"Is she sick because of the fertility program?" She stared at the needle Landry removed from a sealed package, then at the syringe he produced. She took a deep breath, focusing again on the man's angular, boyish face.
Landry dabbed antiseptic on her right ear lobe, then stuck her with a disposable needle in a brisk, practiced motion. Draw-ing off a crimson droplet into a slender tube, he held the blood over a cylinder filled with blue liquid. The droplet fell, hit the surface, and sank to join a pile of blackish globules at the bot-tom.
"Congratulations. You're not anemic." He slid a sample vial up the hollow back of the syringe.
"Anyway she got a little ear infection, and they gave her antibiotics. Most kids have no prob-lem, but every once in a while you get one that's sensitive and gets bone-marrow suppression. Transfusions can help. Bone-marrow transplants-Okay, make a fist."
"What?"
"Make a fist and squeeze a few times. I need to find a vein. Anyway-" His thumb felt around the crook of her right arm. "Bone-marrow transplants will probably do the trick. Here we go." Valerie flinched at the sharp jab of the needle. She felt a flutter in her stomach. Landry pushed the sample vial against the back of the needle until it penetrated the rubber stopper.
"Whoa-careful. Let me get it in there." He poked around gently until the dark red liquid pulsed suddenly into the tube. Taping the needle to her arm, he let the vial fill up, removed it, and quickly attached the long, thin plastic tube from the blood bag.
Valerie gazed at the bag. From the squarish periphery of the large central bag extended several smaller bags connected by tubes. It looked like a squashed octopus. "What are all those things hanging there?"
Landry smiled. "This is what we use for baby transfusions. We fill up the big bag. Then, whenever we need the small amount a baby requires, we can squeeze some into a satellite bag, pinch it off, and use it. That way we don't have to enter the main bag. The blood stays usable longer that way." During all this, he took the opportunity to scan the sheet she had given him.
"I see you visited Dr. Fletcher a few months back."
Valerie frowned. "Yes."
"Were you also involved in the fertility program?"
Valerie stiffened, almost popping the needle out of place. "You mean Dr. Fletcher's involved in fertility programs, too?"
A sinking feeling of embarrassment overcame the young technologist. His brown eyes glanced down at her arm. "I'm sorry. I didn't know that you'd been... I mean, some people think it's strange for her to be working both sides of the street..." That's not right. "I mean, I can understand her trying to maximize women's choices, no matter what they..." He taped the tubes to her arm, squeezed the blood bag a few times to distribute the anticoagulant, and let it hang below the cot.
"There," he said with relief, grasping the sample vial in his suddenly sweaty hand. "Just lie down, relax, and squeeze this every few seconds." He handed her a rubber cylinder. "I'll be back in a few minutes."
He made for the water cooler at the far end of the room and took a stiff drink of Sparkletts. A candy striper noticed his flus-tered expression and wandered over to him.
"What's up, Mark?"
"Nothing," he said quietly. "I just have all the bedside man-ner of a meat packer." He handed the blood sample to the technologist behind the counter, then quickly returned to Valerie's side.
Valerie squeezed and released, squeezed and released. It was the queasiest feeling to know that each contraction sent an extra squirt of blood into the bag. The plastic tube lay draped across her arm. It felt warm and sickening, like a snake that had slithered out of the desert sun to rest on her flesh. A wave of unease bordering on nausea washed over her when she dared to glance at where the tube of dark red blood disap-peared under white adhesive tape at the inside of her elbow.
Some people did this every six weeks. Her boss, Mr. Sewell, was a member of the Rare Blood Club and kept arranging bloodmobile visits for the office. She never donated. Now she knew why. Squeeze. Release. Squeeze. Release.
She reminded herself that this was for a little baby whose life was in far greater peril than hers. She thought about how strange it was that blood-something spilled so easily from cuts, in fights, in wars-could, if gathered carefully, be so valu-able to another.
Squeeze. Release. It really wasn't all that difficult.
After what seemed to be hours of uncomfortable silence, Landry said, "There we go, that's enough." He pressed the bag a couple of times, causing the tube along her arm to creep warmly across her flesh. It made her shudder.
"Do I keep squeezing?" she asked.
He shook his head, busying himself with removing the needle, putting a piece of cotton over the puncture, and fold-ing her arm back. "Don't sit up. Just hold it like this and press," he said. He took the bag over to the sealing unit, and stamped the blood-filled tubing at regular intervals to create almost a dozen sample blisters. He labeled the bag with stickers that read Directed Donation Baby Girl Renata Chandler, adhering a similar tear-away portion of the bar-coded sticker to Valerie's file. That done, he brought a cup of orange juice and two choco-late chip cookies to her.
"Here's the payoff."
Valerie accepted them with a grateful smile.
"Just relax," he told her. "I have to deliver the lab results to Dr. Fletcher." He gazed at her with a troubled expression, then rose and walked away.
Valerie wondered if something was wrong.
"
Landry found Dr. Fletcher in the infant intensive care unit. It looked like any other ICU except that the tubes and wires from all the equipment streamed into a clear bassinet not much larger than a bread box.
Evelyn stood beside the instruments, watching the beat of Renata's heart.
"When did you transfer to pediatrics, Doc?"
Fletcher looked up at the intruder. "Mark, did you get the printout?"
"She's still O positive," he said deadpan. "HLA and serolo-gies will take until six o'clock and Debbie said you'll be lucky to get them that fast." He handed her a manila folder. She opened it up to scan the contents. He took the opportunity to check out the baby.
Renata lay inside the germ-free chamber, hooked to an IV. Aside from her waxy pallor, she looked perfectly healthy. Un-der the warm glow of the heat lamp, her sparse hair shone blond with the softest of golden-bronze highlights. She lay on her back, quietly staring up at a bunny and duckie mobile hang-ing from inside the top of the box.
Fletcher seemed to study the results with cursory attention. "This will do very well," she said.
"Question," said Landry. "How did you know to bring her in when her tests before and after the abortion didn't include the HLA typing?"
Fletcher closed the folder and looked down at Landry from her half-inch advantage. "Dalton's O
positive and so is the baby. I had her frozen sample retested, but the HLA results were ambiguous. Since Renata has a rare HLA, I grasped at straws. If we're lucky, Mark, my `woman doctor's intuition' will pan out, and this baby'll have a better chance." She clapped him on the shoulder. "And isn't that what medicine's all about?"
"Aren't marrow donors supposed to be close relatives? Mr. and Mrs. Chandler both seem fit." What a snoop. "Do you have access to their medical histo-ries?" Landry shook his head.
"Then you couldn't be aware of the mismatched ABO and Lewis factors and Mr. Chandler's history of hepatitis B, could you?"
Landry shook his head again.
"Would it be safe to assume that a closely matched stranger's marrow might, under such circumstances, be preferable to the parents'?"
"Well, yes, but why did you go straight to this woman in-stead of going through the marrow registry program?"