Drawing Blood

By Richard Humphries

Jamaan draws my blood. He’s done it almost

monthly for over two years and is good at what he

does. Neither of us is big on chitchat. I want little

pain. Jamaan wants to be very good at what he

does.

Usually, when I see him, it is the beginning of a

three-day anxiety crisis for me. I have incurable

Stage IV pancreatic cancer. Just when you begin to

forget you have it, you have to face it again.

Every sixty days.

The anxiety starts up in me when I enter the

airy lobby of the Cancer Center. Strange, because

this is where I met the people who saved my life.

 But still, the body remembers the chemo and

radiation and illness on a visceral level and sends a

jolt of fear to your system as soon as you walk in.

Every two months:

Get blood drawn. Make sure they check enzyme

marker number nineteen, the one pancreatic cancer

emits. Last time mine was down to a wonderful 17

from a high of 476.

“Hey, Jamaan,” I say to the big quiet Black guy

who has so often drawn my blood. “How have you

been?”

He remembers my name, pulls my standing

orders from the accordion file on the rear desk.

“Take chair number two, Mister Humphries,” he

said. “Good to see you.”

 I stepped into the next room and sat in the

vinyl-upholstered high chair, pulling the padded

armrest down in front of me.

“It’s been a few months over two years, now,” I

said. “The magic number they say. With this stuff I

have.”

“You’re looking good.”

“My friend,” I was nervous and talking too

much. He wrapped the tubing around my arm to

pump the vein up. “My friend who drove me here,

she just said that only the good die young, so I

should be good for a hundred years.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said.

True. I’m at least twice this guy’s age. Young?

Who am I fooling?

He was watching the vial fill with my blood. I

never look. “I’ve known a lot of guys who weren’t

what you’d think of as good and they died real

young. Hold this cotton ball for a sec, okay?”

He had drained a small vial of blood from me

painlessly. A pro. There’s a difference.

“There,” he said as he applied a strip of tape to

hold the cotton ball against my tiny puncture wound,

“just hold it there awhile.”

“Okay.”

“Over where I live, there’s a ton of people dying

real young lately.”

I can tell where he means. Richmond.

The part of the Bay Area he calls home has one

of the highest violent crime rates in the state, the

sixth highest in the whole country. Next door at

Oakland, they just laid off eighty cops.

“It’s getting crazy over there, isn’t it?” I live a

whole bridge away.

 “Man, I saw my best friend killed in front of me

when I was sixteen. My best friend. Shot dead.”

“It’s like this last shooting.” I read about it in

the paper. “A teenage girl for God’s sake, at a

memorial gathering.”

“Man,” he said. He’s a big guy with close-

cropped hair and big eyes and a quiet way of

speaking. “Man, it’s like two worlds and they don’t

even know about each other.”

“Probably see that around here all the time,” I

said. The Cancer Center attracts patients from

around the country, most White and with money; the

clerks, receptionists, nurses, and the phlebotomists

not so.

“You almost want to say something sometimes.

But of course, I wouldn’t.”

“Sure.”
 “But, even so, when I hear people complain

abut getting old, Man, I just want to say thank your

lucky stars and Jesus.”

There are huge obstacles to growing old in his

‘hood for a young person.

“I’m twenty-six and you would think I am out of

the ‘kill zone’, but my best friend just got killed. His

son is one year old.”

“Poor kid,” I said.

What do you say?

“We weren’t ever really friends, actually. Then

we did some time together and, you know, you get

to know each other. So we did time together and

ended up calling each other ‘Cuz’. He was okay.”

We were alone in the clinic. The waiting room

was empty.

“And now he’s dead.”

 His eyes were wet.

“I’m sorry for your friend, Man,” I say.

“I hear people complain about the weather.

Man. And I just want to say ‘Roll On’. Every day just

‘Roll On.”

I was looking up at him and listening.

“I remember being put in the hole when I was

locked up. No clean clothes, no soap, no toothpaste,

no nothing for a week. Now, man, it could rain for a

year and I wouldn’t care.”

I move to pull my sleeve down.

“Oh, not yet,” he said. “There’s one other order.

For your enzyme marker”

Jamaan draws it fast and painlessly.

“See you in two months,” I say.

“Remember,” he says as I leave, “just roll on.”

 Next business day I get the CT scan. It can

be a spooky experience when you are slid into the

machine on a tray and the whirring begins.

“Breathe,” the recorded male voice says. “Hold

your breath.”

“Breathe.” Five seconds later.

You do that a few times as the dye enters the IV

in your arm. Your body grows warm from within from

the chemicals.

My IV nurse this time was great. She glided the

needle in my left arm at first try.

“How have you been, Mister Humphries?’ she

asks.

“I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.” I feel

awkward because I like to be polite to these good

people.
 “Oh, I wouldn’t expect you to. The last time I

saw you I was a Nurse in the O.R. when you had

your surgery.”

“Long time ago,” I say. It was nearly three

years ago. They opened me up; saw there was

nothing they could do. Sewed me back up.

“That was a tough one.” She’s short, prim,

about my age. “They looked at your tumor from

every angle, though. They really tried.” She taps the

IV port she’s installed in my arm. “That okay?”

“Fine,” I say. “Not loose at all. Thanks so much.”

. . .

The unwelcome memory of that past surgery

came explicitly back. They had split me in half,

straight down the middle. I was in the hospital

recovery room, in horrible pain when I came to. A

young gangbanger was on the gurney next to me,

half of his genitals had been shot away.

“Listen,” a balding doctor was saying in no

uncertain terms to the angry man, “don’t try to tell

me who I can treat in my emergency room. If he’s

the guy who shot you,” the doctor nodded at a

gurney against the far wall, “the cops will deal with

it. My job is to treat everybody who comes in here.

Don’t try to tell me who to treat.”

The doctor walked away. His blue scrubs were

splattered with red. The fellow on the far stretcher

moaned beneath a turban of bandages covering his

head and upper face as the guy next to me shouted

curses at him, promising revenge. Dried blood

smears nearly covered the floor.

Being alive or dead seemed a small thing to my

roommates. I silently asked God to save my life.

 The third day I see my Oncologist. She will

explain what my CT shows. Tell me it is okay and to

come back in two months.

I have beaten all odds with the kind of cancer

inside me. I have lived beyond all expectations.

My son Ryan is with me in the examination

room. It helps me to have him there and I tell him so

and he always says to forget it, Dad.

“There are a few things in your scan that

concern me,” my Oncologist says.

We wait to hear what they are.

“The mass on your pancreas has grown a bit and

the shadow on your liver is of concern.”

This is not good news. Not at all.

“What’s my enzyme marker at?”

“Well,” she sighs. “It’s at nine thousand.”

 “Jesus.”

“It’s only a number,” she says. “It means we

have too many cancer cells running around

unchecked.”

“What, uh, can be done?” I ask.

“I want to put you back on the same chemo

regimen we did before.”

“What if it doesn’t work?” I ask.

“Then,” she smiles at me. Ryan’s hand grips my

shoulder. “We’ll try something else.”

“When, uh, would we have to start the chemo?”

I hate chemotherapy. It is horrible.

“Well,” she says, “we could wait for a bit if you

want.”

“Yes,” I’m thinking it is summer and I feel well

and want to hike, swim, play. “Let’s put it off a bit.”

 “Okay. Next week, then” she smiles. “Let’s get

on top of this.”

We exchange goodbyes and the nurse comes in

and is kind and will arrange my chemo and call in my

pharmacy orders and gives me a hug and cares

about all of it and me and my son.

I become slightly less stunned on the cab

ride home.

“Hey, Dad,” Ryan asks, “What would she have

done if you didn’t want to put it off. What then?

Would she have just started injecting chemo into

you? “

“Sent me straight upstairs, Ryan. Boom.”

“Jesus,” we start laughing. “Thank God we

asked for some time.”

“How about lunch, Dad? On me?”

 “Yeah,” I needed to shake the specter off. “That

sounds great.”

“Hey, driver?” Ry asks. “29th and Sanchez,

okay?”

“Sure,” the driver says as we crest a hill. The

morning fogs have lifted, exposing a pastel-bright

July day across the city. The long morning shadows

were shrinking.

“Roll on,” I say to myself. “Just roll on.”

Cover design: http://www.ryanhumphries.com/

Cover image: The Gross Clinic, by Thomas Eakins, 1875.