CHAPTER SIX BLOOD DRIVE
CHAPTER
SIX
Blood Drive
It took six weeks for Patsy’s Nurse Corps request to come back denied. They thanked her politely for her application but told her the Army Nurse Corps had no room for her.
‘That can’t be right,’ Cora said when Patsy told her about the rejection. ‘They’re running ads in all the papers about a nursing shortage, asking nurses to enlist.’
‘There’s a quota for Negro nurses,’ she said, sinking onto the couch. ‘They’ll only take fifty-six for the Army Nurse Corps. They’ve got their fifty-six.’
‘But – but they need you.’
Patsy flinched and turned away, while Cora tried and failed to tamp down her anger. Some days she thought she’d never understand this country, and every day she found it harder to forgive it. Was America trying to win a war or not?
‘Are you still gonna work at the blood drive?’ Cora asked.
Patsy looked up, surprised, like the one didn’t have a thing to do with the other. ‘Of course.’
The government wanted everyone to help out in any way they could, even if they couldn’t enlist. Posters and ads told people to buy war bonds, plant victory gardens, and give blood.
So, when the Red Cross put out a call for people to pitch in with their nationwide blood drive, Patsy had immediately volunteered to lend a hand.
She badgered Cora and Jasper to bleed for the troops, jabbering on about scientific advancements and blood refrigeration, and she argued that giving blood was a way to help Lee, Benny and Roscoe, not just Uncle Sam.
According to their letters, Benny and Roscoe had both deployed, but Lee was still stuck in the mud in Texas.
She’d written back to Roscoe and Benny, wishing them luck and promising prayers, but Lee’s letters she tucked into her pillow and left unanswered.
She scolded herself for being a selfish, spineless coward, but she didn’t write.
What she could do, at least, was give blood.
So, on blood-drive day, she finished work early, slipping out of the small office she and Mr Griffin had moved to when everyone else quit the sinking ship of wartime life insurance, which effectively left Cora promoted to every job Mr Griffin couldn’t get to, and picked up Jasper in Benny’s blue Plymouth.
She drove them to the Bloodmobile parked over by City Hall, where they found Patsy knee-high in boxes and bottles looking energized, as if she hadn’t been working there since early morning.
‘The whole truck is refrigerated,’ Patsy said in awe.
They knew that already, since the blood bank and new refrigeration process had been reported on in all the papers. They even knew the other part that only the Negro press printed: that the mastermind behind it all, Dr Charles Drew, was a Negro doctor.
Jasper said that was the only reason he trusted the process. He didn’t believe anything the government said about harmless procedures involving needles in his arm, but he trusted one of his own not to be running experiments on him or taking something out of him that he needed to be keeping inside.
Cora and Jasper went to the Colored donor table where Patsy waited on them right away.
The line for white donors was six people deep and Cora rolled her eyes at them as Jasper took a seat.
If they preferred to stand in line rather than let Patsy see to them, they deserved to wait.
Jasper pushed up his sleeve and Patsy swabbed his arm with disinfectant.
‘You’ll just feel a little prick. That’s all.’
At the sight of the needle, Jasper gritted his teeth and turned away. Blood flowed from his arm to the bottle in a slow, steady stream.
‘Does it hurt?’ Cora asked.
‘Course not,’ he said, but he wore a grimace and refused to look at the bottle.
‘Stop clowning around,’ Patsy said. ‘You’re making Cora nervous.’
He closed his eyes.
‘You’re not feeling lightheaded, are you? Did you eat today?’
‘Not yet. I’ll get something later.’
‘Good Lord, Jasper. You’re not supposed to do this on an empty stomach.’ She removed the needle and stoppered the bottle. ‘Eat this,’ she said, handing him an orange. ‘And take a minute before you get up. Cora doesn’t mind waiting, right, Cora?’
He peeled and ate the orange as Patsy filled out a label and attached it to Jasper’s bottle.
‘What the hell, Patsy?’ Jasper said, pointing to it, accusation in his voice.
Patsy set aside the bottle. ‘Your turn, Cora.’
He rolled his sleeve down in rough, jerky tugs. ‘I should have known.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Cora asked. ‘What’s on the label?’
Patsy busied herself with a new bottle, a needle, some tubing. ‘Just your blood type,’ she said. ‘The date it was taken. Stuff like that.’ She didn’t look at Cora.
Jasper glared at her and puffed out a breath of disgust.
‘I don’t make the rules, Jasper. We have to label it like this.’
Cora walked around the table to the box of bottles and picked up Jasper’s blood donation.
On the label, in her neat print, Patsy had written all that she’d said, along with the word Negro.
Cora pressed her lips together to hold her temper, but the anger washed over her, like a wave. ‘So, they’re segregating the blood?’
Patsy nodded.
Jasper stood, shoving his hands into his pockets. ‘This country makes every damn thing about race.’
Cora felt a shaking start up in her stomach that lifted and spread to her hands, which trembled with pent-up anger. They were at war, for God’s sake, and this kind of racist idiocy was bound to cost lives. She tucked her fingers under her arms and took in deep breaths to try to even herself out.
‘That’s why it’s even more important that we give blood,’ Patsy said, leading her to the chair. ‘Our men need us to do it.’
Cora clenched her hand into the fist Patsy made her form, but she doubted she needed to. Anger spiked her pulse, and her blood streamed into the glass. When it was full, Patsy fixed a label to the bottle.
Type A negative
June 12, 1943
Negro