Part 19: Stuck on a Notion

I enjoyed drawing blood at National Health Labs, which had an office across the lobby from Voshell's Pharmacy in the medical office building at Wilkens and Pine Heights Avenue.

It was a stress-free 9 to 5 job in a controlled environment. The bloodwork was routine; pre-admission tests, blood glucose and anticoagulant checks, therapeutic drug levels. The lab also received urine samples and the occasional sputum or stool sample, and we ran EKGs.

All of the specimens and tubes of blood were picked up twice a day by a company courier and taken to a central lab in Virginia.

The courier's job consisted of nothing but driving back and forth between Baltimore and Vienna, Virginia, spending the entire work day sitting behind a steering wheel. I'd rather be jabbed with needles.

The lab's clients were generally healthy and cooperative. Nice people, usually bathed and sober. It was easy work.

Our office had one other phlebotomist, a young married woman named Veronica. There was also an older woman, Betty, who was the receptionist and office manager but didn't draw blood.

Veronica wore her hair in a frame around her face with her bangs flipped upward, as though her hair was startled and trying to escape her forehead. She lived in an area called Glen Burnie, which meant nothing to me but based on her intonation seemed to suggest something related to class or social status. She said it almost apologetically.

It was a fine job, and we all got along great. But I had nothing in common with these people aside from an occupational proximity to body fluids. There was no socializing. None of us had an inclination to hang around with the others outside of work.

After several months in Baltimore, I still hadn't struck any friendships and still felt isolated. Work only occupied eight hours of the day. That left too much time to mope by myself.

I mentioned to Veronica that I was thinking about getting a part-time job, and she told me about Pharmakinetics, a company that does drug metabolism studies on dozens of subjects at a time. All the subjects stay isolated in a dormitory-like setting.

Pharmakinetics is always looking for phlebotomists, Veronica said. They have a high turnover because it's difficult work. All of the sticks are precisely timed and done under highly controlled conditions. Subjects are stuck dozens of times in studies that lasted three or four days, sometimes a week or ten days. Blood is drawn 24 hours a day, even waking them up at night for timed sticks. For this, study participants earn a few hundred or a thousand bucks.

The clientele that sign up for these studies are criminals and unemployable scum, Veronica warned me. It's a tough crowd. These are people reduced to allowing themselves to be jabbed with needles over and over again, she said. And the company is located on 25th Street not far from Greenmount, in a very dangerous part of the city.

I didn't need to hear any more. I was sold.