of me figure out why some people go so crazy for the stuff. Nine times out of ten if you offer me a piece of chocolate cake or a piece of any other flavor I'll go for the non-choco option. Seriously, if I'm missing out on what is so great about chocolate, what else am I missing? Is everyone elses sensations better then mine, more enhanced? Am I only getting half the pleasure out of life that everyone else is getting? If so, I could spend my life wondering what sex feels like for everyone else, or reading a good book, or holding a door open for an old lady. Is it worth the effort if I know I'm not getting as much joy out of the experiences as everyone else? Yes.

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(First group of lines I call 'The Tale' but I haven't come up with the rest of it yet. The other two groups of lines are just random rhymes I had saved in the same file)

Come close, gather around, sit, and let us be as friends,

So I can tale you a tale, of many beginnings and many ends.

A tale of many triumphs and just as many sorrows,

Let me tell you here and now, for who knows when there will be no more tomorrows?

A song for the present meant to hope for the future and celebrate the past,

Of hearts pounding, kisses lingering, and how the sweetest moments never last.

Do I have your ear? If so then listen close and utter not a sound,

Because though this tale might be told again, this moment will never come back around.

A story of love, as all the greatest ones seem to be,

Listen true, for it could be a far different tale to you then it is for me.

 

Sometimes words burn harsher then any fire,

Told too honest, 'tis better when dressed by a liar.

 

Evil sprite or sinful sage,

I who put my pen to page,

To release the words from my mind's cage,

And weave them with more magic than any mage.

Let the blood boil and the words rage, rage, rage… 

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The winds of change are here, herding cloudy days overhead. We are long past the time when we shared a bed, why must we fight? In this world of ours how are we so sure we're right? Shadows over spines, as we think dark thoughts and our hands perform even darker deeds. Fulfilling baseless desires and empty needs. Hearts rebel within our breasts as fists pound loyalty upon our chests and we are pushed forward to destruction. Instruction and order are shouted in our collected ear, telling us what the top wants to hear, but a few of us refuse to listen clear. Lungs ache as we shout resistance into the skies, and the winds carry them outward. And so it flies.

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Feedback on any of the above is welcome. No critiques are too harsh.

(All works are copywrite Joseph Land 2008)