I’ve grown accustomed to the feeling of blood draining from my body.
That sounds more morbid than it is, at least I think so, but as I sit at the phlebotomy station, watching the pulse-propelled red shooting into a whirring machine, I dwell on the bodily experience of willingly separating a part of myself from the rest of myself.
I find myself here, every so often, at the plasma donation center. Lured in by the promise of a little supplemental income, I trade the liquid coursing through me for a deposit on a card. It’s a transaction that gives me pause: plasma for plastic. An iodine-stained bandage on the fold of my elbow marks me for the rest of the day, as does the debit card in my wallet that identifies me only as “[Plasma Company] Donor.” No name, all action: for this I am what I do, or more accurately, what I give.
Sitting on the bed, pumping my fist when the machine blinks green and relaxing when the machine blinks red, glancing briefly at the wall-mounted television playing today’s matinee flick, Barbershop 2, I remain aware always of the other bodies surrounding me.
The phlebotomists shift from bed to bed, checking on us donors, awaking the sleepers (a big no-no), and fiddling with the withdrawal rates to keep the donation process moving along. After all, there are more bodies waiting in the lobby for a free bed, getting checked for track marks or undisclosed piercings and tattoos that could contaminate the center’s bank.
These are the newfangled priests and priestesses. White lab coats their robes, surgical masks and safety glasses their phylacteries, their outfits lend a certain gravitas juxtaposing their cheerful banter. They excel at small talk, puncturing swollen veins with needles they advise against fixating on. We volunteers, the laity, partake in the ritualized exchange, some reversed and monetized Eucharist, and observe in fascination the carts that make their way down the aisles as piles of filled bags get swapped for new ones.
This mental frame romanticizes the goings-on. So too do the center’s posters reminding us of the live-saving potential our plasma holds for others. Such benefits are certainly a perk, but I’d hazard a guess that it’s very much a tertiary one. For many of us on the beds, in the lobby, collecting our receipt/deposit slip (is there really a difference in this situation?), we are here because fifty bucks a week is nothing to scoff at. It goes toward rent, groceries, cigarettes, whatever: what matters is that we came to the machine in the first place.
It is a benevolent – or at least generously indifferent – machine, the plasma collection system. The techs guarantee at each visit that my blood cells will make their way back into me. The apheresis takes interest only in the extracted plasma, filtering the whole blood through the centrifuge, drawing off its prize, and discarding the vital waste and returning it indifferently.
After thirty or forty minutes, my circulation has acted as it should. My bag is full; my plasma drifting in rest when it had been zooming through me an hour before. I arise a little gingerly, conscious of the venous puncture awaiting the coming scab. Stepping out again into the sunlight while gulping down electrolytes, I take one last look as my bag takes its place among others of its kind, just as I take my place among you.
Jacob Schepers (Calvin ’12) is the author of A Bundle of Careful Compromises (2014), a winner of the 2013 Outriders Poetry Project competition. His poetry has appeared in Verse, The Common, PANK, The Destroyer, and others. He lives in South Bend, IN, with his wife, Charis, and two sons, Liam and Oliver. He is both an MFA student and doctoral candidate in English at the University of Notre Dame.
