Blood Work

29

THEY GOT TO HOLY CROSS shortly before noon. Graciela parked in the front lot and they went into the hospital through the general admissions entrance. She did not want to go through the emergency room, since that was where she worked. She explained on the way over that she had been taking a lot of personal days off with little notice to be with Raymond since Gloria’s death. But the patience of her supervisors was wearing thin. She didn’t think it would be wise to take the day off on one day’s notice and flaunt it by walking through the emergency room. Besides, what they were about to do could get her fired. The fewer people who saw her the better.

Once inside the hospital, Graciela, her nurse’s uniform and her familiar face, got them where they needed to go. She was like an ambassador for whom all barriers were lifted. No one stopped them. No one questioned them. They took a staff elevator to the fourth floor, arriving a few minutes past twelve.

Graciela had told McCaleb her plan on the way over. She figured they could count on having fifteen minutes to do what they had to do. That was the maximum-just the time it would take for the blood supplies coordinator to go down to the hospital cafeteria, get her lunch and then bring it back up to the pathology lab. The BSC actually had an hour lunch break but it was routine in that job to eat lunch at your desk because there was no replacement while you were gone. The BSC was a nursing position but because the job did not involve direct patient care, no one filled in the spot when the BSC went on break.

As Graciela expected, they got to the path lab at 12:05 and found the BSC desk empty. McCaleb felt his pulse quicken a little bit as he looked at the flying toasters floating across the screen of the computer sitting on the desk. However, the desk sat in a large open lab station. About ten feet from the computer desk was another desk where a woman in a nurse’s uniform sat. Graciela showed nothing but ease with the situation.

“Hey, Patrice, what’s the haps?” she said cheerfully.

The woman turned from the files she was dealing with in front of her and smiled. She glanced at McCaleb but then looked back at Graciela.

“Graciela,” she said, drawing each syllable out and overdoing the Latin inflection like a television news anchor. “Nothing’s happening, girl. How ’bout you?”

“Nada. Who’s the BSC and where’s the BSC?”

“It’s Patty Kirk for a few days. She went down to get a sandwich a couple minutes ago.”

“Hmmmm,” Graciela said as if it had just dawned on her. “Well, I’m going to make a quick connect.”

She came around the counter and headed toward the computer.

“We’ve got an SCW down in emergency with rare blood. I have a feeling this guy’s going to run through everything we got and I want to see what’s out there.”

“You could’ve just called up. I would’ve run it for you.”

“I know but I’m showing my friend, Terry, how we do things around here. Terry, this is Patrice. Patrice, Terry. He’s pre-med, UCLA. I’m seeing if I can’t talk him out of it.”

Patrice looked at McCaleb and smiled again, then her eyes studied him in an appraising way. He knew what she was thinking.

“I know, it’s kind of late,” he said. “It’s a midlife crisis sort of thing.”

“I should say so. Good luck during residency. I’ve seen twenty-five-year-olds come out of that looking like they were fifty.”

“I know. I’ll be ready.”

They smiled at each other and the conversation was finally over. Patrice went back to her files and McCaleb looked at Graciela, who was seated in front of the computer. The toasters were gone and the screen was awake. There was some sort of template with white boxes on it.

“You can come around,” she said. “Patrice won’t bite you.”

Patrice laughed but didn’t say anything. McCaleb came around and stood behind her chair. She looked up at him and winked, knowing that he was blocking any view Patrice had of her. He winked back and smiled. Her coolness was impressive. He looked at his watch and then held his arm down so she could see it was now seven after twelve. She turned her attention to the computer.

“Now, we’re looking for type AB blood, okay. So what we do is log on here and connect with BOPRA. That’s short for Blood and Organ Procurement and Request Agency. That’s the big regional blood bank we deal with. Most hospitals around here do.”

“Right.”

She reached up and ran her finger beneath a small piece of paper taped to the monitor above the screen. There was a six-digit number written on it. McCaleb knew this was the access code. On the drive over Graciela had explained how little security was attached to the BOPRA system. The code to access the computer was changed monthly. But the BSC position at Holy Cross was not a full-time position, meaning that nurses assigned to it were put through on rotation. This rotation was also routinely disrupted because nurses who had colds, viruses and any other maladies that did not require them to miss work but required that they be kept away from patients were often assigned to the BSC desk. Because of the high number of people working in the slot, the BOPRA code was simply taped to the monitor each month when it was changed. In eight years as a nurse, Graciela had worked at two other hospitals in Los Angeles. She had said that this practice was the same at each of those hospitals as well. BOPRA had a security system in place that was circumvented in probably every hospital it served.

Graciela typed in the code number followed by the modem command and McCaleb heard the computer dial and then connect to the BOPRA computer.

“Connecting to the mother station,” Graciela said.

McCaleb looked at his watch. They had eight minutes at the most left. The screen went through some welcome templates before settling on an identification and request checklist. Graciela quickly typed in the needed information and continued to describe what she was doing.

“Now we go to the blood request page. We type in what we are looking for and then… hocus pocus, we wait.”

She held her hands in front of the screen and wiggled her fingers.

“Graciela, how’s Raymond doing?” Patrice asked from behind them. McCaleb turned and looked back but Patrice was still working with her back to them.

“He’s good,” Graciela answered. “It still breaks my heart but he’s doing good.”

“Ah, that’s good. You gotta bring him in again.”

“I will but he has school. Maybe spring break.”

The screen started printing out an inventory of the availability of type AB blood and the hospital or blood bank location of each pint. While BOPRA was a blood bank itself, it also served as a coordinating agency for smaller banks and hospitals throughout the West.

“Okay,” Graciela said. “So now we see that there is a pretty good supply of this around. The doctor wants to have at least six units on standby in case our patient with the sucking chest wound needs more surgery. So we click on the order window and put the hold on six. A hold only lasts twenty-four hours. If it’s not updated by this time tomorrow, that blood is up for grabs.”

“Okay,” McCaleb said, acting like the student he was supposed to be.

“I’ll have to remember to tell Patty to update this tomorrow.”

“What if you called this up and there was no blood?”

On the drive over she had told him to ask the question if there was anyone else in the nurses’ station when they connected to BOPRA.

“Good question,” she said as she began moving the computer mouse. “This is what we do. We go to this icon with the blood droplet on it. We click and that gets us to the donors file. We wait again.”

A few seconds went by and then the screen began filling with names, addresses, phone numbers and other information.

“These are all blood donors with type AB. It shows where they are, how they can be contacted and this other information shows when they gave blood last. You don’t want to keep going to the same person all the time. You try to spread it out and you try to find someone either near to us, so they can just come in here, or near to a blood bank. You want it to be convenient for them.”

As she spoke she ran her finger down the list of names. There were about twenty-five of them, from all over the West. She stopped at her sister’s name and tapped the screen with her fingernail. Then she kept going. Her finger reached the bottom without coming across the names James Cordell or Donald Kenyon.

McCaleb loudly let out his breath in disappointment but Graciela raised her finger in a one-moment gesture. She then hit the screen up key and a new screen of names appeared. There were maybe fifteen more. The name James Cordell sat on top of the new list. She ran her finger down the screen and found Donald Kenyon’s name second from the last.

This time McCaleb’s breath caught and he just nodded. Graciela looked up at him, the somber look of confirmation in her eyes. McCaleb leaned close to the screen and read the information that followed the names. Cordell hadn’t given blood for nine months and it had been more than six years since Kenyon had spared a drop. McCaleb noticed that the final notation after each name was the letter D followed by an asterisk. Other names had one or the other but only a few had the combination of both. McCaleb reached down and tapped the screen below the letter.

“What’s that? Deceased?”

“No,” Graciela said in a quiet voice. “The D means donor. Organ donor. They signed papers, put it on their driver’s licenses, all of that, so that if the time comes that they come into a hospital and die, they can take the organs.”

She looked at him the whole time she said this and McCaleb found it hard to look back at her. He knew what the confirmation meant.

“And the asterisk?”

“I’m not sure.”

She scrolled the screen until she got back to the legend at the top. She ran her finger along the symbols until she got to the asterisk.

“It means CMV negative,” she said. “Most people carry a non-threatening blood virus called CMV. It’s short for some big word. About a quarter of the population doesn’t have it. It’s something that has to be known to make a complete blood work match between donors and recipients.”

He nodded. It was information he already knew.

“So that’s today’s lesson,” Graciela said quietly.

She moved the mouse and McCaleb saw the arrow move to the disconnect icon at the top of the screen. He reached down and grabbed her hand before she could click the mouse button and sign off the BOPRA system.

Graciela looked back up at him, the question on her face. McCaleb looked back at Patrice. He couldn’t talk. He looked around and saw a clipboard on the counter with some forms on it and a pencil connected to it with a string. He signaled with his hand to Graciela, pointing to Patrice and then back to her and making a talking sign with his fingers. He then grabbed the clipboard and started to write.

“Hey, uh, Patrice, how’s Charlie doing?” Graciela asked.

“Oh, he’s fine. Still an asshole.”

“Boy, you guys get along so gooood !”

“Yeah, we’re real lovebirds.”

McCaleb held the clipboard in front of Graciela. He had written three questions.

1. Can you print out that list?

2. Can you call up your sister’s file?

3. Who got her organs?

Graciela hiked her shoulders and mouthed the words I don’t know to him. She then turned to the computer and went to work. First she printed out the list of type AB donors. Thankfully, the computer was attached to a laser printer which did the job almost silently and Patrice paid no notice. McCaleb quickly folded the list lengthwise and put it in his inside coat pocket. Next, Graciela went back to the original welcome screen and pulled down a window of commands. She clicked the mouse on an icon that showed a red heart. A screen that saidORGAN PRO -CUREMENT SERVICES appeared and there was another template seeking an access code. Graciela hiked her shoulders, looked up at the code taped above the screen and typed it in again.

Nothing.

The arrow switched to an hourglass and nothing happened. McCaleb looked at his watch. It was 12:15, the end of the window of opportunity they had agreed upon. Patty Kirk would be back any moment and they would be discovered. When she had planned all of this out, Graciela hadn’t said anything about how they would explain what they were doing if they were caught.

“I think the computer’s freezing,” Graciela said.

Out of frustration she whacked the side of the monitor with an open hand. McCaleb always considered it amazing how many people thought this might help a computer. He was about to tell her not to bother when he heard the wheels of Patrice’s chair move. He turned to see her getting up. Maybe she was going to take a shot at the computer also.

“There it goes,” Graciela said.

McCaleb kept his body between Patrice’s view and the computer.

“Damned thing,” Patrice said. “It’s always doing that. I’m going to go upstairs to the porch for a Coke and a smoke. See you later, Graciela.”

She smiled at McCaleb.

“And nice to meet you,” she added.

McCaleb smiled.

“Nice to meet you,” he said.

“See you later, Patrice,” Graciela added.

Patrice walked around the counter and out into the hallway. She never looked at the computer screen as she passed. When she was gone, McCaleb looked down at the screen. There was a flashing message across it.

LEVEL 1 ACCESS ONLY

TRY AGAIN

“What’s that mean?”

“It means I don’t have the code to get into that file. What time is it?”

“Time to go. Sign off.”

She clicked on the disconnect button and McCaleb heard the chick-chick sound of the telephone connection being broken.

“What were you doing?” Graciela asked. “What did you want?”

“I’ll tell you later. Let’s get out of here.”

She got up, moved the chair back the way she had found it and they hurried around the counter. Out in the hallway they took the first right and headed back toward the elevators. They walked quickly, as if they were thieves. There was a woman coming toward them, carrying a can of Coke and a Styrofoam sandwich box. She was about eighty feet away and she was smiling at Graciela.

“Oh, shit,” McCaleb whispered. “Is that-”

“Yes. We’re cool.”

“No, stall her.”

“Why? We’re fine.”

He raised his hand to rub his nose and block his words from traveling to the approaching woman.

“The screen saver. They don’t usually come on for at least a minute. She’ll know.”

“It doesn’t matter. We’re not stealing government secrets.”

As it turned out, Graciela didn’t have to stall. Patty Kirk stalled herself.

“Graciela, what are you doing here?” she said as they approached. “I just saw Jane Tompkins in the cafeteria and she was bitchin’ about you not coming in again.”

They stopped and Patty Kirk stopped.

“Don’t tell her I was here!” Graciela urged.

“Well, what are you doing?”

She raised her hand to signal Graciela’s uniform.

“This is my friend, Terry. He’s pre-med. UCLA. I told him I would show him around today ’cause he might transfer his residency here. I thought with the pinks on, it would be a lot easier to get around. Terry, this is Patty Kirk.”

They shook hands and smiled. McCaleb asked how she was doing and she said fine. He had visions of those flying toasters finally returning to her computer screen.

Patty Kirk looked back at Graciela and shook her head.

“Janie’s going to kill you if she finds out. She thought it was something with Raymond again. You owe me big time for this, girl.”

“I know, I know. Just don’t tell her, okay? Everybody is mad at me down there. She’s the only friend I’ve got left.”

They said their good-byes and McCaleb and Graciela moved on to the elevator. When Patty Kirk was out of earshot, Graciela asked if the stall was long enough.

“Depends on what the screensaver is set on. But it’s probably okay. Let’s get out of here.”

Back in the Rabbit, Graciela drove out of the hospital lot and headed to the 405 freeway to go south.

“Where to now?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. We have to get into BOPRA somehow. We need the list of recipients. But I doubt we could just drive up and they’d give them to us. Where is BOPRA anyway?”

“ West L.A., near the airport. But you are right, you’re not going to just go in there and be given a list. The whole system is built on confidentiality. I only found you because somebody told me about that newspaper story.”

“Right,” he said.

He was already past that. His mind was racing and it finally snagged on an idea. They were coming up to the freeway entrance.

“Let’s go over the hill. To Cedars. I think I know somebody who will help us.”