The Nameless Place

I have been going to a plasma donation center twice a week lately to sell off precious bodily fluids.

As you read that did you cringe a bit? I do, just slightly, every time I think about it. They have a TV screen around every corner, big, shiny, flat and expensive. At every moment except for a brief screening period the mind is distracted with a constant, numbing stream of sound and movement on these screens. I am certain this is carefully calculated to allow those who donate to pass through the entire process in a sort of haze.

The waiting room is full of mostly college students, young, fresh, rosy cheeked, with textbooks laid on their laps. The rest are an older, ragged looking crowd. They are a little rough around the edges, and are usually the chatty type. I belong to neither of these groups, but everyone assumes I am a student. It's the rosy cheeks, I guess.

Each time I go I am weighed, asked a battery of questions regarding my health, and blood from a pricked finger is analyzed to determine my worthiness to proceed. I have never failed the screening. This gives me a vague sense of pride, as the healthiest cow might feel on its way to slaughter.

I am then funneled through to a back room where there are even more TV screens. Reclining benches line the walls and are arranged back to back in lines throughout the room. The room is well-ventilated, but there are no windows, and the fluorescent lights cast a very unflattering glow. It smells faintly of latex gloves, and disinfectant.

And this is where I see faces that have become familiar to me. Some of them are the faces of other people who regularly come to donate at the same times I do. But mostly, I recognize the phlebs, the people who work in this windowless, noisy place. Their faces float above flimsy white paper lab coats and their voices are oddly muffled behind splatter visors. I study their faces because they are refreshingly human. They are generally friendly, happy to strike up conversation. But this is a nameless place. They wear name tags, but I've noticed most of them routinely hide them. I can't say I blame them. It always makes me feel so odd to take a name from a name tag. As if I'm stealing something. I recently introduced myself to a phleb. Every time I come, I have to give my name and assigned number to whoever has the chore of stabbing me with a needle. I suppose they know my name... but somehow that feels like a sorry substitute for a good old-fashioned introduction. Her name was Kelly, and I told her I was happy to meet her.

After the plasma has been separated from my blood and returned to me, I am bandaged up. The containers used to hold everything are gathered into a bloody mess of tubes and bottles and dropped into a waste bin with dozens of other bloodied containers. I am sent on my merry way, slightly richer. Or am I? This whole business, the numbing movies, the namelessness, and deceptive sterility of it all, is it possible it is taking more from me than just the water in my blood?

Well... I'm not really sure. Which is why, I suppose, it makes me cringe, just slightly every time I think of it.