O Negative

Attention all passengers, anyone with O Negative blood, who is willing to help us with a medical emergency, is requested to meet with our ship’s head nurse in the Tides Dining Room on Deck 4.

I am sitting near the pool on Deck 12 of my Royal Caribbean cruise ship when the announcement comes over the loudspeaker. I actually haven’t heard exactly what was said because most announcements have something to do with the next goofy activity and I usually am not interested.

Attention all passengers, anyone with O Negative blood, who is willing to help us with a medical emergency, is requested to meet with our ship’s head nurse in the Tides Dining Room on Deck 4. 

After the second announcement, I am aware that something is being said about O Negative blood, and a medical emergency.

Attention all passengers, anyone with O Negative blood, who is willing to help us with a medical emergency, is requested to meet with our ship’s head nurse in the Tides Dining Room on Deck 4. 

Upon hearing the announcement in its entirety, I hop up off my deck chair, put my bathing suit coverup on, pack up my book, water, and phone, and head to Deck 4. I have O Negative blood, which I know is kind of rare. About seven percent of the population has it. I knew we had close to 2,000 passengers on board and a quick calculation means there is the potential of 140 of us with this blood type. By the time the head nurse does a head count of everyone who has responded, there are 17 volunteers in the room.

“I’m going to start by asking a series of questions. Please raise your hand if your answer is Yes. Are you in any doubt about whether you have O Negative blood? In other words, if you are not sure whether you have O Negative blood, please raise your hand.”

Three hands go up, and I think: Really? Why on earth would you come down here if you weren’t sure? Curiosity about the medical emergency? People are weird.

“Thank you so much for being willing to volunteer. You may return to your regular activities. Now, for those of you still seated, are you experiencing any cold-like symptoms like coughing, sneezing, watery eyes, or fever? And I want to add that even if you believe one of these symptoms to be allergy-related, I still want you to raise your hand.”

Two people raise their hands.

“Thank you so much for being willing to volunteer. You may return to your regular activities. For those of you still seated, do you take a blood-thinner such as heparin or warfarin, also called Coumadin?”

Eight people raise their hands. All of them, curiously, are men.

There are now only four of us left in the room. 

“OK then,” says the head nurse, “does anyone here have a Red Cross card with their blood type listed, or any other official documentation that states that you have O Negative blood?” 

The woman sitting nearest to me has her arm around the shoulders of a twenty-something looking man. She raises her hand.

The nurse says, “Great, may I see your card?”

The woman says, “Well, it’s actually not my card. It’s my son’s.” She nods her head toward the young man, who I seriously wonder about. He has no facial expression, and he looks a bit hungover. 

“Sir?” the nurse prompts. “May I see the documentation you have indicating your blood type?” 

Awareness seems to return to the young man’s eyes. He suddenly jerks his shoulders as if in revulsion of his mother’s arms around him. Or, is it some sort of spasm? Maybe he’s cold and just shivered? He stands, reaches in his back pocket for his wallet, digs inside for the card, and finally presents it to the nurse. 

The nurse looks the card over. The nurse looks the man over for what I would describe as an uncomfortable amount of time. The mother has a look of hopeful anticipation on her face. But it’s more than that. Maybe pride? I can’t quite put my finger on it.

The nurse then asks the young man, “Are you here on your own volition?” This, I think, is a question I would also have definitely asked him as he seems so robotic.

The man nods, utters the word yes and the nurse says, “OK, you come with me.”

The mother jumps up from her seat and says, “I can come, too, right?”

The nurse says, “Of course, madam.” He then turns to me and the other person in the room and says, “Could you both please write down your names on that clipboard paper over there? Include your cabin number, and, if you know, where you’re likely to be over the next couple hours. In the event there’s any problem, or if we need more than what this volunteer is able to provide, we’d like to know where we might find you. And, thank you so much for coming down here today. We really appreciate it.”

The nurse, the young man, and the mother scurry off down the hall toward the on-board medical facility.

With 2,000 passengers on board, it’s unusual, to say the least, to have a second encounter with someone with whom your first encounter is as brief as mine was with the volunteers. I had been on the cruise for a week already, and had never before seen any of the other 16 volunteers that showed up in the Tides Dining Room on Deck 4 for the medical emergency call. And yet, just three hours later, as I am descending the stairs from Deck 12 back to my room on Deck 7, I see the mother of the young man. She is all but running up the stairs. She holds a glass of orange juice in each hand. She would not have noticed me except I say, “Oh hi! How is your son doing?” She glances up and probably still doesn’t recognize me but answers, “He’s tired, and I think his blood sugar is still low.” She raises the glasses to show me the orange juice and keeps her pace up to ascend the next several steps. “Everything went well, though?” I call. Now with her back to me I hear her say, “Yup!” And off she goes.

The experience makes for a good story to tell that evening at dinner with my travel companions, and again in the morning during coffee and breakfast with the dozen-ish others we’ve met and with whom we’ve become social. Of course everyone wants to know what the medical emergency was and what the outcome was, but I don’t know any more details. That is, I didn’t know any more details, until two nights later.

A large group of us attends the evening stage show together, and then six of us decide to go have another cocktail together at a little Bistro. As we share tales of the various excursions we had been on earlier in the day, I realize that right across from us, sitting in a booth, is the mother and son. The mother has her legs draped over her son’s lap and she is holding his hand. He, again, has a blank look on his face. He looks high. I stare at this little tableau trying to figure out what the hell I am witnessing. 

My table of companions grows quiet for a moment, and I can’t help myself. “Hi there,” I say in a louder voice. The mother and son look over at me. “Looks like you’re feeling better. I ran into your mom bringing you the two orange juices after you donated blood the other day. I was there ready to volunteer, too.”

The mother reaches up to her son’s face to caress his cheek with her hand. The son makes the same jerky motion he’d made down in the Tides Dining Room and the mother reluctantly removes her legs from his lap and sits up a bit straighter. He then explains in a very clear and commanding voice that all had gone just fine. He was fully recovered and felt great. He added that the passenger who needed the blood had apparently fallen a couple days earlier. But then had grown weak, and her husband became concerned when he couldn’t wake her up. The ship’s medical staff had done some quick work to find that she had been bleeding internally. The blood was needed to give her a bit of strength so they could then off-board her and send her to the nearest medical facility. 

The mother’s eyes pool with tears. While looking lovingly at her son, she says, “He’s a hero.” She attempts to place her hand on his cheek again, but he, gently this time, guides her hand back to the table. He gives us all an embarrassed smile. 

After that, my travel companions and I had a field day (or two) speculating about this couple. There were far more questions than answers to that relationship. It was shipboard gossip worth its weight in salt. 

Copyright DJ Anderson, 2020