"I'd never been on a boat," my dad said, raising his glass toward mine. We'd had to ride the ferry across the sound from Seattle.
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"Well," I said, "then here's to new experiences. Yours and mine."
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Our respective glasses clinked together, and we went about enjoying the rest of our meal on Bainbridge Island. I was feeling the ache of the pre-donation drugs permeate through my bones; I'd been having injections for the previous four days, and moving or even just walking was an arduous and painful experience. The side effects were awful.
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"So, assuming it all goes smoothly tomorrow, the recipient will be receiving your bone marrow on your mom's birthday?" He asked.
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"Yes," I said, "her fifty-sixth birthday, to be exact."
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He nodded. My dad had lost his mother a few years ago, and he'd told me on more than a few occasions that he finally understood what I'd gone through twenty years ago; that now he understood what it meant to feel alone in the world; what it meant to lose someone so intrinsic to your wellbeing.
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He raised his glass again.
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"To our mothers."
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I smiled, and our glasses clinked in the soft light of the sunset.
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* * *
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Mary, the director of the medical facility, led us back into a brightly lit room with several hospital beds lined around the room. There were a frightening clown mask and a separate clown painting on one wall, and I was afraid to ask what the thought process or motivation was behind putting that crazy shit up on the wall. The ceiling was a series of vertically hung tiles that must have required a ridiculous amount of effort to hang. And it almost worked, save for the small sections of haphazardly hung tiles that set my OCD into a righteous rampage.
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To retrieve my stem cells, they hooked an IV into each arm and the entirety of my blood, one cup at a time, cycled through a machine. It took eight hours in a hospital bed in which I wasn't really able to move. It was mostly boring, anti-climactic, like jumping out of an airplane and finding that it was like doing your taxes. Only slower.
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I had three nurses tending to me throughout the procedure: Grace, Donna, and Rachelle.
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* * *
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"I learned the names of all the nurses," I told my psychologist a few days after the procedure, "and that struck me as kind of odd."
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"Why?" She'd asked, "It seems like you wanted to know whoever would be taking care of you. It sounds like a defense mechanism to me. And a good one at that."
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* * *
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My dad thought Grace was cute--because of course he did--and I spent most of my time joking with each of the nurses to alleviate the tension. I usually joked about dying. I suppose there are worse defense mechanisms in my arsenal, but I could have chosen a slightly better time than when life is literally hanging in the balance.
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* * *
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"There's a danger to putting everyone at ease," my psychologist told me afterward, "in that everyone might think you're okay when you're not."
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* * *
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"How are you feeling?" Grace asked me. I was looking pale, gray, ashen.
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"Did you ever see 'The Matrix'? The scene where Neo is trying to disconnect himself from all those hoses and throws up the clear liquid stuff and gets flushed down the toilet?"
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She laughed, "It's not that bad, is it?"
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"That's exactly what the robots would say, Grace."
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I listened as the little machine clicked back on, and my next cup of blood began to spin in the centrifuge again, slowly trickling into the collection bag one tiny cell at a time.
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"It's amazing that this can save anyone," I commented.
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"I think about that a lot," Grace said, "about a lot of things."
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"Me too," I said, closing my eyes, "and not just medically."
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* * *
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I drank afterward. Grace and Donna had both told me not to overdo it, but I've never been the best judge of that sort of thing. I like to find the line and then take a good sized step over it, and maybe a second one for good measure. I guess that's the nature of being me.
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"How are you feeling?" my dad asked me.
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"Like I'm a quart low," I said, "and that I need to masturbate."
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He had to put his glass down for a moment because he was laughing so hard.
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"And other than that?"
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"Eh, I'll live. I just hope..." I trailed off.
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"Yeah," he said, "I know."
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We sat in silence for a few minutes and stared at the street outside of the restaurant.
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* * *
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"So you donated... just to be nice to a stranger?" My co-worker, Taylor, asked me when I got back to work.
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"Yes," I said, "I'm just an idiot that way."
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* * *
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"Why do I keep calling myself an idiot when people ask about it?" I asked.
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"I don't know. You seem to downplay a lot that you do," my psychologist said, "why did you donate your bone marrow?"
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"I just wanted to help someone," I said, "or at least give a family a chance at not losing someone they love."
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She nodded, "Then why not just say that? It's good to be humble, but you don't have to be self-deprecating. You're not an idiot."
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I sighed, frustrated.
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"You told me that you don't find it significant that the patient received your donation on your mom's birthday..."
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"No, I said that I TRY not to find it significant. Not that it ISN'T significant. I don't want to be the kind of person that finds signs and meaning in everything for no good reason; I don't want to be like the people that worship outlines of Jesus they find in a piece of toast."
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"What are you going to write about this, then?" She asked, "Are you going to be honest about how you feel? Or are you going to write one-liners and jokes?"
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"Probably both."
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"And what are you going to write about the significance of saving a life? Is it significant?"
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I smiled, "I don't know. I think I'll merely write that it was a sacrifice of blood; fifty-six years in the making."