Donating blood is temperature sensitive
The smell of red rubber dodge balls moves through your mind as you shove open the heavy and creaking old door. Squeaking soles on the gym floor echo at you like seagulls on the shore. The door is roughly worn, splintery and soft at the same time. There are half a dozen folding chairs immediately inside the foyer, with people not talking to each other seated there. Far in the back of this ancient gymnasium, the pop up city that is the Red Cross Blood Drive was mingling with itself, milling back and forth with furtive glances at the seated non-talking people.
The welcome desk had two nervous people at it, stumbling over their words and sweet as pie, they had to explain the crisis. This building is old, as I might have mentioned, and as I gazed around the tall and expansive room, with a ceiling two stories high, the ticking and burbling sound of steam radiators climbed into reach. Dark brown, and chest high, those old beasts of raging heat are older than most of our grandparents. They were working their hardest, chugging along at the speed of 1920.
The crisis was indeed the temperature of the room, it is October, near Halloween, and the wind that blew me in the doors brought golden orange leaves and a bite in the air. Crouching low in the room like a thief, the cold air seeped its way across the room, taking the heat as it went. A battle these radiators have seen and won hundreds of times before, but you mustn't rush them.
A gaggle of staff stood at the thermostat, staring intently and pacing. We waited for 65 degrees, and we were at 63. Oh, so very close. I pondered, I lingered. Should I wait and see how long it might be? Cracking the ice with the group on the chairs, I decided to plunge in.
“Hey, do you all think we might be losing heat out those double doors back there?”
Across the basketball court was an exit, and the doors were swung all the way open. Turning behind me, we all collectively looked at the front door as well. I went to close the inner set of doors, and as I turned around a guy from the non-talkers had hopped up to close the doors across the room.
Suddenly a talker, he was very chatty. Unable to wait the time it took for those tortoise radiators to crank up to full speed, he left before he could drain some of his blood for others to use later. I am not usually a patient person, but today I was. I waited, and I observed the room. There are two large wall collages, of the women in 1920 that helped secure women’s rights to vote. So long ago, and yet we fight the war once more.
