LAB TECHNICIAN
(to audience)
I watch too much. That's what it comes down to, plain and simple. I look further than I should. I should just go in, do my job and leave. It's pretty brainless work, really. No reason I can't just, you know, shut down and go on automatic.
(heavy sigh)
No different from any other job, though. I get in there, all set to be the diligent little drone, plugging in numbers, shuffling data ... it's no good. I think it's a mixed blessing ... or a blessing in disguise, I guess. Most of the time it reminds me how little I am in the larger scope of things, but I guess mostly I just realize how fragile everything is and how much I should appreciate what's already there. God. I sound like a damned Hallmark card. 'The fragile nature of life shows us the beauty of our being!' Nope. Not a Hallmark. A Jehovah's Witness--Scientologist, maybe. Too gushy for a Hallmark.
(changing tack, suddenly more intense but still avoiding the real issue)
It's like this. I get the new assignment and they really play it up big. My regular temp contact gets this other chick from the office on line with me so she can rant and rave about how this place is one of her favorite customers, and how they're so honorable and noble and all that shit, and I think 'Hey, the hours are flexible, the pay's okay I really need this job.' Data entry, mostly, they say, and putting test tubes into incubators. Needs someone who's organized. I almost laughed at that you've seen my place! But I guess I can be organized when I need to be. Test tubes. Dress casual-office. Fine. No problem. Test tubes. OsteoLabs, Inc. Apparently the last temp they had in the slot was so lousy they had to fire her. She kept entering information incorrectly and spent half her day on the phone. Thinking on it, I wonder how my agency chooses people for their assignments. Not many people have the stomach. I barely do. Some days it's worse than others. Exactly? Well, they run tests on donor bones for the American Red Cross and some other groups. Yeah. Donor bones. Betcha didn't know you could donate your right iliac crest along with your liver, eh? Hip bone. It's part of your hip bone. Gotta admit, I'm learning more than I ever did with that "knee bone's connect to the thigh bone" crap from school. It's a pretty new process, I guess. I mean, they've been grafting bones for a while, but they've recently started replacing whole bones. A fibula here, a tibia there. Here a rib there a rib everywhere a rib rib
(bursting out)
God, I know it's honorable, but the people!
(pulling back together a bit)
It's I mean, the test tubes are fine. Little tubes of pink and urine color liquid with swabs floating in them. Numbers up the side, transfer bone swabs into orange, tissue swabs into red, de-mineralized into blue, check to see the numbers match up. Date them and mark the calendar for incubation checks. Even the tissue sample bottles are okay...if you don't look at them, if you don't think about the stuff floating around inside, if you just see the number written on the side. That's what it's all about. Numbers. God, I've never seen so many codes and numbers and little stickers in one place. Numbers on the bottles match the numbers on the forms, match the numbers on the reports match the numbers on the dittoes match the numbers in the computer...
(changing direction again)
I work right next to the freezers. Sometimes I have to go in there to drop off the tube cases I empty out in the mornings. My folks had a freezer like the ones they use. Sits on the floor, not upright. Opens at the top. Exactly the kind you have to take the lid off of when you throw it out, because it's a really good hiding place for a kid. They fit really nicely into one of those freezers. OsteoLabs has row upon row of those kid-sized freezers. My parents used theirs for the cuts of meat they bought each year when they went in on a whole lamb with someone--lamb chops, shank roasts, leg of lamb ... rack of rib of lamb, fibula of lamb, tibia of lamb ... Wrapped up tightly in plastic wrap and then in bigger ziploc bags, marked and dated. I've been there when they pull from the freezers for irradiation packaging. People chops, people roasts, leg of people If you watch too much, it gets to you. If you think too much.
(taking a deep breath)
It's not ... it's not the parts that get to me, and it's not even the tissue samples floating around in the bottles. I told them I wouldn't handle the blood samples that hadn't been tested and treated, and it took me a while to get over the guilt at being paranoid about that, but that wasn't really what got to me, either. Not deep down, I mean. Maybe it was a part of it. It's that when I go in there every day, day after day after day, sorting out the test tubes first, and the samples, and doing the filing and all, I know that some time I'm going to have to do the donor releases. They either go for irradiation because our tests showed non-compliance with some bacteria or disease or something, or they get released back to their center...flown back to Dallas, or Columbus, or Seattle wherever. Parts is parts, right? But before they leave, I have to do final tabulations in the computer. It's a series of database files all strung together where every piece of information about a given donor is chopped up into little numbers and data bits. Every donor ... that comes to the labs for testing gets a number. Not 'Fred Jones.' 'Donor 0500743.' Fred Jones is long gone. If it's given the green light, 1 punch up the donor number and pull out a blank Donor Release form. Up top goes that same donor number--repetitive redundancies are a must-have around here! Then--
(pausing in memory)
--there's that line that I hate. It starts out innocuously enough...'Date Received'...all that means is when did they toss good ole Donor 0500743 in his ziploc baggies and throw him in freezer number such-and-so. But then it asks 'Donor Age.' Donor age at time of death, that means. Donor age is frozen on paper the way donor himself is frozen in those little baggies. To find the donor age I have to go into the file on Donor 0500743. Sometimes it's on the top sheet, sometimes it's harder to find no matter what, though, it's there. They need to know the sex of the donor, because different tissues and bones are stronger in men than in women. They need to know the height and weight to make sure the bones didn't carry undue stress for a number of years, but if they don't get that, it's not vital. What they have to have, above all else, is the donor age. If they don't have the donor age, they'll toss the donor. Don't ask me where, I don't know, and I never want to ask. But there's never not been a donor age. It's always there. I always find it, and I always write it in the little space at the top of the page. Most of the donors they test are between 40 and 60. Older than that, they don't have many good cuts. Younger? Well. Sometimes they're in their 30s. Occasionally the late 20s. Three days on the 'job, I got my first 17. Like I said, the job is numbers. Always numbers. They don't tell you much about Fred Jones. Usually you never get to see that Donor 0500743 was a Fred Jones. As far as you're concerned, he's Donor 0500743 out of Tacoma. Sometimes they send more paperwork than is strictly necessary. You find out that Fred Jones had a history of heart problems, and it's no surprise that he died of cardiac arrest. Most of the Joneses between 40 and 60 died of cardiac arrest, or something like it, or complications derived from it. Not many seventeens come in with cardiac arrest, though. I had to look. Wouldn't you? My Seventeen was named Alex Michael Brown. I wondered if Alex was short for Alexander. I decided it wasn't. Alex Michael Brown is such an unobtrusive, middle-America sort of name. I don't remember where Seventeen was from. Probably Ohio somewhere. Alex Michael Brown could get lost it a crowded freezer, I thought. They sent more paperwork than was strictly necessary for Alex Michael Brown, seventeen. They sent the hospital record sheet. Cause of death? GSW. Not just a 'regular' GSW. My seventeen died of a 'Self-Inflicted gun shot wound to the head.'
(pause)
God damn it!
(confronts audience)
Have you ever felt an eternity? Damn it, I have. An eternity is measured very precisely. It's the amount of time you know passed when you look at the paperwork of a Seventeen with a self-inflicted GSW--to the head! and you see three signatures. Three signatures with dates and times beside them. The first one is the Admitting Nurse from E/R. Signed, dated, time of admission to hospital. The second one is the Attending Physician. Signed, dated, time of declared death. Alex Michael Brown was lucky, the second was a few minutes after the first. If he wasn't, it would be an hour, two, three ... maybe five. There's a third signature, too, though. Very shaky, very fragile. Dated. Time released as donor body. It's about three hours after time of admission for my Seventeen. It's his mother's name. An eternity is the amount of time I know passed between the first signature and the third. Alex Michael's mother had three hours to understand how a little boy with a big gun and no heartbeat could help a lot of people out because of his anguish. THAT is a fucking eternity. And every time I get one of those Seventeens I tell myself I won't look, and every time I say it, I look anyhow. I've seen a Twenty-three who died because he wouldn't wear his seatbelt. His second signature was more than seven hours after the admitting signature. I've seen a Twenty-eight who died from injuries sustained due to a ski-mobile accident. I saw one who died of a GSW, but no mention of self-inflicted. I think that donor was from L.A. Lots and lots of cardiac arrests and cerebral hemorrhages. That first Seventeen was the toughest, though. They were right, you do harden at least a little bit. But you know, even worse than seeing a Seventeen come in and finding the extra paperwork is seeing someone my own age come in--and not finding the paperwork. Fred Jones could be me, give or take a few inches that don't matter much in a freezer. He could be me, but I don't know how I died. I don't know how long between signature one...and signature two, and...I don't know who signed the dotted line on signature three.