Chapter 44 Forever and Ever
On day one, my throat is thick while trying to consider what I’d be willing to give up. What I’d be comfortable with Issac sacrificing. He texts me to make sure I’m okay, but we don’t talk about us. And that’s good because it feels wonderful to be back in the shop with countless customers returning to tell us our custom products are working for them. And it’s quite nice to hear the compliments on my exhibition dress. They call me a fairy, recite Issac’s lines from the magazine, and say I’m a goddess. Lex jokes I’ll have to wear the dress to the shop this week and grant them three wishes. Then he says someone will surely ask for a man just like Issac. I don’t know if there’s anyone in the world quite like him, but I’ll wish they find someone that is perfect for them. At the end of the day, I conclude that maybe sacrifices aren’t necessary. Issac and I can live in a fairy-tale-like bubble where distance, our careers, and my privacy don’t matter. We’ll hop on flights to see each other, maybe settle down and buy homes on both sides of the country, we’ll spend our days smiling and laughing and having incredible sex.
I don’t text him this though, because he’d tell me to keep thinking.
On days two and three, I miss him something awful and try to recall his scent from memory, but it does nothing to stop the ache in my chest. I should’ve brought home one of his unwashed T-shirts. I wonder if he’s sitting somewhere missing me too. I almost send him the lyrics of “Lover” so he can remember what it felt like during the car ride right before we confessed our love to each other, but he’d say I’m breaking the rules.
Day four comes and I wake with pulsing flank pain. My new doctor’s visit isn’t for two months, but this nagging feeling in my body is hard to ignore. On break in the back room at the shop, I examine my medical file, reading instances where my doctor made special notes about my anxiety, my weight, blood pressure readings with mentions of my family history of heart failure. It’s all things I figured I’d find until I get to the printouts of bloodwork. My stomach clenches as I wade through tests, watching various labs increase and decrease throughout the years. Some have been flagged over and over again, and I wonder if it’s a mistake. How many people have looked at my labs throughout the years? Would the nurses have caught something my doctor might not have?
Between customers, I spend the day on Dr. Google but it’s a scary place with scary answers. I look up the flagged acronyms and abbreviations, read about creatinine clearance and GFR and feel sick over what I find. Mom doesn’t want to hear any of my worry and insists I call my former doctor for an explanation before panicking.
“There’s no way something is wrong and he never told you,” she says.
Lex makes me promise to stay off the internet, then says he’s going to ask for Shane’s medical opinion. Thinking of speaking to my old doctor again is what fills me with panic, and I hate to bother Shane, but there’s no way I won’t break my Google promise, which will mean drowning in worry about things without context for eight whole weeks, so I let Lex take my lab work off the counter before he leaves the shop.
And I sleep a little easier when he doesn’t call me with bad news.
On the morning of the fifth day, I lie in bed and trace my fingers over my lips, close my eyes at the ache of wanting to kiss Issac again. He texts me as soon as I open them.
He must hear my heart from miles away.
Day five, and I’m still in love with you. Just like I’ve always been. I’ll understand if you have doubts about your own feelings, but I know how your mind runs you ragged sometimes, and I don’t want you to have any doubts about mine. I love you. I want to be with you. In a real relationship. I’ll give whatever I can to make it work. Have a good day. PS: Don’t respond to this. You have 48 more hours.
I smile at his reminder because he’s so annoying and I absolutely love him that way. And he doesn’t have any doubts. He still wants to be with me. The feeling in my body is too big to contain, I roll over, scream happy things into my pillow. Will two days feel like twenty?
At work, I reread the message every chance I get to feel the high again, then decide that day seven is taking too long to get here. I want to tell Issac how right it felt to touch him and hold him and think of him as mine. I’m his. It doesn’t matter if he’s there, and I’m here, he’ll always have a piece of my heart with him. There’s nothing we could discuss that’ll keep me from wanting to try.
When the shop closes for the day, I’m smiling as I pore over paperwork in the back room, deciding that I might just call him as soon as I get home. Tell him it’s my turn to break the rules. But I hear the shop bell go off and inwardly curse. Mom’s going to be annoyed that, in my distracted state, I forgot to flip the open sign to closed.
Minutes go by and I hear low voices, and then…then I think I hear her cry out. I push away from the table, and hurry to the door just to come face-to-face with Lex. He called out sick this morning, so I’m surprised to see him, but before I can ask him what’s wrong with my mom, he shifts to the side, giving me a clear view of who she’s talking to. Shane, a tall, fair-skinned man with huge hands gives me a small wave, though he’s not smiling like he usually is when I see him.
Lex clears his throat, and my eyes flick to his face. His are red rimmed, his cheeks are drawn. Why is he here if he’s sick? Has he been crying? “We should talk. All of us,” he says.
I follow him to the front, the whole time a warning wrings my stomach, my heart races. Mom can’t even look at me. She shakes her head, tells Shane that this is all wrong, and I look at the three of them, demanding answers with my eyes, before, “What is it?”
Lex is the first one to speak, but he’s rambling on about the debate he had with Shane over whether they should tell me because Shane isn’t my doctor and he’s a cardiologist, but he did make sure to check in with a specialist at his hospital and…
“Just tell me,” I whisper.
Shane steps in front of Lex, pulls a stool for me to sit, uses a soothing tone to say, “I’ve checked your lab work with a nephrologist friend named Dr. Baldwin at my hospital and the GRF test you were worried about…That test does show how well the kidneys are functioning and your results are consistent with a chronic kidney disease diagnosis.”
I take a startled breath. Last night, I fought the urge to self-diagnose with a Google search, praying all the articles on the internet were wrong. Praying I was just looking for something that wasn’t there. That couldn’t be there because…“My doctor—”
“Deserves a malpractice suit,” Lex injects, anger flashing on his face.
I look at my mother again, hoping she’ll shake me awake like she did when I was a child struggling through a bad dream, but she looks like she needs someone to say this isn’t real herself. When Lex reaches to hold my shaky hand, I ask Shane if there’s more he can tell me, and he hesitates while searching my eyes.
“Please,” I beg, desperate to know what this all means for me.
“Alright,” he says. “Well, Dr. Baldwin, the kidney specialist, said the numbers are consistent with stage three kidney disease, which means it’s advanced enough to begin addressing now in the hopes of helping it from progressing to the stages with more serious complications.”
I let go of Lex and hug myself, remembering what I’d read about the five stages yesterday. How three is between a healthy organ and complete kidney failure. Advancing to stage four might mean anemia and heart disease. I didn’t allow myself to read any more because my father was diagnosed with heart failure at forty-three. I’m only twenty-five. There’s no way something that’s supposed to be keeping me alive is failing. But Shane’s telling me that it is.
“The way you live your life should change, Laniah, but Dr. Baldwin can explain it better than me. She offered to squeeze you in for an office visit soon, so that you don’t have to wait months to meet your new primary care doctor, who will probably refer you to see a kidney specialist like her anyway.”
He lets out a small sigh, and I find myself wondering how many times he’s had to deliver bad news like this.
“Okay,” I say, and they all stare, expecting something else. How can I explain to them that it feels like oxygen is being stripped from the room?
Shane clears his throat. “I’m sorry this is happening to you. I wasn’t sure whether it was wise to tell you this way, but Lex thought it might be better for you to be surrounded by people who love you and…”
Whatever else he says falls to the background when Issac’s face materializes in my mind. He loves me and he’s not here and…didn’t I already know there was something wrong deep down? Didn’t I warn myself?
I try to swallow, but air isn’t making it to my lungs and the earth is spinning and I get off the stool because if I can just make it outside, where there’s sunlight, then maybe…maybe…But suddenly my mom is right there, steadying me by the door with her strong arms and whatever was holding me together cracks as soon as she hugs me. “Momma,” I cry, and she brushes the hair from my face, says, “I’ll give you both of my kidneys if I have to.”