Blood 'n Guts

IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL morning, the kind that signals that the cold Boston winter has nearly faded. The sunlight radiated down upon the Mem Hall steps as I bounded gingerly across them, but the glorious weather seemed somehow incongruous with the experience I was about to undergo.

They wanted my blood. Or so the kid who lives above me had said when he asked me to participate in the Red Cross Blood Drive. I imagined that I could feel the stuff sloshing around in my veins as I stepped up to the registration desk in Mem Hall.

"You nervous?" the secretary asked as she was filling out my card.

"Not really," I lied.

"Have a jelly bean," she suggested, as if to impart the therapeutic properties of a librium to a piece of candy. I popped one in my mouth anyway.

Looking around me. I noticed for the first time that Mem Hall had been transformed into a Barnum and Bailey-like infiemary. Bunches of helium filled balloons dotted the area, occasionally rising to the dusty rafters. This festive touch was offset by the green operating tables full of donors which took up half the building's floor space.

The middle-aged Faculty wives who ushered me through the waiting process all made valiant attempts to exude cheerfulness. Sporting blue smocks and name tags, smiling as wide as they could, and making insipid conversation ("How marvelous to remember your social security number!"), they all tried to make me feel as if I were sipping tea in their homes. But it just didn't work. They knew as well as I did that the purpose of my visit was not tea but blood. However, they were very considerate and did as much as they could to calm me.

A nurse administered a thorough review of my medical history before allowing me to give blood. She asked about everything from obscure childhood illnesses to what I had for breakfast that morning. This interrogation induced a temporary hypochondria forcing me to remember anything in my past that might compromise my ability to give blood. "What if I don't have enough?" I thought. The speed of the process left me no more time for injurious self-contemplation.

The next thing I knew. I was stretched out on one of those green tables, the precious life-fluid running from my vein to a bag out of my sight. Lying on my back. I could view the Mem Hall stained glass windows in all their exquisite detail, a treat that students gazing down at blue exam books rarely enjoy. Dante, Chaucer and Blake smiled benignly upon the whole affair.

Turning my head, I noticed that I was surrounded by students, faculty, and grounds workers. It occurred to me that, within this context, donating blood took on the dimension of a socially leveling process. In such a socially stratified place as Harvard, where each element conforms to its designated position in the hierarchy, it is easy to forget that we are all made of flesh and, of course, blood. Donating blood linked us in a way that no other Harvard function possibly could; the blood of a kitchen worker was worth just as much as that of the most world-famous professor.

A FACULTY WIFE helped me walk from the operating table to the snack table. I protested that I would be late for her husband's class, but she insisted that I stay in the chair for 15 minutes anyway. Other faculty wives kept bringing me juice and cookies. Elsie's it wasn't, but it kept me from passing out.

Before they let me leave, the ladies in the blue smocks made me fill out a questionnaire asking why I gave blood. I checked the box in front of "humanitarian reasons," but realized that this was somewhat inaccurate. True, while I donated my blood in part for the lives I would save. I was salving my good liberal conscience as well. I reasoned that my blood running in some body else's veins would somehow make me a better person.

As I rose from the table, glutted on oreos and orange juice a middle-aged woman bade me good-bye.

"Come again," she chuckled, "and bring all your friends."