Blood Type

— “Guadeloupe woman is the only known human with newly discovered blood type”

Hematology Today

— “Guadeloupean is the only person in the world compatible with herself”

Live Science

We’re going to call her Marge because we don’t really know who the hell she is. Or what. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

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Guadeloupe is a wonderful place to visit—or to live, I suppose. Cooling island breezes, staggering ocean views, accommodating Guadeloupeans anxious to translate welcoming smiles into gratuities—you can almost feel your blood gently warm as soon as you step off the plane. “Your blood”—that’s the difference, isn’t it? Between Marge and the rest of us, I mean.

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Marge is tall, strikingly so, with ebony hair so lustrous it seems more shimmer than color. Tourists hit on her, each in their own way, even the married ones. That smile, so radiant, suspended from cheek bones to kill for, or maybe to die for. Does it matter? Someone’s a goner either way. Old men would crack old men jokes around her just to try to elicit that smile. One particular old man, who fancied himself more attractive than his fellow old men fancied themselves, tried to engage Marge in conversation. He knew just what to say, he thought. He knew women, knew they liked to talk about themselves, he thought. He often bragged to his golfing buddies that if they wanted to get laid, follow his lead. His golfing buddies hated him at least as much as they hated themselves for their not being as glib, for their persistent slice off the tee, for their having grown so suddenly old. “So tell me about yourself, Marge—it is “Marge,” right?” Marge had nodded. “You’re obviously a beautiful woman, but what’s the real Marge like? Deep inside?” Marge just smiled and probably thought, “That’s what I’d like to know.” She reached out and accepted the hard candy he offered—one of the Jolly Rancher reds, Cherry—but nothing else. At least not yet.

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If it hadn’t been for the car accident, we—in other words, no one—would have ever known, would have ever suspected that Marge was and wasn’t Marge—that is, she was … and wasn’t … the person she was before we decided to name her Marge. I know. It’s complicated.

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Why “Marge”? And why did we even feel the need to name her? What would you have done? You’re dropping your best lines on this woman, even asking her about herself for God’s sake, and she just smiles. “So what’s your name?” She just smiles. No name. The locals said that years ago some old man, one of the tourist regulars before the heart attack, had named her Marge—“She won’t tell me her name? Then I’ll tell her her name.” And she became Marge. And he became quite dead from either the liquor, the heart attack or from leaning too far over the second-story balcony of his room right before the heart attack to yell for Marge to come on up for a hard candy “if you know what I mean!” whereupon he clutched his chest and tumbled wide-eyed over the railing, onto the pool’s diving board, and straight back up into the light Guadeloupean trade winds before splatting down into the deep end. Marge just stared, “smiled” some onlookers said, at the body floating belly up as a Jolly Rancher red drifted peacefully to the bottom of the pool.

Two guests relaxing in chaise lounges by the pool’s edge applauded the dive, the mid-dive summersault, even the flat-on-the-back landings on first the diving board and then, SMACK!, on the water itself. So they got a little wet. What a story. What fun they were having in Guadeloupe. But when the diver failed to acknowledge their recognition for a seemingly brave if not perfectly executed feat, when the diver chose just to float on his back and not even offer a thumbs up, the couple ceased clapping, closed their eyes, and resettled into their chaise lounges, the man slitting his eyes just enough to see if the dark-skinned Marge was still standing poolside.

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We all tacitly agreed that from then on she would be “Marge.”

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About the car accident: Marge may or may not have been at fault. The police found the car securely embedded in the tree, Marge unconscious in the passenger seat and bleeding profusely from the side of her neck, the old man in the driver’s seat, his fly unzipped, a now-disinterested penis lolling to the side, Marge’s open left hand resting palm up on his right thigh, his right thigh just as dead as the rest of him. A report was written. An officer asked if “hand job” was one word or two, medical personal at the Centre Hospitalier Universiteaire de la Guadeloupe tested Marge’s blood for a match so they could begin the transfusion, and a funeral director would wonder, days later and ever so briefly, about the sudden influx of old dead men but then shrug it off as good for business and place an order for some of the more expensive urns.

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The transfusion was the start of it all. For most of us, for most … people, it’s usually a straight-forward process: find the blood type, match the blood type, needle in the vein and start the transfusion. And if there’s no, say, B– available, you go with O+, the universal donor. Right?

Maybe not.

What if there is no match? At all? Nada? Zip? Nothing? What if it’s a blood type unique to no one, ever, no one except the person with the bleeding neck who you’re prepping for a transfusion you can no longer give?

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It was close, “touch and go” the doctors said to no one in particular, for Marge had no visitors while she was in the hospital. No friends. No family. It seemed no one knew Marge except for the few old men who were damned if they were going to go to the hospital and say, “Hey there, I’m here to see Marge.” Nosir, better to wait until she was better, out of the hospital, standing at poolside while taking a break from cleaning rooms. We all assumed she was there to clean rooms. Hematologists flew in from several countries: France, of course, Spain, Germany, China, Mexico, the States. They wanted to know how Marge was the only person on planet earth to have the blood type they were now calling Gwada-negative. They wanted DNA tests, ancestry reports, medical records old and new. The reporters soon followed. There were 24/7 news cycles to fill. The reporters wanted to know if Marge was married, available, married and available, had children, a boyfriend, girlfriend, both, neither, favorite foods, a celebrity crush. All of them—hematologists and reporters—got the same answer: a smile framed by hospital lights reflecting the glisten on the surface of dark skin and darker hair.

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Dr. L. Robert Franscisco, a hematologist from Mayo Clinic, said what his peers had quietly surmised: “Alien.”

Yes, of course, what else could it be? He is from Mayo Clinic, you know.

Reporters began to dig. Translators were paid. French to English. Creole to Chinese. Whatever it took to find out who Marge really was. They failed to find anyone who had talked at length to the person called Marge, but there were people who knew if not her directly then of her—as a quiet teenager, as an even quieter child. No one recalled ever knowing her name other than to say it wasn’t Marge. But they did remember her—sort of, somewhat, who she was, or at least had been. “Whatever,” they said, “she could not be an alien.”

Still …

L. Robert couldn’t let it go. Repeatedly he thought, “If the blood isn’t human, she must be alien. If the blood isn’t human, she must be alien. If the—” and so it would go until it was all he could think about.

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During the old man’s autopsy, the pathologist checked for alcohol in the blood, drawing a sample from the old man’s femoral vein to ensure an accurate reflection of any untoward alcohol level. It seemed a reasonable step considering the old man either jumped or fell from a balcony onto a diving board and into a swimming pool. And the blood type was what? Unknown? The family doctor was consulted. He emailed that it couldn’t be true. Old guy’s blood type was B+, always had been, always would be.

The autopsy said No.

The pathologist said Gwada-negative.

Reporters shifted from all things Marge to the old man’s friends and family. Turned out it was easier to find family than friends, and even family wasn’t so friendly. No one seemed to miss “the old pervert” (his daughter’s words) all that much. But there was one who knew the old man’s blood type: “B+ as in ‘I’m positive he was a capital B bastard’” (his son’s words).

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L Robert contacted the pathologist, discussed his findings. Now there were two who tested Gwada-negative. Soon there would be three as the driver of the crashed car, his penis safely tucked back inside his pants and his fly zipped shut for the last time, had been transported to the morgue. Same pathologist. Same test for alcohol level. Different femoral vein. Same result. Gwada-negative. L. Robert read every newspaper article, every internet article on the accident. The old man—old man #2 L. Robert called him—had been at the hotel where Marge worked. He had sat poolside, talked to Marge before stepping off the edge of the pool and swimming a lap as best he could. A witness remembered him, them, Marge and old man #2, talking—well, not really having a conversation, more like the old man chatting her up. The witness said he remembered because he always got a kick out of “these fat old men and how they think they’re still hot shit to hot young women as if they’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell.” The witness did allow that Marge had smiled, that they had walked off together.

“If the blood isn’t human, she must be alien. If—”

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L. Robert became obsessed, fixated. He found himself taking a leave of absence from Mayo Clinic. He found himself having rented a room in the hotel where Marge worked. He found himself sitting for hours on the second-story balcony, waiting for Marge to appear, to walk over and stand by the pool’s edge. She was so much taller than most Guadeloupean women. She seemed to glide more than walk toward the pool. Soon enough an old man would creak up from his chaise lounge and approach her. But the moments before that were the ones L. Robert found himself waiting for, when the sun seemed to reflect off the pool’s surface and bath Marge’s skin in … in … L. Robert couldn’t quite find the word, the exact word to describe this glowing woman who stood at pool’s edge. L. Robert, the author of so many acclaimed articles in so many acclaimed medical journals, could not find the word. The old man shuffled over, said what he needed to say—L. Robert could make out the sounds but not the words. Marge seemed to nod her head ever so slightly as he handed her something, pointed to his watch as if to confirm a time, and walked back toward his room. Marge offered a slight smile to her sun-reddened reflection elongated in the pool—or was it a slight grimace, a flash of distress?—it was hard for L. Robert to tell with the distance between them.

In three days L. Robert would be referring to the old man as old man #3. Must have been a cigarette that caught the sheets on fire. One of the hotel employees was close by, heard the choked screams, grabbed a fire extinguisher and quenched the flames, but not before the old man had officially become #3.

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L. Robert was two years past normal retirement age, but he liked his work, felt it was important, and to be honest, he would rather be called “Doctor” than “retired.” Sure, it was a touch of vanity, but no one was hurt by it so what the hell. “I am what I am,” he’d thought, shrugged, and then left it at that. His leave of absence would be up in three days. If he didn’t return, he knew he’d be relegated from Doctor to retiree in a heartbeat. There was no shortage of younger doctors eyeing his position. But that’s not what was on his mind as he sat on the balcony waiting for the sun to reflect off the pool and onto Marge’s bronze skin, onto her thick, ebony hair. “If the blood isn’t human, she must be alien. If the blood isn’t human—”

He recreated the moment now. How the old man had struggled to rise from the chaise lounge, how the old man was clearly trying to hold in a stomach in that refused to obey, how the old man had approached her, spoken to her, stood between her and the sun so that Marge’s face, her skin and hair, became little more than shadow, had offered her something, probably a hard candy, it was always a hard candy, had agreed on some kind of goddamned arrangement, L. Robert thought as he remembered one last thing. Before Marge disappeared—she never seemed to just walk away; she would just be suddenly not there, gone—L. Robert had watched as she allowed what he assumed was a Jolly Rancher Cherry to slip from her hand into the pool. He had kept watching until she was no longer there to watch, until he was just staring at the pool’s surface and then beneath the pool’s surface, down to the bottom where a red liquid seemed to form and mix with the chlorine as it escaped into the pool’s filter grate.

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L. Robert read about the fire, about the man who had been burned to death (“immolated,” thought L. Robert) inside the bedsheets, about the hotel employee and how she had doused the flames. There were pictures, but L. Robert didn’t need to look at them to know who the man and the woman were. And he knew a photograph could not replicate the bronze glow, the dark shimmer. And he knew that Marge was not an alien, no, Marge was not an alien. But her blood, ah, that was a different story.

Her blood.

The alien was her blood.

L. Robert knew it just as surely as he knew that he’d worked his last days at Mayo Clinic, that he would be sitting on the second-story balcony tomorrow, staring down at the pool’s surface.