The Phlebotomist

by Chris Panatier

  Her touchstone sounded, and with nobody standing in line, she took a break to glance at it.

  PATRIOCAST 10.20.67

  Safety Reminders!

  Never trust a blood bag given to you by someone you do not know. It could be CONTAMINATED.

  Before affixing a new blood bag, wash your port with hot water and PatrioCleanse™ antibacterial soap (Free at all donor stations).

  Blood-borne pathogens are HIGHLY CONTAGIOUS! Do not associate with anyone who is ill.

  If you become aware of a sick individual, you can help them! Tap the PatrioCare™ icon and Patriot will deliver them to one of our convalescence facilities for treatment. Remember, preventing the spread of disease is a four-step process:

  Sequestration

  Diagnosis

  Inoculation

  Elimination

  Patriot thanks ALL DONORS. Your gift matters!

  Protecting the blood supply was vital to helping those inside the Gray Zones and so Willa was generally supportive of the measures taken to do so, even if they tilted toward heavy handed. She’d escaped Chrysalis and most of its aftereffects, but not without help. Acute radiation syndrome – ARS – had been widespread in all directions of the blast. In managing the crisis, the government had drawn a miles-wide circle around ground zero. The radiation levels for those within the ring who had survived the initial blast were deemed untreatable. Those on the outside of the ring with signs of ARS received platelet transfusions in the hope that their bone marrow cells would repopulate. If they did, the patient recovered, if not, they met the same fate as those inside the ring. Willa had been outside the ring. The transfusions had saved her life.

  All of that didn’t mean she was blind to reality, however. Over time the consequences of Patriot’s strict policies had begun to pile up. Fed by an accelerating cycle of fear that someone’s cold or flu might actually be hepatitis or HIV, neighbors started reporting neighbors. You couldn’t get the police to AB Plus, but news of infection would have the authorities outside the house in minutes. Even without confirmatory testing, Patriot scooped up the afflicted and transferred them for treatment. Sometimes they didn’t come back. Rumor had it that Patriot quarantined those who failed to recover in a remote settlement on the city’s edgelands. Willa wasn’t so sure. The real problem was paranoia, and no one could eradicate that. Eventually, people learned the drill: if you were sick, draw the curtains until you weren’t.

  Willa’s vault was cooling blood again and the lines brought no drama. The monotony and repetition was a respite from the outside world – the struggle to live and provide, the state of her once great country, bomb anxiety, Isaiah’s future… She got lost in the contours of each blood bag she collected, let the cold liquid inside salve the tension she stored in her arthritic fingers. A job could do wonders for one’s mental state, regardless of its complexity. Completion of a task was good for the soul.

  At close, Willa exited the station into a heavy mist. She briefly considered summoning a brellabot to keep her dry, but that meant money. Besides, she’d kept on her reaper’s black, which was surprisingly weather resistant. She flipped up the hood. Based on the latest forecast, fallout drift was negligible.

  Situated in the middle of a large O-negative district known simply as O Minus, Station Eight was the busiest precinct in the segment. As universal donors, the O-negs enjoyed the highest demand for their blood, which meant it fetched the top prices.

  What Patriot was willing to pay for blood was dictated by a few factors Willa understood and a few she didn’t. The biggest key was compatibility, and thereby the proportion of the population that could safely receive one’s blood. The O-negs could donate to just about a hundred percent of the population, barring rare cases, while O-positives were donor compatible with around eighty-five percent of folks. As such, those with the O antigen were deemed “highbloods”. A-negs could donate their blood to about forty-six percent of the population, while A-positives hit at about thirty-nine percent. This solid, but by no means high, donor compatibility meant people with the A antigen were “midbloods”. At the bottom of the barrel were B-negs and B-positives, at fourteen and twelve percent donor compatibility, and below them were AB-negs at four percent and AB-positives at three and a half. Their blood was worth the least. The Bs and the ABs, then, were “lowbloods”.

  Willa’s route toward home took her from O Minus into the midbloods, their borders delineated by an uptick in poverty. Finally, she traversed the southern tip of A Plus, across a thin finger of O Plus, and into the lowbloods.

  Hardly a neighborhood and more like a slum, AB Plus was the place she’d come from – and eventually escaped. Folks with the AB-positive antigens were the opposite of O-negs in just about every way. They were universal recipient. Willa mused that the term carried such a pleasant connotation if you needed blood, but not if you had to sell it, which of course everyone did. As donor blood, AB-positive was a bad match for anyone but other AB-positives, which accounted for only three percent of the population. So demand for it was miniscule. The real kicker was that since AB-positives were compatible recipients for the other seven blood types, should they need blood, they didn’t even require their own type. Where the Trade was concerned, AB-positive was redundant. An unlucky mistake of creation. A sick joke. Willa half wondered why Patriot bothered to collect it at all.

  The worst part about the whole thing – from the Harvest, to the Trade, from cash-for-blood donations to neighborhoods segregated by blood type – was that it didn’t have to be like this.

  Back when phlebotomists were valued for their skill and knowledge rather than to serve as glorified button pushers, Willa had real training. She knew blood. Understood that it wasn’t just one substance, but a blend of four distinct components, or fractions, with each one serving a different, vital purpose. And importantly, patients rarely required all of them at once.

  In the old days, fractionation, also known as apheresis, was the process by which only some of these components – red blood cells, plasma, platelets, or white blood cells – were removed from a donor’s blood. Depending on the need, be it trauma, a leukemia diagnosis, or any number of other maladies, fractionation allowed for the selective collection of blood serums rather than all or nothing.

  Before the Harvest, fractionation was standard practice. In one sitting, whole blood was drawn, centrifuged into fractions, the desired component removed, and everything else sent right back into the donor. An anticoagulant introduced into the system ensured the blood didn’t curdle before the donor got it back.

  And that was the problem. The synthetic anticoagulants used in blood transport and preservation were unsafe for introduction into the body, making them ineligible for fractionation. Transported blood, for instance, had to be processed to remove synthetics prior to transfusion into people. The only anticoagulants that were safe for use during apheresis were made from crops that were contaminated by fallout. Absent an anticoagulant, fractioning simply wasn’t an option. So whole blood made the Harvest.

  Willa drew to a stop in front of a lopsided ranch-style home, its siding sloughed in places exposing the pink swirls of century-old batting and rotten studs. A bay window in front still held glass in the center pane, and there, collected like a gathering of starfish, pressed the tiny hands of maybe a dozen children, their eyes shining from behind.

  Higher up in the window, the blinds opened enough for another set of eyes. Likely one of the few adults occupying the home, with shared responsibility for the children inside. That’s how it was in AB Plus. Automation had killed off the jobs, so parents turned to the Trade, doing what they could to provide, tripping along the tightrope of hypovolemia until they eventually made one donation too many.

  It was an inescapable cycle for those in the lowbloods. Even choice of mate was an exercise in self-preservation. Since blood type is inherited, the only way to maintain an O-negative bloodline was to have kids with other O-negs. An O-neg wasn’t going to pair with someone without it a
nd risk downgrading the blood of their children. For the same reason, the midbloods avoided lowbloods. They might even get lucky, as the laws of genetics allowed the rare O-negative child to midblood parents. But an AB mother would never give birth to an O child, regardless of the father’s blood type.

  And that’s what got her, the truth of the world these children had yet to appreciate. Born with the wrong blood into a world organized according to it. Relegated to damnation through no fault of their own.

  Willa looked to the sky and wondered when the last time a catering drone had been inside the jagged border of her old neighborhood. Months probably, maybe longer. Elsewhere, virtually all commerce was conducted via drone, especially in the business districts where they saturated the sky like starlings. They were even thick in the air over much of O Minus, where run-of-the-mill drone services could be afforded. Not in AB Plus. These people still walked miles to pick up The Box when it was issued every two weeks.

  She considered her touchstone. The five hundred sat in her account like a swollen cyst. It was true that she and Isaiah could use it, but she wanted it – and all the questions that came with it – gone, excised from her conscience. They’d always gotten by before the five hundred, and they would get by after it.

  A tap brought her touchstone to life. “I’d like catering service please,” she said.

  State star level: two through five.

  “They don’t have one-star drones anymore?” Willa asked, perturbed.

  One-star foodservice level selected, confirm?

  “Confirm.”

  How many dining, please?

  “One hundred.”

  Confirmed. Debit four hundred and eighty-nine. Confirm?

  She smiled. “Confirmed.”

  Willa glanced back to the window of the house from where the eyes gleamed and gave a little wave. The starfish twinkled back. Above them, their guardian, scrutinized her. She understood. Nobody wandered into AB Plus to take in the view. You were either trouble, or stupid, or both. Willa just hoped the drones came before somebody decided to blood-mug her. With her luck it would be Tillman, who come tomorrow would waltz in to Donor Eight looking to sell her own blood right back to her. She took solace in knowing that he wouldn’t get much for it.

  She waited, kicking her toes at the sickly grass that stuffed the sidewalk cracks. It was an uncanny feature of the blood districts. They were woven together by contiguous patches of gray-yellow grass, agglomerated like land masses that crossed sidewalks and streets alike. It was everywhere, twining its infirm way across empty lots, abandoned salvage yards, and childless parks beset by naked trees.

  Green and blue landing lights appeared in the distance, four sets in all. Commerce drones were distinguishable from those built to transport people, taking on the form that best served whatever they carried. The approaching catering drones looked like flying charcoal grills. They descended from the low clouds and landed smoothly on the sidewalk to either side of her. Their ducted fan stalks folded seamlessly into the body panels and she bounced her touchstone against their interfaces to verify her identity. Segmented domes slid open to reveal a three-hundred and sixty degree buffet of steaming bins: rice and beans, corn bread, pickled vegetables, and some sort of cheap white fish. A drawer presented degradable bowls and biopolyware.

  Willa signaled an invitation to those inside the nearby homes, but the eyes stayed put. Understandable. She’d have had the same response if she were the one behind the blinds. Give them a minute, she thought, an empty stomach will always prevail.

  She laid a filet in the bottom of a bowl, buried it under hot beans and rice, unwrapped a fork, and gently folded the mixture so as to allow the steam to escape. She set her backside against a drone and dug in. Up and down the street, the windows framed constellations of eyes, and she could tell from the shuffling behind each that the empty bellies were winning.

  CHAPTER THREE

  INFUSION

  To introduce a fluid solution into the body through a vein.

  “What’re you looking at, Everard?” asked Sasha, one of the youngest.

  Everard let the blinds snap shut as he pondered. “Crazy woman just standing out on the street.”

  “How do you know she’s crazy?”

  “She’s standing in the middle of AB Plus, ’Sosh,” said Everard. “That and she’s got hair brighter than bubble gum.”

  “What color is bubble gum?”

  “Pink.”

  “Can I see?”

  “No,” he said, shooing her away. Now, what in the damned hell was a woman – and an older woman, at that – doing loitering in the roughest patch of AB Plus? He reopened the gap in the old blinds again and watched as she messed with her touchstone. Couldn’t be a spy if she had a touchstone. Either that or she was a top-notch spy with a jailbroke handpiece. Still, pretty brazen to go ’round out in the open looking like a circus performer. Then again, what was the saying? Hiding in plain sight?

  The padding of feet told him the rest of the children had gathered to see what the fuss was about. “Y’all scoot,” he said, taking Honey under the arms and bringing her back to the living room. “Come on, stay away from there.”

  He set her into an old beanbag and turned back for the window, where all the children had shoved themselves beneath the blinds to get a view outside. He rushed back to the front. “Goddamit you guys, what’d I tell you?”

  “She looks nice,” said Jack, an older boy about second grade in age, though no one knew his exact years.

  “Git,” said Everard, trying to herd them away. They scattered momentarily only to recongeal into clusters at the window’s edges. He opened the blinds again to see the woman staring directly at him. She did a friendly little wave. Who was this person? All around him the kids shouted greetings as they returned the salutation.

  “What’s she doing here, Everard?” asked Jack.

  “I don’t know and I guarantee you she don’t know either. One can shy of a sixer for sure, Jack… she’s probably crazy.”

  He kept watching. She let her touchstone hang free on its lanyard and pushed her hands deep into the pockets of her coat. That pink hair. Odd as it was, it seemed familiar to him, though he couldn’t place it. Was that a reaper’s outfit? She waved again and then glanced to the north. Drones.

  Worse than a spy. She was Patriot. They’d come for him.

  “Quick!” he ordered. “Everyone into the back room!” He corralled the children. Years of vigilant living had hardened their discipline in times of emergency, and they moved to their safe places largely on their own. Returning to the window, he opened the slit in the blinds as four large commerce drones landed just off the old crumbled sidewalk. The woman tapped her touchstone to each and the shells on top slid open to reveal… food? “Holy shi–” he stopped himself. “That red beans and rice?” He felt like he was having a bad trip, but he hadn’t been ’shrooming in twenty-five years.

  Furniture shuffled in the other room as the children reemerged from their hiding spots, with Everard too flabbergasted to stop them. He hadn’t seen commercial drones over AB Plus in, well, ever? And four of them full of food? Something like that cost more money than he’d know what to do with. With that kind of money, the woman had to be a criminal. A criminal dressed like a Patriot station worker. Only a pro would be so brazen. He felt a mixture of wonderment and admiration at the stunt.

  They all watched as she took a bowl from a compartment and began scooping heaping blobs of rice and fish into it. Then, standing out in the open in the middle of AB Plus, the woman in the pink hair began eating dinner.

  “She’s eating food!” hollered Ryan, as the others exclaimed various theories and pontifications about the woman who’d brought food drones into the most desolate place in the city. She took another bite and began gesturing to the houses, then signaled Everard to come outside with her. “She’s inviting us, Everard! Can we go?”

  They were all hungry. They were always hungry. Everard couldn’t remember
the last time he’d had anything more than a nibble of the meals they made for the children. His ribs jutted out so far the kids could hang from them. He turned from the window. “You stay put. Get me? I don’t know what this is all about. Anything happens, you get in your hiding spots and send word to Lindon, yes?”

  The children nodded.

  “Good. Lock the door behind me.” He took a pocketknife from his cargo shorts. “Octavia,” he said, handing the tiny weapon to the oldest child. “You the man o’ the house.” She nodded.

  “But she’s a giiiiiiiirl,” one of them squealed as Everard left the room. He heard Octavia give the boy a dressing-down and the whining stopped.

  He went to the dark entryway, flipped a series of deadbolts, and cracked the door. The woman saw this and addressed him.

  “It’s OK!” she called. “Come out here before it gets cold. Bring those kids. Get them fed.” She took an exaggerated bite. “You too, come on,” she hollered toward the neighboring homes.

  Everard looked down the block at the other houses. No movement, though there would be soon if he didn’t make a move first. They’d give him a short grace period out of deference for who he worked for. He rubbed the stubble of his shaved head and gave his beard a pull. He opened the door slowly.

  “Come on,” the woman called again.

  He moved cautiously forward, knowing that the neighborhood was just as interested in his response as they were in her. As he stalked down the weed-covered walk, he tried to place her. She definitely wasn’t from the neighborhood. Clothes were too clean and in good repair. She was well fed. He tried not to assume too much from the Patriot lab coat – she’d probably stolen it. He shouldn’t have been susceptible, but he found himself charmed by the pink hair, the cheerful way it popped against her dark skin. When he got to within a few feet, he eyed her and the food with equal suspicion, at the same time unable to hide his own desire for it. Turning back to the children in the window, he signaled for them to stay put, then back to the woman said, in his most indifferent tone, “Who’re you?”