“I know. I’ll be ready.”
They smiled at each other and the conversation was finally over. Patrice went back to her files and McCaleb looked at Graciela, who was seated in front of the computer. The toasters were gone and the screen was awake. There was some sort of template with white boxes on it.
“You can come around,” she said. “Patrice won’t bite you.”
Patrice laughed but didn’t say anything. McCaleb came around and stood behind her chair. She looked up at him and winked, knowing that he was blocking any view Patrice had of her. He winked back and smiled. Her coolness was impressive. He looked at his watch and then held his arm down so she could see it was now seven after twelve. She turned her attention to the computer.
“Now, we’re looking for type AB blood, okay. So what we do is log on here and connect with BOPRA. That’s short for Blood and Organ Procurement and Request Agency. That’s the big regional blood bank we deal with. Most hospitals around here do.”
“Right.”
She reached up and ran her finger beneath a small piece of paper taped to the monitor above the screen. There was a six-digit number written on it. McCaleb knew this was the access code. On the drive over Graciela had explained how little security was attached to the BOPRA system. The code to access the computer was changed monthly. But the BSC position at Holy Cross was not a full-time position, meaning that nurses assigned to it were put through on rotation. This rotation was also routinely disrupted because nurses who had colds, viruses and any other maladies that did not require them to miss work but required that they be kept away from patients were often assigned to the BSC desk. Because of the high number of people working in the slot, the BOPRA code was simply taped to the monitor each month when it was changed. In eight years as a nurse, Graciela had worked at two other hospitals in Los Angeles. She had said that this practice was the same at each of those hospitals as well. BOPRA had a security system in place that was circumvented in probably every hospital it served.
Graciela typed in the code number followed by the modem command and McCaleb heard the computer dial and then connect to the BOPRA computer.
“Connecting to the mother station,” Graciela said.
McCaleb looked at his watch. They had eight minutes at the most left. The screen went through some welcome templates before settling on an identification and request checklist. Graciela quickly typed in the needed information and continued to describe what she was doing.
“Now we go to the blood request page. We type in what we are looking for and then… hocus pocus, we wait.”
She held her hands in front of the screen and wiggled her fingers.
“Graciela, how’s Raymond doing?” Patrice asked from behind them. McCaleb turned and looked back but Patrice was still working with her back to them.
“He’s good,” Graciela answered. “It still breaks my heart but he’s doing good.”
“Ah, that’s good. You gotta bring him in again.”
“I will but he has school. Maybe spring break.”
The screen started printing out an inventory of the availability of type AB blood and the hospital or blood bank location of each pint. While BOPRA was a blood bank itself, it also served as a coordinating agency for smaller banks and hospitals throughout the West.
“Okay,” Graciela said. “So now we see that there is a pretty good supply of this around. The doctor wants to have at least six units on standby in case our patient with the sucking chest wound needs more surgery. So we click on the order window and put the hold on six. A hold only lasts twenty-four hours. If it’s not updated by this time tomorrow, that blood is up for grabs.”
“Okay,” McCaleb said, acting like the student he was supposed to be.
“I’ll have to remember to tell Patty to update this tomorrow.”
“What if you called this up and there was no blood?”
On the drive over she had told him to ask the question if there was anyone else in the nurses’ station when they connected to BOPRA.
“Good question,” she said as she began moving the computer mouse. “This is what we do. We go to this icon with the blood droplet on it. We click and that gets us to the donors file. We wait again.”
A few seconds went by and then the screen began filling with names, addresses, phone numbers and other information.
“These are all blood donors with type AB. It shows where they are, how they can be contacted and this other information shows when they gave blood last. You don’t want to keep going to the same person all the time. You try to spread it out and you try to find someone either near to us, so they can just come in here, or near to a blood bank. You want it to be convenient for them.”
As she spoke she ran her finger down the list of names. There were about twenty-five of them, from all over the West. She stopped at her sister’s name and tapped the screen with her fingernail. Then she kept going. Her finger reached the bottom without coming across the names James Cordell or Donald Kenyon.
McCaleb loudly let out his breath in disappointment but Graciela raised her finger in a one-moment gesture. She then hit the screen up key and a new screen of names appeared. There were maybe fifteen more. The name James Cordell sat on top of the new list. She ran her finger down the screen and found Donald Kenyon’s name second from the last.
This time McCaleb’s breath caught and he just nodded. Graciela looked up at him, the somber look of confirmation in her eyes. McCaleb leaned close to the screen and read the information that followed the names. Cordell hadn’t given blood for nine months and it had been more than six years since Kenyon had spared a drop. McCaleb noticed that the final notation after each name was the letter D followed by an asterisk. Other names had one or the other but only a few had the combination of both. McCaleb reached down and tapped the screen below the letter.
“What’s that? Deceased?”
“No,” Graciela said in a quiet voice. “The D means donor. Organ donor. They signed papers, put it on their driver’s licenses, all of that, so that if the time comes that they come into a hospital and die, they can take the organs.”
She looked at him the whole time she said this and McCaleb found it hard to look back at her. He knew what the confirmation meant.
“And the asterisk?”
“I’m not sure.”
She scrolled the screen until she got back to the legend at the top. She ran her finger along the symbols until she got to the asterisk.
“It means CMV negative,” she said. “Most people carry a non-threatening blood virus called CMV. It’s short for some big word. About a quarter of the population doesn’t have it. It’s something that has to be known to make a complete blood work match between donors and recipients.”
He nodded. It was information he already knew.
“So that’s today’s lesson,” Graciela said quietly.
She moved the mouse and McCaleb saw the arrow move to the disconnect icon at the top of the screen. He reached down and grabbed her hand before she could click the mouse button and sign off the BOPRA system.
Graciela looked back up at him, the question on her face. McCaleb looked back at Patrice. He couldn’t talk. He looked around and saw a clipboard on the counter with some forms on it and a pencil connected to it with a string. He signaled with his hand to Graciela, pointing to Patrice and then back to her and making a talking sign with his fingers. He then grabbed the clipboard and started to write.
“Hey, uh, Patrice, how’s Charlie doing?” Graciela asked.
“Oh, he’s fine. Still an asshole.”
“Boy, you guys get along so gooood !”
“Yeah, we’re real lovebirds.”
McCaleb held the clipboard in front of Graciela. He had written three questions.
1. Can you print out that list?