by Jaime Reed
I sat in the chair on the opposite side of his desk, trying to figure out what products he used to get his hair so bouncy. The front part fanned downward, then swooped over his forehead like an ocean wave, and I imagined rocking that style when I finally took my braids out. My face was rounder than his, but I’d still look cute. My hair would need a straight press and maybe a trim, but—
“Janelle?” he said after what sounded like numerous tries for my attention. “Do you have any questions on what I’ve explained so far?”
“Huh? Oh! No—I don’t understand anything about white blood cells, antibodies, HLAs, HPAs, or HBO. I wouldn’t know a genetic crossmatch from a city crosswalk. I just need to know if I’m compatible.”
“You’re very compatible. In fact, you’re a near perfect candidate.”
English was my first language, yet I was gonna need a translator for that response. “How? We’re not related.” Then again, Mrs. Weaver hadn’t made the cut, and she’d given birth to Alyssa.
“You have type O blood, which is universal, and you have four of the six required antigen markers—”
I had to stop him right there. “Please. Two syllables or less.”
“Your blood types are the same. Her immune system won’t try and off your cells for invading their turf. Your organ tissues have similar enough DNA to attempt to pass as her own.”
I kept to my original question. “How?”
“You’re from White Chapel. That’s a small farming community, am I correct?” he asked, and I nodded. “People have been there for generations. It’s like a large tribe, and ancestors of the original founders are still living there.”
So Dr. Ken Doll had jokes. “Okay, it’s not even like that, sir. This is Virginia, not West Virginia, and we’re not that small of a town.”
“I’m only implying that this country is a melting pot. People marry into different ethnicities. Genes are passed down, and it’s often harder to find a match for some people because they’re so blended, but sometimes that can work to our advantage. We happened to luck out in your case.”
Yeah, real lucky. Now I was questioning my family tree. I knew that slavery and illegal race-mixing did happen in the South, so it might be possible, somehow, somewhere, in a galaxy far, far away, that Alyssa and I had a relative in common. I knew DNA was weird, but this suspended all boundaries of belief. Or maybe I didn’t want to believe it. That thought was more alarming than the test results.
After another ten minutes of watered-down med school vocab, Dr. Brighton flipped to a new section in his file. “Now that we’ve tackled the medical side, it’s time to delve into the mental and emotional side.”
I rubbed my clammy palms on my legs. The friction burned my thighs. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning you need to assess the risks involved in going forward,” he replied. “What if the kidney fails?”
Baffled, I pointed to both the open file and the computer on his desk. “You just spent twenty minutes telling me I was a perfect match.”
“No one is a perfect match, Janelle. Not even identical twins are a sure thing. There’s always a possibility that the transplant will fail. It could be right away, a month, or three years from now. There is no guarantee when it comes to the human body.” With hands clasped together, Dr. Brighton leaned in, ready to drop some hidden knowledge. “Nearly a quarter of the transplants we perform here every year are re-transplants. Some organs fail sooner than others. But organs from living donors are far more successful and have a longer shelf life. The recipient will have roughly fifteen years.”
My hand gripped the chair to keep from falling over. “Fifteen years? That’s it? What happens after that?”
“The recipient may need a new transplant.”
I jumped out of my chair. “What? She’ll need a new one when she’s thirty?”
“Or sooner. We’ll have to see.” His chair rolled toward the computer and he wiggled the mouse to wake the screen. “So this is why I want you to think long and hard about this procedure. How will this affect your relationship? It’s one thing to donate to a complete stranger, but could you live with seeing Alyssa every day knowing what you’ve lost and that she still could die? Will she blame you? Will you blame her?”
We do that anyway, I wanted to say, but a growing knot caught in my throat. Blinking away the prickling tears, I looked over at the file cabinet, the plaques, the family photos on the wall, the view of the parking lot through the window, anywhere but the pity on Dr. Brighton’s face. Spotting the water cooler in the corner, I went over for a drink. I still felt his steely blue eyes track my every move. I refused to show weakness, not today.
“I’m not trying to scare you but to give you realistic expectations,” he continued. “Organ donation is not a once-and-for-all fix but an extension of a life span and better quality of the time given. Patients spend up to four hours on a dialysis machine three days a week. That’s twelve hours a week, two days a month, and nearly a month out of an entire year. Imagine what your friend could be doing with her life with that time—because that’s what we’re campaigning for. It’s why your case has jumped to the head of the line among thousands, and why in a few weeks we’re at the midpoint of a process that takes close to a year to complete. Time. It is what we’re racing against and chasing after.” His fingers tap-danced on the keyboard as he typed notes into the spreadsheet.
I nodded, drinking in his message and washing it down with my cup of water.
“So, should you agree to proceed with the evaluation, we’ll arrange a session with Dr. Langhorne. She’s our chief sociopsychologist and very good at what she does.”
I stared out of the window and mulled over the concept. “I’ve never gone to therapy before. Is she nice?”
His hesitation made me turn around. He seemed lost for words, or rather in a struggle to choose the right ones. “She’s … efficient. You’ll meet her soon enough.”
Dr. Brighton’s words rode shotgun with me on the long drive home. Decisions like these took time, which apparently was a dying resource.
Mateo’s Fred Sanford truck hogged the driveway, so I parked at the curb. While gathering my stuff from the passenger seat, I got a text from a person I’d thought I deleted from my address book.
ALYSSA: Come to my house after school. Thanx.
Stop the presses! I’d been summoned by the queen herself, and who would dare decline a royal engagement? By God, I must tend to her council at once. Yeah, right. If it were a real emergency, she would’ve called directly, or sought professional help via 911. I could count on zero fingers the times I’d jumped at her command, so why quit that habit?
I went inside, took a shower, ate some of Mateo’s bomb quesadillas, walked the dogs, then found my way onto Alyssa’s front yard around 4:15.
Before my foot hit the stoop, the door opened and Alyssa appeared, wearing pajamas and a ticked-off expression.
Since that was her resting face, I needed context. “How you feeling? What’s your flavor?”
Alyssa flashed me a smarmy grin, then scrolled her phone with her thumb. “Sour. I texted you two hours ago.”
Smiling wide, I showed her my own phone. “Yes, and I dropped everything and ran right over.”
She scoffed and shook her head slowly. “I swear, Persian rugs lie better than you. Anyway, can you take me to my dialysis appointment? I’m too weak to drive.”
My gaze swung to the white Rabbit convertible in the driveway and then to the orange Camaro that wasn’t there. “Where’s your mom?”
“At work. And Ryon’s got SAT prep today.”
“I thought the hospital didn’t allow visitors. And where’s the Borg?” They were her friends, after all. Or had I imagined the last two years?
“I told you I’d check about visitors. They approved it,” she said, completely dodging the last part of my question. “So can we go?”
“Depends. You got that gas money?”
She lifted her head to the sky and groaned.
“Omigod, Janelle! Could you do me this one favor?”
That sounded like something friends would do. You know, the people she didn’t call. But whatever. “I’m just messing with you, you big baby. What time’s your appointment?”
“Four thirty.”
I checked the time on my phone. “See, look at that. I came just in time.”
Her puckered lips and sidelong glance spoke volumes. “I knew you’d take your sweet time coming over. That’s why I texted you so early.” Bag in hand and a pillow tucked under her arm, she stepped out of the house and closed the door behind her. “Let’s roll.”
The Peninsula Dialysis Center was a small clinic on the outskirts of the county. The place looked more like a nail salon than a hospital, with wall-to-wall windows, bright lights, and a chemical stench in the air. The lobby had that white, high-tech sleekness featured in every sci-fi movie. The tall blond behind the counter could easily play the hot alien that the star captain would hook up with.
Thinking of nerdy stuff reminded me that I needed to text Sera. We were supposed to hang out at her place this afternoon. It had completely slipped my mind because—life. I checked my phone and Sera had already texted me.
SERA: R U coming later?
ME: IDK how late I’ll be. Rain check?
SERA: Sure.
“Texting my replacement?” Alyssa cut her eyes at my phone as she pulled her ID from her wallet. “Does your new bestie know you’re with me or are you keeping it on the low?”
“I know how testy you get when people put your medical issues on blast, so no. She doesn’t know. How does it feel being the side chick?” I gave her a sorry-not-sorry smirk.
She returned the look. “Oh, Janelle Lynn. We both know I’m never the side chick.”
There went that jealousy thing I’d picked up on before. I’d caught it during the school food drive and it hadn’t made sense then, either. She had four loyal disciples on her squad and half the school on her friend list, yet she was checking for me?
Maybe besties were like spouses: You can only have one at a time. Any more than that and you’d run the risk of starting a cult.
After Alyssa and I signed in at the front desk, we chilled in the sitting area and read magazines until she was called to the back room. I expected to wait in the lobby until she was done, and maybe catch a nap. To my surprise, she waved me to come along.
“Normally, visitors aren’t allowed in during the ‘put-on’ and ‘take-off’ parts of the treatment, but I put in a special request for certain people to come, namely you and Mom,” she explained, but left out one critical part.
“Why me?” I asked.
“Because … reasons.” She hedged. When I stopped in the middle of the hall, she went on to say, “I trust you, okay? You’re better at handling weird than most people, and the registration form asked for two contacts in case something happens. My dad lives too far away, Ryon would only cry the whole time, and the others … You’re just the first contact that came to mind, is all.”
That made me smile a bit. “You telling me I’m your person?”
“Ugh! You’re still hooked on Grey’s Anatomy, I see. I gave up on that show after McDreamy died,” she muttered, then kept walking.
The dialysis room was a large, open space divided into ten stations with leather recliners set in a semicircle. After she got a quick physical exam, Alyssa hopped into her assigned lounger and fluffed the pillow she’d brought from home.
The nurse handed me a face mask, safety goggles, and a long-sleeved smock to avoid contamination. Then I was asked to sit at a safe distance from Alyssa’s seat during the “put-on” process. For the next ten minutes, I sat amazed, watching the nurse hot-wire the robo-kidney with blurring speed. Alyssa wasn’t kidding when she said that people needed to take a class to operate the machine. No way would I try that at home. A cartridge slid here. A pouch of fluid hooked there. Tubes connected to knobs that wrapped around wheels that clipped onto more tubes that inserted into Alyssa’s arm. And the poor girl had to do this three times a week? Twelve hours a week, two days a month, and nearly a month out of an entire year. My mind couldn’t wrap around a problem that big.
An hour into the process, Alyssa and I entered a strange area of physics where we occupied the same space, but in different dimensions. I was on my phone. She was on hers. Both of us avoided the things that were really on our minds.
Loud snores caught my attention. An old woman two stations away lay sound asleep in her recliner. The paperback novel she’d been reading rested on her stomach. Her head lolled to one shoulder while her short salt-and-pepper wig twisted in the opposite direction. At first glance, I mistook the hairpiece for a gray poodle sleeping on her head. It even swelled and contracted as if it were breathing on its own.
And no, I was not, absolutely not, going to look at Alyssa. The moment we locked eyes, the second she cracked a smile, I would burst out laughing, and we were too old to cut up in public.
“You know you saw that. Don’t act like you didn’t,” Alyssa mumbled, her thumbs clicking away on her phone.
“What is wrong with you?” I whispered. “That’s a little old lady. Be nice.”
She shrugged and kept texting. “What do you mean? I love old people. I want to be old people. But if I see something funny then I’m gonna laugh—simple as that. You did see that thing move, though, right? It wasn’t just me?” When I didn’t answer, she said, “Because the sign at the front door clearly says NO SMOKING and NO PETS, but old girl gets to waltz in here with a dead squirrel on her head.”
“Shut up, Lyssa,” I gritted out. “You are so wrong for that. I swear, I can’t take you anywhere.”
Setting her phone on her lap, she lifted her chin high and proud. “Unfounded and untrue. I may be a diva, but I’m also a lady.”
I had to lean all the way back in my chair on that one. “Need I remind you of all the times you ran your mouth? You almost got kicked out of school because you’re forever talking back to people that you’re not supposed to.”
Her hazel eyes swept up and down my frame like I was the short one in our duo. “I’m gonna need receipts.”
“I’ve got plenty.” I ran down the front-runners on my fingers. “That time you made Sera cry in the middle of a pep rally.”
She waved off exhibit A. “It was self-defense. She kept harassing me for calling Ryan ‘oppa,’ like I don’t know what that means in Korean. He’s two months older than me and he’s my boyfriend. He fits the profile.”
It was true, but the point was winning the argument no matter what. I kept going. “Or when you cussed out that pregnant cashier at the fro-yo shop.”
Hand resting on her chest, Alyssa looked dismayed. “That chick had the nerve to call me fat. The. Nerve!”
I moved on to my third and most incriminating piece of evidence. “Or when you made the guidance counselor quit her job.”
After a long pause, she said, “Hey, you don’t sit behind a desk, talk crap about my mom being trailer trash, and not have your life flash before your eyes. It’s just not how things are done in my world, especially while in the middle of a custody battle. Mrs. Cline found that out the hard way.”
Case: dismissed. The smile I didn’t know I was wearing melted from my face. I fell against my chair and watched her in silence. That part of the story had been conveniently left out of the hallway tabloids, and not once had I thought to ask Alyssa for the real scoop. What other details had I missed?
Sighing, Alyssa stared dead-eyed at the ceiling for so long, I looked up, too. It had that speckled Styrofoam tiling you’d see in every office building.
“Remember that time I went to Finnegan’s for my birthday and I ordered that nasty shrimp platter?” she asked out of the blue.
I recalled the event vividly. “I think half the waitstaff remembers that night.”
She shuddered at the memory. “It looked nothing like the picture on the menu. It was like five shrimps, dry as could be, shivering on the
plate. I made the waitress take it back to the kitchen and ended up ordering the best salad I ever had. Why can’t life be that easy, you know? You just flag over your server and tell them to fix it.”
I’d give anything to know that answer for myself. My hand swiped the air, indicating an invisible tagline. “Excuse Me, Life? This Is Not What I Ordered. That would make a cool T-shirt.”
She considered the concept for a moment. “That’s a great idea.”
“I’ve been known to have a few in my day.”
Her gaze drifted across the room in recollection. “Yeah, you have.”
The minutes ticked away before either of us said another word. Finally, I asked, “Lyssa, can we just say what we really wanna say to each other?”
Her head tipped toward me. “You wanna go first?”
As a matter of fact—no. The question felt hopeless, and simply asking it caused exhaustion. But I had to get the ball rolling. “How did we get here? We used to be best friends and finish each other’s sentences. This is not what I ordered.”
She gave me a chin-quivering smile, the kind that fought off tears. “It’s not what I ordered, either. But what else is on the menu?”
I extended my arm and slipped my hand in hers. “Hopefully, something fresh.”
Alyssa squeezed my hand and smiled in earnest.
“Come on, Janelle. No one will know it’s you.” Alyssa slapped her hall pass against her thigh in an impatient beat as she checked her phone. “The bell’s about to ring in three minutes.”
We stood outside of Mr. Russo’s art class, casing the row of lockers across the hallway. The corridor had to be free of witnesses, so we’d gotten out of social studies at the same time to make the drop. It had to go down during last period to avoid risking Mateo losing the note between classes. Alyssa had planned our operation down to the second. All that was missing was the Mission: Impossible theme song piping through the intercom. And my courage.
My head shake came off like a tremor as I literally held my heart in my hand. Crushed between my fingers was pent-up emotion inside heart-shaped pink construction paper. Every wish, fear, and daydream I’d hidden since last semester was carefully spelled out in colored marker and scratch-and-sniff stickers. None of Alyssa’s matchmaking efforts had worked, and we’d only seen Mateo a few times during summer break anyway. So she’d decided on the anonymous approach in a controlled area, which meant waiting until the first week of school.