Blood

"Blood, it's all there is/ in times of trial and loneliness." So goes a favorite song of mine, and it pops into my head as I stand in St. Vincent Hospital, holding a box of blood from the Red Cross that is getting heavier and heavier. I deliver lots of these. Once I helped save someone's life: The job turned urgent, I was called on my cell, and, well, the speed limit was no longer observed.

Some drivers hate these deliveries, but I welcome the chance to stretch my legs. I've been in every hospital in the greater Portland area, from Hillsboro to Gresham. Some things are almost always the same; usually the blood bank is in the basement, adjacent to the lab. Patients and visitors usually never go to the basement, so it's another world down here. The walls are absent of soothing art, the corners vacant of silk plants. They are often eerily empty, save for the occasional purposeful figure in pale blue or aqua scrubs. In my black clothes I'm clearly an interloper of sorts, but I've always said if you do something purposefully enough, people will think you're supposed to be doing it. I've passed carts full of needles, of morphine ampules, just sitting out. I've overheard indiscreet conversations that would chill the blood of a patient's loved ones. But now as I stand here, unable to decide between the Red Elevators and the Green Elevators, another line from that song occurs to me: "If I stayed away too long/ many times I lost my way."