Rebecca Handler

Boris is a middle-aged grocer with a stained t-shirt and a big grin. He prefers customers who pay in cash, and he tosses apples to the latchkey kids who come by after school. He donates blood as often as he can. He’s unfazed by needles and knows that his blood type – O negative – is the magic kind that can help anyone. 

That’s how I imagine him. 

My sister-in-law and I named my anonymous blood donor Boris. The charge nurse who is named after a month that is not April, May nor June warned me I could become cold as his blood first circulated throughout my body. As I watched the beet red liquid slink its way through the plastic tube attached to the port in my chest, I thought of the Buffy episode in which Spike takes Buffy to a brothel where humans pay vampires to drink their blood. I did not get cold.    

I needed a blood transfusion because chemotherapy caused my hemoglobin to drop. Hemoglobin is a protein that carries oxygen around the body, and low hemoglobin is related to anemia, a condition I had for a while as a teenager. I don’t remember feeling tired back then, but I do remember applying gold eyeliner before school and my mom shouting up the stairs, “Iron pills!” I didn’t like taking pills. Sometimes I lied to my mom and was mean about it. “I took the stupid iron pills Mom. Why do you always think I’m lying?” 

I felt weird about getting a blood transfusion. Who is this Boris fellow and what’s in his blood? The nurse assured me the process of preparing blood for transfer is safe. When she began using words like centrifuge and storage conditions, I realized I didn’t care and stared at the hazardous waste bin.

This was not the first time I didn’t understand something. Most days I don’t understand most things. I implicitly trust the expertise of other people when I drive my car, turn on my stove, and send my children back to in-person school. 

The working title of my first novel Edie Richter is Not Alone was You Belong to Everyone. One theme in the novel is that despite whatever intentions we might have to be self-sufficient and independent, we are connected and have a responsibility to each other. This is not a noteworthy observation, but it’s something I felt like exploring. 

Now, being treated for cancer, I can’t escape this idea. Week after week, I go to the hospital for everyone who loves me, including, but not limited to, myself. I don’t know how doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide work. I can’t even spell them without googling. 

This morning, someone ran a stop sign just as I stepped into the intersection. It reminded me that today, like every day, my life is in other people’s hands.  

What I’m saying is that everyone should get vaccinated. 

The hardest part of cancer is walking into the infusion center week after week. The hardest part is smelling the alcohol swabs, wearing yet another wristband, and seeing the avocado drawing with the caption, “You guac!” The hardest part is answering the same questions about my birthday, whether my insurance has changed, and if I have any new allergies. I don’t want to get my blood drawn, and I don’t want to get weighed every week by the same woman with the beautiful blue eyes who has a “Helluva commute I tell you. Looks like the world is getting back to normal.” 

I don’t have any fucking new allergies.

I wish for a fire alarm in the middle of one of my infusions. I want the nurse to panic and rush me out of the building, still attached to my IV. The street would be filled with sick people and tiny babies in incubators. We would squint at the sunshine waiting for the fire fighters to arrive. A siren in the distance would cue my oncologist to start directing traffic, telling cars to get out of the way, to make way for the fire truck. My surgeon, fresh blood on her scrubs, would strike up a conversation with the check-in guy. “Can you believe this?” she’d say, removing her gloves. “Well, this is different!” One of the babies would start to cry and, maybe because I’m wearing a soft pink sweater, one of the nurses would ask if I’d mind holding the baby. I’d still be holding the warm blanket from the infusion center so I’d wrap it around the baby and sit down carefully on the curb. The baby’s eyes would be foggy because they’re brand new. I’d whisper, “Hush, it’s just a warning.” The truck would pull up and four fire fighters would run inside. The cafeteria woman would have a guitar and she would start playing Paul Simon’s “I Know What I Know.” Everyone would sing along. She moved so easily all I could think of was sunlight. The baby I’m holding would fall asleep. I’d stand up, taking care my IV is still in place, and return the baby to a nurse. I’d start dancing with the woman with the blue eyes who does my vitals. We’d be perfectly in step, doing a Charleston type of move.

It would be a false alarm of course, and everyone would eventually go back inside. But that day would be different. Easy even.