Phalanx Blood

Paisley, Oregon

Kidnapped

My blood kills cancer . Yep, you read that right. The big bad  C  word that scares just about everyone these days. My blood kills it.  Dead .  Dead Kennedys’  invitation to the White House dead. Disappointed George Romero dead .  Doesn’t matter what type of cancer. It quickly finds itself outmaneuvered, surrounded, and mercilessly crushed by an iron-red phalanx. Just a few drops of my blood— drops  mind you, and miracles start happening.

One doctor tried to explain something about my blood multiplying like crazy around abnormal cells. It picks up the scent of cancer the same way a shark detects an old bandage from five miles off, then wicked rips it apart... Or is that how the immune system is supposed to work? Cheese an’ rice! I can never remember the difference.

Growing up, I never got sick. Not once. Swine flu closes down the entire school for a week, I got nothing. Mom and Dad get slammed with the cold, and I walk free. Maybe I’m a mutant like the X-Men.

Nah. I’m not that lucky. Chances are I’m just a run-of-the-mill freak.

Do I sound a little snarky? Excuse the crud out of me; I’m a bit tired and was aiming for wicked flaming pissed off. Being a slacker has become a familiar comfort in the face of everything else going butt over kettle; it’s a reason to keep going. Why instantly incinerate someone with the raw power of words when you can slow roast them with a self-replenishing supply of corrosively dry sarcasm?

Yeah, I know, write me off as one of about a billion frustrated teens looking at the wrecked world we’re supposed to fix; call me entitled, moan on how this is a dream come true and you would give anything to be in my position. Just remember two things. The first is one day we’ll be making company policy and holding elected office, and then we’ll get to decide whether you’re worth retaining as a citizen or sending to the meat farms for rendering. The second is I too figured I’d be a real hero to all America—the Cancer Killing Kid (and I’m real glad cancer isn’t spelled with a K). But that’s not the reality of it. Not anymore. I learned why every regular bum suddenly imbued with incredible superpowers in the movies works so hard to keep it a secret. This miracle cure is a miracle curse.

Being at the top of everyone’s contact list is well beyond annoying. If I don’t pick up, someone might order my kidnapping. It’s been nothing but running or hiding for me. Think I’m paranoid? Maybe, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get me. To some very particular people, I’m worth more than all the gold on the planet; heck I’m worth more than all the printer ink on the planet! Everyone wants to be the bio company to discover the cure for cancer. And what does the life and wishes of one punk teen rate compared to that?

I should back up and start from Day Zero.

When I turned 16, my parents encouraged me to start giving blood. Encouraged is a hard-knuckled ultimatum for a lot of guys, especially the Full-Blooded-Irish boys downtown, thankfully too busy after the craic to unite and take over the world. So being bribed isn’t so bad. Mom and Dad are mostly cool, and they’re an endangered species: The Middle Class. They can afford to care about nature preservation, mutual wellbeing, and all the stuff our government sees no profit in. Bribing me with a bigger weekly allowance if I don’t interfere with their perception of me as a perfect copy of them and their values won’t break the bank. I had a wish list (who doesn’t?) and figured what was the harm in letting them continue to believe what they want to believe? Needles don’t scare me. Added to the fact that they hosted a blood drive in my honor (I know, a weird way to celebrate my birthday), it was hard to find a way out.

HIV and other blood-borne pathogens scared people back in the eighties so bad that just naming them puts the yuppies who were around back then into pants-filling panic attacks. They practically foam at the mouth, like I mentioned 9/11. The Red Cross screens all blood donated, including mine.

And that’s when began the sharp shower of sewage that sure hasn’t been short.

A few days after my first blood donation (yay me), I’m in my room, trying out my new HTC Vive (virtual reality awesomeness), thanks to Mom and Dad’s generous contribution to their son’s Entertainment Fund. (Not the College Fund, mind you. That’s a totally different—and much bigger—account).

We live in a well-known town, but that’s as much as I’m giving you. It’s for your own good, if not mine.

It’s Tuesday afternoon, about 5 o’clock, school is over (you’re not hearing much about it either, but that’s purely for apathetic reasons), and both my parents get home from work. Mom’s a really smart chemist and Dad’s a big name lawyer, mostly for environmental causes; it’s always speechification about preservation of natural resources in this household, if only for their use in more awesome drugs.

Me, I tend not to talk much unless there’s a reason, so they know to find me in my room doing my own thing—even if they didn’t hear me thumping into things. My new VR rig is so bleeding edge it doesn’t use a controller for a user interface; it actually reads movement impulses via the optic nerve and translates them to my virtuality. That means I’m in my own hi-res world, a three-dimensional canvas to host whatever my twisted little brain comes up with. The downside is that I’m nursing a barked shin and smarting elbow from bumping into my bed and desk respectively. If this is still a problem by the time I get my degree, my first project is to figure out a VR rig with a subroutine that will scan the physical dimensions of the room in which it’s functioning and impose them in the virtuality. If Dad handled personal injury lawsuits, this thing would be the upper-class free range, grass fed, artisanal, small batch goose that humanely laid the conflict-free Fabergé egg.

I’m painting this ripping waterfall as a centerpiece in my virtual canvas; the size scale is about a hundred to one, and I’m already towering over the rough penciled outlines of the surrounding Amazon rainforest like the wrathful specter of Bob Ross, come to inflict happy accidents on the hapless natives. It’s taken a while to get the textures right—the quickening ripple of the flow above the falls as it funnels inward, light casting tiny rainbows through the spray far below.

I’m mentally toning down the angle of refraction through the falls, and out of nowhere there’s a light tap on my right shoulder. My heart skips a beat and I’m already jumping, an inarticulate squawk escaping my lips, and burning embarrassment is already reddening my cheeks before I can get my limbic system to believe I’m not about to be brutally murdered by some ghost in the machine. Hazard of the occupation, I guess. At least I wasn’t playing Arizona Sunshine. That would’ve needed a new set of clothes. And a shower.

The headset comes off and Mom is backing away with this amused grin on her face.

Sorry to bug you, she says, not looking sorry at all. We got a call from Doc Brown.

Doc Brown isn’t his name. I’m currently sworn to secrecy (on pain of...well, pain) and I can’t use any actual names. I like Back to the Future; if you don’t get the connection, go look it up. Brown’s a guy my mom knows who works at the Red Cross. It’s not like I know him, so a shrug is the best I can do for her.  So sorry, don’t care, thanks for coming out.

About that time my dad comes in, all smiles too.

Warning! Timing too good to be a coincidence! Go to red alert! I detect divide and conquer tactics in action, and must work to remain blank so they don’t realize the soft approach has been detected and decide to do things the hard way. But then Mom looks concerned, like moms do when something they are trying to figure out doesn’t make any sense. The average Joe on the street just looks confused, but a mother always has an overlaying trace of anxiety, showing some secret vulnerability that they would never let the world-at-large see.

I play possum. Let my mouth hang open. Try to let my eyes unfocus. I’m not wicked smart but I’m bright enough to know that the brighter my folks think I am the more they’ll come to expect of me. You can bang that in the can with the rest of the trash. Think reality television, I tell myself, IQ test results: negative.

I shrug again, and talk with as little effort as possible: So what? It came out soft and glottal, feeling like it stayed in my throat. Not exactly the elocution of the great philosophers of times gone by, but Marcus Aurelius would’ve praised it for its efficiency. Except he was Roman, not Greek, which for some reason always ticks me off when I think about.

Mom’s eyes soften and a pale, delicate-fingered hand rises to caress my cheek. There is love in that glistening gaze, and a pity that my aunt down South would summarize with Bless your heart. (Roughly translated: You poor fool, you couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were on the heel). Mom’s education means she’s a tad more refined in her diction than that, but the sentiment remains the same.

He said your blood titer levels are off the charts, she says gently, "so he’s sending it to Blah-Blah-Blah Research Company." Can’t name the company. Sorry. In retrospect I wish I can. Really. Wish. I. Can.

I blink, waiting for something more, but she just looks on as if offering emotional support. I guess I should be devastated, but she might as well have walked in and told me the harbor contains 32.5 fishing boats; it’s probably a fact, but means nothing to me. She encouraged me to join the debate team last semester; why she should make tangential statements prone to misinterpretation due to their heavy reliance on context was just as much an unknown as the statement itself.

Well, I say, trying to prompt her, "is Doc Brown supposed to do that?"

I had to give him permission, though he sent it off to be tested before he called. He’s the ask-for-forgiveness instead of permission type. I hope you don’t mind, she adds.

Guess you’re the ask-for-forgiveness type too, I think. I straighten up and close my mouth, immediately gaining 30 IQ points as far as they are concerned. That depends entirely on why Brown decided to up and do the tests without permission, and why you went and did the same, I say. Sounds like you’re both in a hurry. And I’m not sure I like people assuming something is so important that it’s alright to ignore my wishes. It’s the sort of thing Dad argues in court all the time.

Mom gapes at me and backs off, her flats clicking softly against the hardwood floors. My room is cream walls, oak floors, big windows looking down from the second floor, and a ton of bookshelves. Her gaze pulls from me to a series of dog-eared paperbacks filled with the wisdom of the Greeks, who seemed to be pretty good at picking fights and arguing. A lip droops as if she is pulling into a scowl at them, targeting the parties responsible for making her son able to argue, but her expression smooths over before it is even made.

Stronger titer levels can help patients in need of transfusions, my dad says, as if he’s been practicing a speech. His speeches sound more natural than his natural speech, so his smooth tenor and calming motions with his hands are an obvious tell. He’d make a terrible poker player. It’s standard to do added testing.

The obvious fallacies of his assurances pop up in my head as if scrolling from a computer readout, sped by rising emotion that I suspect is anger, if not at them then at their attempt to handle me instead of just speaking plainly. "It wouldn’t be added testing if it was standard, Dad, I say. It would just be standard testing, which presumably I consented to upon giving blood; if they had no implied consent there would be no point in collecting it. And why should titer levels matter to patients who need transfusions when they could be getting actual transfusions?"

Dad’s jaw tightens. Anger. Just a touch of it. Thoughts shifting. You cocky little jackass. Slight upturn of the lip. Amusement. Pride. But you’re my little jackass. That’s what makes him a good lawyer: he admires an opponent’s argument instead of just trying to beat it.

My mom shakes her head at my dad. I’ll never forget it. It’s like he doesn’t understand the situation at all. She looks back at me again. They think your blood might be able to help a lot of people.

I nod curtly with folded arms. Yeah, beginning with me. I’m using it now, as a matter of fact. It keeps me alive.

Dad snorts with harsh, sudden laughter, but Mom, after a brief tolerating smile, takes the more pragmatic side and emphasizes those four choice words: A lot of people.

I am so done with this conversation and want to go back to my paint project. Algebra II homework and a lab writeup await, so I don’t have a lot of time.

"Yeah, okay, look; you’ve already agreed to overlook Doc Brown breaking some laws regarding consent because you think the sacrifice is worth it. Only problem is that you’re sacrificing me, not yourself. And you’ve come up with some tear-streaked explanation of how much good it’s going to do without actually telling me what’s going on, so clearly my part in this argument is symbolic at best, I say, sliding the headset back in place. And since my wishes aren’t a part of this equation, do you mind going elsewhere to finish up this speech? I got stuff to do and you’ve made it clear you don’t need me."

Or at least that’s what I want to say. If only I had the balls. There’s a certain point that you can’t cross if you want to have a weekly allowance and hobbies outside of being grounded. I haven’t been grounded in years. And with good reason. My folks are old school. No phone, television, or books aside from a Bible and textbooks. You tick my folks off and you’re doing serious hard time.

What really happens is she turns dirty—my mother of all people—grabs my gut and tickles me like I’m five years old. Fortunately I fall in the direction of, and land on, my soft king size bed, but she hangs on, digging deeper into my stomach.

Later I find out my dad gets it all on his phone and sends it to his Facebook friends. An innocent attempt at revealing a mother bonding with her son. How sweet. But looking back, that was so not smart. Now everyone knows what I look like. Can you sue your own parents for violating HIPAA and privacy laws?

NEXT MORNING I WAKE, needing my coffee fix with an extra shot of caffeine. Yes, I drink coffee at 16. It’s not so bad a way to cope with the day; some people shoot smack every morning. I greet the parental units in my normal zombie-style while pouring my cup. Today they are unusually quiet. They just go about dressing and prepping for the day, eyes down. That seems a little off; they’re morning people and usually talk about everything from the spring changes in weather to how the DOW is doing. But I could barely be bothered to care with my daily cup of liquid crack pumping through my ravaged veins, without it I’m not certain a nuke going off would be enough to make me pay attention. It’s only while I’m showering that a few ideas insert themselves into my brain, first of which is my blood. My out-of-this-world blood that no one else seems to have.

And, right about now, I should be asking for a car. A fast suck-my-exhaust getaway one. But I didn’t see what was coming. What normal suburbanite kid really thinks the tedium is going to change?

Dad drives me to school as usual, and he’s quiet. 98.6 FM, the Classic Rock Croc, isn’t droning on the radio; I guess there’s only so many times you can hear Carry On My Wayward Son before you start thinking about changing your name to Colt and hunting down supernatural creatures for an hour once a week, minus commercials. Not that much of a change from the norm, and it gives me time to sort out my thoughts for everything due today. I’m not a