After a moment of quiet, the voice on the other end said, 'Yes.'
'You might be able to assuage some of those feelings by giv-ing the gift of life to another child.' Silence crisscrossed the wires for long moments. Evelyn knew that if she said nothing more, Valerie would have to make the next move to break the awkward hiatus.
After a pause that almost seemed itself to be a battle, Valerie's soft voice said, 'All right. What should I do?'
'
Mark Landry gazed at the blonde entering the lab and thought, What a babe! Wearing a maroon cashmere sweater dress and matching high heels, she looked to be in her mid-twenties. That was all right. He liked older women. His fin-gers tapped at the counter.
Valerie approached the skinny laboratory technologist-he was the only one in the lab whose life at the moment appeared to be untainted by physical labor. She handed him a slip of paper.
'Here for a blood test and a pint, eh? Sit up here, Ms. Dalton. This won't take long.' She sat on the cot. There were three other people in the room, all hooked up to blood bags. She found it remarkably difficult to look at the people or the apparatus. She kept her eyes focused on the young man.
He was a lanky, freckled surf blond possessing an eager, admiring wolf gaze. She was flattered, but since she was in a situation that involved pain and bleeding, she wished for the entire episode to conclude swiftly.
He recorded her blood pressure, taking longer than normal to fit the cuff on her smooth, tanned arm. He gazed at her eyes-grey in the fluorescent light of the lab-while attempt-ing to make conversation.
'My name's Mark.' He glanced at the paperwork. 'Uh, is this for donation or autologous storage?'
'Autologous storage?'
'You know-setting blood aside before an operation so you only get your own. Safer, these days.'
'No, it's for a baby here. It's-'
'Oh, right,' he said, removing the pressure cuff and substi-tuting a stretch of elastic. 'Directed donation for the Chandler girl. Her mother was in the center's fertility program. Just born three days ago and already in trouble.' He donned a double pair of clear plastic gloves. 'I'm going to take a drop of blood from your ear lobe.'
'Is she sick because of the fertility program?' She stared at the needle Landry removed from a sealed package, then at the syringe he produced. She took a deep breath, focusing again on the man's angular, boyish face.
Landry dabbed antiseptic on her right ear lobe, then stuck her with a disposable needle in a brisk, practiced motion. Draw-ing off a crimson droplet into a slender tube, he held the blood over a cylinder filled with blue liquid. The droplet fell, hit the surface, and sank to join a pile of blackish globules at the bot-tom.
'Congratulations. You're not anemic.' He slid a sample vial up the hollow back of the syringe.
'Anyway she got a little ear infection, and they gave her antibiotics. Most kids have no prob-lem, but every once in a while you get one that's sensitive and gets bone-marrow suppression. Transfusions can help. Bone-marrow transplants-Okay, make a fist.'
'What?'
'Make a fist and squeeze a few times. I need to find a vein. Anyway-' His thumb felt around the crook of her right arm. 'Bone-marrow transplants will probably do the trick. Here we go.' Valerie flinched at the sharp jab of the needle. She felt a flutter in her stomach. Landry pushed the sample vial against the back of the needle until it penetrated the rubber stopper.
'Whoa-careful. Let me get it in there.' He poked around gently until the dark red liquid pulsed suddenly into the tube. Taping the needle to her arm, he let the vial fill up, removed it, and quickly attached the long, thin plastic tube from the blood bag.
Valerie gazed at the bag. From the squarish periphery of the large central bag extended several smaller bags connected by tubes. It looked like a squashed octopus. 'What are all those things hanging there?'
Landry smiled. 'This is what we use for baby transfusions. We fill up the big bag. Then, whenever we need the small amount a baby requires, we can squeeze some into a satellite bag, pinch it off, and use it. That way we don't have to enter the main bag. The blood stays usable longer that way.' During all this, he took the opportunity to scan the sheet she had given him.
'I see you visited Dr. Fletcher a few months back.'
