Elena drove the 4 a.m. run from the regional blood center to St. Mary’s three times a week. The van was a white Transit with a temperature alarm that beeped if the cargo bay dropped below 2 degrees or rose above 6. In fourteen months of driving, the alarm had gone off once, on a July morning when the compressor relay failed, and she’d called dispatch and they’d sent another van and the blood had arrived twenty-two minutes late but within tolerance.
The replacement driver had been professional. He’d transferred the coolers correctly. Elena had waited in the lay-by until the swap was complete, then driven the failed van back to the depot. He’d delivered the blood and none of the units were compromised. Nobody at St. Mary’s noticed the delay.
She took the A40 because there was no traffic at this hour. She preferred the A40 to the M40 diversion, though both routes delivered within the same window. The headlights caught the road markings and nothing else. She didn’t listen to the radio. The fan from the refrigeration unit ran at a constant pitch and she’d stopped hearing it the way you stop hearing a fridge.
A fox crossed the road near Gerrards Cross, moving from one dark hedge to another. She slowed, checked the mirrors, continued.
At the hospital she reversed into the loading bay. The night porter checked the manifest. She handed him the coolers one by one—seven units of O-negative, four of A-positive, two of platelets. The cold bit her fingers through the gloves.
He signed the manifest. She signed below.
On the drive back the sky was starting to lighten. She would park, leave the manifest in the tray, and drive home. On Thursday she would drive the same route. The blood would be typed, cross-matched, and transfused into patients who would never know it arrived in a white Transit driven by Elena, or by whoever else was on the rota. The chain from donor to recipient was anonymous at every link. That was how it worked.
Elena parked. She left the manifest. She drove home. The flat was quiet. She made tea, ate toast at the counter, and went to bed.
Tomorrow she would not drive. Someone else would. The blood would arrive at the same temperature, signed for by the same porter or a different one.