Free Donor 23 by Cate Beatty

turned and ran up the next flight.
    Duncan shouted behind her, “Joan, think of me.”
    She did think of Duncan. She thought of him as she ran up the stairs and as she walked the hospital hallway. She should have been worried of any fallout that could come from revealing her name to a citizen, but all she could think about was Duncan and the rose in her hand.
    Joan happily breezed across the ninth floor—rose in hand. She knew this area well. Many donor auditions took place here because of its convenience for the physicians who reviewed the auditions and results. Donors had to perform at least one audition a year. She’d come here for auditions as a kid, but when Tegan became a professional athlete, Joan and her co-donors switched to exercising and auditioning at the Center.
    Much of the floor consisted of a large audition room. Feeling reminiscent, Joan stopped and glanced in through the double swinging doors of the huge room. Bright lights hovered over a matted room full of exercise equipment, treadmills, weight machines, and medical monitors. A couple dozen or so donors worked out at various stations, some of them hooked up to heart or blood pressure monitors. A few proctors strolled the floor with whistles around their necks, keeping tabs on the donors. Mirrors covered an entire wall. Joan smiled as she recalled how she hated those mirrors. She never thought of herself as pretty and didn’t like watching herself exercise.
    She glanced at her wrist phone. Her appointment was for a different room, and she walked on. She twirled the rose in her fingers and turned down a hallway, following signs that indicated the way. Turning another corner, the hall opened into an expansive, windowed viewing area. Joan had never seen this.Slowly, she walked closer to the windows. They overlooked the audition room.
    She saw the whole audition room before her as she looked through the glass—through the mirrors she had seen from inside the audition room. In the viewing area, both standing and seated at chairs, people watched the donors—watched the various auditions. They pointed at the donors and spoke into wrist phones.
These were benefactors,
Joan realized. They secretly observed their donors’ auditions behind a one-way mirror.
    Two people next to her stood up, bumping her elbow.
    “Excuse me,” one politely said to Joan. Then he turned to his companion, “I’m going to cut that number 33 loose. Did you see her at that weight machine? She’s just too weak. My wife doesn’t need two donors, anyway. Come on, I’m hungry. Grab a bite somewhere?”
    Joan focused her attention back on the audition room. She spied a middle-aged women with a “33” on her shirt, struggling at a weight machine. Not far away two young, teenage boys performed pull-ups side by side on a bar. They kept stealing glances at each other as they pulled themselves up again and again, both clearly exhausted. Finally, one dropped from the bar. The one still hanging smiled in triumph. The boy on the ground jumped up, intending to do more pull-ups, but a proctor stepped up and shook his head. The proctor turned to the boy still grasping the bar and motioned for him to keep going. He strained but continued the pull-ups.
    Something tugged at her heart as she watched them. She pushed the feeling back. A huge poster of the Governor towered over the audition room. Joan stared at it—maybe for too long—and left the viewing area.

8
    D r. Jules Chin drank too much the night before. She stopped at the exam room door, rubbed her eyes, steeled herself, and walked briskly in. The girl sitting on the exam table jumped.
    “Didn’t mean to startle you,” she calmed Joan.
    Joan didn’t respond. She looked down, held the rose to her nose, and took a deep breath. Jules Chin set some papers down and removed the stethoscope from around her neck. Dr. Melnick, Dean Garcia, and a nurse with pink hair quickly entered the room. This time, Chin jumped. Melnick paused and stared