Larry's Kidney: Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China with My Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant--and Save His Life

by Daniel Asa Rose

  Because I am.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Last Kidney in China

  The longer the night lasts, the more our dreams will be.

  It’s 10:00 P.M., and Mary and I are singing Peking Opera in Larry’s hospital room. She’s performing the male roles, and I’m doing the females in falsetto, with much ritualized stomping of feet and syncopated banging of bedpans. Still wiped out from this morning’s dialysis, Larry lies before us on the bed with his eyes closed, showing all the appreciation of a corpse. I do believe, however, that down at frog-decibel level, he may be chuckling in time with the music. It wouldn’t be too much to shoot for a grin, would it—one of Larry’s old-time razzle-dazzlers? “Ha ha, good one,” that’s what I’m aiming to hear, like a grand-slam home run, despite a few missing teeth in the bleachers.

  And then at 10:01 P.M., the call comes. It’s Cherry on the phone.

  “Now is the time,” she says. “Approval has been granted.”

  Whoa, team. I hush Mary in the background and collect myself. “Have all the papers gone through, the signatures from all the parties?”

  “All yes, but no time for small talk,” Cherry says. “Tell Larry surgery in two hour, preparation begins right away.”

  It’s day forty-two in Shi, our forty-ninth day in China, and we can barely believe it. We’re so pumped—we’re like hostages suddenly being told they’re about to be set free—we go into double time, hurriedly getting things in order as a swarm of white-clad people enter our space and scurry about efficiently. We’ve been poised to go for so many weeks that we’re almost exploding out of the gate. Mary sweeps the latest pistachio shells out of the way so that when the time comes, Larry can be wheeled out smoothly. Larry fumbles with his shoelaces, but he’s so flustered he’s tying them into knots. I take over removing his Businessman’s Running Shoes, freeing him to keep up a running monologue as the Judy-look-alike resident shaves his lower abdomen and crotch.

  “I’m not optimistic about this operation,” he says. “I know the stats are on my side, but my hunches are usually good, and I don’t think I’ll make it. There’s going to be a complication, and I won’t pull through. And I’m surprisingly okay with it. My choice to come to China was a sound one. I’m just so tired, tired isn’t the word for it. I can’t fight for my life anymore. Whatever happens, happens. I want to be cremated, just so you know—my ashes buried with my mutha, my futha, and Judy. And to remind you, even if I come out of it and by some miracle it’s a success, I reserve the right to kill myself.”

  I’m paying as much attention to these pronouncements as I usually do, preoccupied by glancing sidelong at his crotch. First time I’ve ever seen it. Is that what it boils down to, the nest of his manhood? This tender package, this shy sac, beneath all the hurly-burly of his life? It seems so private and quaint, after all the histrionics of his existence. Eventually I tune back in and find the words he needs to hear.

  “Well, I have a great feeling about this,” I reassure him. “Everything’s fallen into place for us. This is just the endgame of a very fortunate series of events.”

  But no sooner are the words out of my mouth than I’m seized with a huge charley horse in my thigh. I rarely get charley horses, but this one clutches me for nearly a minute, making me squeeze the bedside for support.

  “Dan bad?” Mary asks.

  I concentrate on breathing oxygen down to the spasm. Serves me right for sounding overoptimistic. “Give me a sec,” I say at last. Just as an e-mail comes in. It’s the Disapproving Docs demanding an update, “or we cannot vouch for the consequences.”

  The phone rings. It’s Cherry again. “Oh, and Daniel, we now have a price for you,” she says.

  “Go ahead,” I say, breathing through my spasm.

  “Dr. X give you half-price special, like what he give Chinese citizen. Thirty-two thousand American dollar.”

  “I see,” I say, not letting the figure sink in right away, not tipping my hand about how pleased its initial sound makes me.

  “You can get this now?” Cherry asks.

  “Right now, in the middle of the night?” I ask.

  “Yes, please, before operation. Is midmorning U.S.A., banks open.”

  “Yes, but it may take a while to go through.”

  “You tell them to wire and show us document, is okay.”

  My spasm subsides as I prepare to tell Larry the news. He’s lying on his bed with his bare feet pointed at me. In most countries this is an insult, but I don’t mind. “Ready for the number, Larry? Thirty-two.”

  He seems obscurely gladdened by this, taking the figure in stride. “That includes everything?” he asks tonelessly. “CAT scans, recovery time, post-op care?”

  “Thirty-two for everything, Larry. And that’s for a team of four surgeons and an anesthesiologist. I was gearing up to convince you to spring for sixty or eighty.”

  “Which I may or may not have done.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “And that’s their asking price,” Larry says. “I bet I can talk them down to twenty-five—”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” I caution him. “Thirty-two’s an unbelievable price, considering it costs eight times that much at home for a cadaver kidney—”

  “I know, it’s excellent—”

  “I can’t believe it!” I crow, finally letting the figure sink in. “Thirty-two! Larry, we’re gonna save your life!”

  “Yes,” he says, thoughtfully picking at a hangnail on his big toe. “It may well be….”

  But not ten seconds elapse before he’s on to a new subject, slowly excavating his Kleenex storage box. “Next order of business, here’s my passport for safekeeping,” he says, withdrawing the small navy blue booklet and handing it over. He starts plucking cards and papers from his wallet, then lays it belly-up so its contents are exposed.

  “Just take the whole wallet, take whatever you need, keep records or not, it doesn’t matter. Reimburse yourself for any hospital payments you’ve paid, buy yourself some good things. I know I’m setting you loose with free money in a city with massage parlors on every corner, but you deserve it, give her a kiss for me.”

  “Larry, I’m happily—”

  “Did I say you weren’t?”

  “But all joking aside, you’re okay with handing over your stuff? Not losing self-respect?”

  “That’s a girlie thing,” Larry says dismissively. “But you’ll need my all-purpose password for my various accounts. Ready? 1909VDB-S.”

  “Wait a minute, I know that code,” I say. “It’s from the first Lincoln-head penny, designed in 1909 by Victor David Brenner—”

  “That’s right, and the S was from the San Francisco mint, the rarest of them all.”

  “So wait,” I say as a vague recollection comes to me. “Did you have a penny collection when you were a kid, too?”

  “Dan, you been undergoing dialysis, too? Your memory’s not so great. We bofe had them,” he says. “I wanted to have one like my big cousin had. You honestly don’t remember?”

  “I remember mine. I never had the 1909 VDB-S, of course. That was the holy grail, but I had a 1943 zinc penny I was pretty proud of—”

  “Who do you think traded it to you?” Larry says. “I only got the new Lincoln memorial in exchange, but I didn’t mind.”

  “Larry, did I…cheat you?” I ask. “A Lincoln memorial in exchange for a ’43 zinc?”

  “In mint condition, but I wanted you to have it,” Larry says.

  Suddenly I have access to a whole chronology of memories about Larry as a kid that I didn’t have until this moment. A sweet little Larry being generous to a fault. A sweet little Larry being a good sport about being taken advantage of. A little-less-sweet Larry never wearing gloves in winter, to toughen himself up. A lot-less-sweet Larry being an ace shot with a peashooter. A tough-talking Larry standing up to bullies. A problem-student Larry bringing cherry bombs to school—and defying his teachers to send him home for it. There may also
have been something about a scuffle with a guidance counselor, but I can’t stand to think of it, because it’s dawning on me that I may have had something to do with this timeline. Could I have contributed, even in a minor way, to his unsweetening?

  And always, Larry loving Girl Scout cookies—which is at least one memory I can do something about, right here and now.

  “Here, want one? I say, holding out a Caramel de Lite. “For courage?”

  “Too sugary,” he says, taking a flaky dry Chinese pastry instead.

  I don’t know what to say, so I get busy with my hospital duties.

  10:14 P.M. I scramble to make calls to Larry’s bankers and lawyers, fax a letter giving his broker the hospital’s routing number.

  10:17 P.M. Get verbal confirmation that thirty-two thousand American dollars are winging their way to China.

  10:21 P.M. At Larry’s request I reach his lawyer at her vacation ranch in Wyoming, ask her to fax Larry’s living will.

  10:22 P.M. Do we know where our donor is? Is he having his final dinner?

  10:23 P.M. We receive a fax with written confirmation that money is in transit. Show this to Cherry.

  10:29 P.M. Larry says, “Why do I feel I’m about to flunk my final pilot’s test?”

  10:31 P.M. Larry says, “I’m not deluding myself about what a long shot this is.”

  10:26 P.M. Do we know where our donor is? Is he is being walked from his final holding cell?

  10:35 P.M. “Everything clicking like clockwork,” Cherry reports. “Organ on its way.”

  “The donor, too, or just the kidney?” I ask.

  Cherry and the Judy look-alike exchange a giggle. “Just the kidney, really,” Cherry says.

  10:37 P.M. KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK. It’s the waifs from candeyblossoms.com. I’m pretty sure I canceled the account, but I guess they’ve found new ways to get around it.

  10:37 P.M. Just as I’m closing my laptop so there’ll be no more interference, I receive another e-mail from the Disapproving Docs, saying that unless I assure them that Cousin Burton’s life is not in danger, they retain the option of reporting us to the FBI.

  10:38 P.M. The computer is successfully shut down.

  10:39 P.M. My cell phone rings. It’s Jeremy with a new bagel he wants me to listen to, but I don’t have time right now and have to cut it short. What’s he doing home on a school day anyway? Is he faking sick again?

  10:40 P.M. A visibly nervous Larry asks Cherry if she can sit on his bed with him.

  “This may come as a shock,” he tells her, “but my self-assurance fails me in certain situations, and this may be one of them.”

  “Yes, of course,” Cherry says, seating herself and taking his hand.

  10:40 P.M. I think about how much gentler “yes, of course” is than the French “mais oui,” which always carries a hint of exasperation in it. I think about how I’ve seen no exasperation among the Chinese these entire two months. I think that twenty-five years ago the Chinese appeared brutal to me, with policemen pulling citizens by their hair, but that this time the Chinese have the face of Cherry, the face of Jade.

  10:41 P.M. I recover a repressed memory that I did in fact take a semester of French in college. Yuh-vonne’s fact file was correct! It was on the pass-fail system, as I recall, and I didn’t exactly distinguish myself….

  10:42 P.M. Still holding Larry’s hand, Cherry takes a phone call and then says, “Sorry to report we need more cash money for antirejection medicine. Ten thousand RMB.”

  “But Larry’s account is maxed out till tomorrow,” I tell her.

  “Must find a way,” she says.

  10:43 P.M. I race out of the hospital with my own MasterCard, which I hope still has enough credit on it to fulfill the hospital’s request. As I’m racing back with a giant wad of cash in my pocket, I glimpse oily roasted peanuts through the window of a nearby market. And I haven’t had a bite to eat since this morning.

  10:48 P.M. Large paper bag of peanuts in tow, I race back into the hospital, just as a dusty ambulance is pulling up the entranceway.

  10:48 P.M. Meet the surgeons coming up the elevator from their basement dorm room. They’re in their early thirties, wearing blue jeans, just waking up from an evening nap in preparation for the midnight surgery. They won’t let me take their picture, and they let me know that Dr. X is meditating before procedure and cannot be disturbed.

  10:49 P.M. I’m greeted by Mary outside our room, waving her hands and cheering, “Yay-yay Larry!”

  10:50 P.M. “I’m a creative type,” Larry is saying to the Judy look-alike, who is swabbing his tummy with alcohol and painting arrows. Or maybe what he’s saying is “I’m afraid of heights.” With all the extra bodies in here, the acoustics aren’t great right now.

  10:51 P.M. While Larry drinks something that will empty his bowels, Cherry walks me down to the cashier on the fifth floor to deposit the latest money into Larry’s account. At this hour the place is even more deserted than usual, but Cherry keeps ringing the bell until the cashier shows up and runs my ten thousand RMB through her handy counterfeit-checking machine. A line more or less forms behind me. Someone tries to cut in front of me, but I block him from doing so. Cashier says something that makes the crowd laugh.

  “What’d she say?” I ask Cherry.

  “She make little joke,” Cherry informs me. Instant Inscrutable. I could live here thirty years and never plumb the depths of that one.

  10:53 P.M. In the elevator going back up, I ask Cherry: “What’d you mean before when you said, ‘Just the kidney, really’?”

  “I mean donor is brain-dead, freshly executed, but still alive on life support. Body with kidney coming in ambulance.”

  I stop eating peanuts mid-munch. “I just saw an ambulance pull in when I went out for money,” I say. “Could that have been him?”

  “Doubtful,” she says thoughtfully. “He come in regional ambulance, probably dusty.”

  “This one was dusty.”

  “Okay, that is him.”

  10:53 P.M. Now we know where our donor is. The dead horse has indeed come to the live horse—but only because the Chinese government has put the dead horse to death.

  10:54 P.M. On way back to Larry’s room, I stop in Abu’s hallway to give everyone the news. As usual, the competition’s deadly quiet, but it stops for the minute it takes them to partake of some of my peanuts, a silent moment we share on Larry’s behalf, no less reverential for being full of munching mouths.

  10:56 P.M. On my return I see that Larry is wearing a black and gold yarmulke.

  “Don’t worry, it’s only a loaner,” he tells me. “I need all the luck I can get.”

  10:56 P.M. Downstairs, the donor’s body is being wheeled through the lobby, elevated to the top floor, where it’s placed in an operating room next to the one where Larry will be.

  “Two rooms side by side,” Cherry informs me amiably. “One to remove, one to receive.”

  10:59 P.M. Larry’s transferred from his bed to the gurney in preparation for the trip to the elevator while Cherry escorts Mary and me as closest kin, sort of, to the tenth-floor “Conversation Room,” where the anesthesiologist produces a form to sign. Cherry reels off the list of possible “sad effects”: heart attack, throat damage, on and on. I sign as Mary rubs her crucifix anxiously.

  “You don’t know what you’re missing,” I tell the anesthesiologist who declines my peanuts.

  11:06 P.M. When I get back to Larry’s room, he’s entertaining the Judy look-alike with a brand-new mini-saga:

  “Does the name Rockefeller mean anything to you? Bunch of robber barons from the 1890s. But Jay Rockefeller is senator from West Virginia, one of the smartest men in Congress. Way back, doing graduate work at Harvard, he ended up renting the downstairs of my Aunt Esther’s house, fairly homey two-family structure on Sacramento Street. One day Jay’s car doesn’t work. Esther calls my futha for help, Sam knows where to get a good used battery, needs five bucks to pay the guy, but Jay has already take
n a cab to go about his day. Sam pays for the battery, installs it, car runs fine, Jay’s ever so grateful. But he’s never around when Sam is. And Sam doesn’t want the five bucks back anyway. For the rest of his life, Sam gets to tell people that a Rockefeller owes him five bucks.”

  “Hey, Larry,” I say, standing in the doorway. “That’s a good memory of your dad!”

  “So it is,” he says, marveling. “How do you like that—better late than never.”

  And with a wink good-bye to the Judy look-alike, he’s wheeled out of our cave.

  11:18 P.M. We’re waiting at the elevator bank, where Larry resumes being negatively vigilant, as though making up for the momentary lapse. “None of which diminishes the fact that I continue to feel I’m going to expire of kiddie failure right on the operating table.”

  “Everything’s A-OK,” I say.

  Larry looks at me with preternatural patience. “No, Dan, nuffing is,” he says, “but that’s A-OK.”

  “C’mon, trouper,” I say. “Can you rally?”

  “I’m a pro, Dan. What am I supposed to do: stop living just because I’m dying?” He picks up his cell phone.

  “Who’re you calling?”

  “My broker, Dan. Buying puts on China Life Insurance. It’s called hedging my bets. (What don’t you get? If I die on the operating table, it doesn’t bode well for the way the Chinese perform kidney transplants in general, and presumably the insurance company that banks on people living a long time will underperform over time. Stock goes down, put goes up, ergo the estate of the deceased makes money. Am I missing something?)”