36. Indy
THIRTY-SIX
INDY
For the next few weeks, all of our lives are consumed by the transplant. I’ve never actually thought about what the process of a stem cell transplant entails. I’ve never had to.
There are blood tests. Physical exams. Consent paperwork. Daily injections. Dia starts chemotherapy to destroy the faulty bone marrow.
She stays in the hospital, and we all take turns sitting with her every day during the visiting hours.
Nick signs forms, gets poked with needles, and comes back home, where he tries to hide the side effects from me. His bones ache, he’s tired, and there’s a persistent headache he can’t seem to shake.
I feel sick to my stomach every hour of every day.
It’s like a living nightmare. I can’t look at my parents. I can’t face what I now know. I can’t sleep. I only think in worst-case scenarios.
I keep my mouth shut.
It’s not a choice. Not exactly. I’m standing at a crossroads, filled with terror, knowing I have to move.
But I can’t.
And I keep my mouth shut.
Looking back… how far was I from breaking?
I’m not sure.
With hindsight, you should be able to look back and see the warning signs.
The red flags.
The small moments that should’ve made you look up and go… Wait a minute.
You should have known something was wrong.
You should have felt it.
But no matter how many times I replay the past, no matter how much I look back on my life… I can’t find anything.
There’s nothing.
And then…
Kaboom.
It’s Dad who breaks.
It should’ve been me, but I’m still frozen at my crossroads.
It’s the morning of the transplant.
I’m waiting with Nick.
Pleading with myself to just open my fucking mouth.
“Nick…” I’ve said it about a dozen times so far. And then he squeezes my hand and tells me it’s all going to be okay.
Dad walks in. He glances at me.
Shakes his head.
“This has gone too far already. It’s not right like this,” he says.
He hands Nick a folder. The same one I saw on my mother’s desk that night.
Nick gives him a startled look.
“I’m sorry,” Dad says. “I truly am. It was never supposed to come to this.”
I watch as if in slow motion as Nick opens the folder. The article I squeezed into a fist the other night is on top. There’s something cruelly poetic about the fact that he gets to learn the truth the same way I did.
The words are burned into my brain.
The title in all caps.
TWO TODDLERS SWAPPED AT BIRTH
Then the rest of the article. Really only three paragraphs altogether. Concise and to the point.
Two toddlers accidentally swapped at birth should stay with the families who raised them and not be returned to their biological parents, a court-appointed expert said on Wednesday.
The mistake came to light when one of the couples split and the father demanded a DNA test to challenge the mother’s demand for child support payments, which revealed that neither was the boy’s biological parent.
The court-appointed child welfare expert’s recommendation was not to break the strong family bonds both boys had already formed with the parents who raised them.
I watch him put the pieces together. I watch the shock and the devastation and the hundred other emotions on his face.
I watch him watch me.
I watch his shields go up with three words.
“Did you know?”
And then I watch his trust shatter when I give a single nod.
I’m not sure what hurt the most.
The way I saw him break in front of me from the truth and somehow still holding himself together because he felt he had no other choice. The way I watched him build up every wall around his heart right in front of me. The way there was nothing but ice in his voice when he told me to get out.
In life there are always what-ifs. The alternative scenarios that linger in your mind. The different reality you construct in your head when the present starts to suffocate you.
Paths not taken.
Words left unsaid.
Moments when a single choice might have turned your life in a different direction. What-ifs that are built from missed chances and near misses. Occasional lucky breaks. It’s the voice in your head that says somewhere, in another universe, things turned out differently for you.
It’s an alternate reality where somebody said yes instead of no. Left five minutes earlier. Turned right instead of left. Walked instead of taking the bus. Spoke up instead of clamping their mouth shut. A multiverse of choices that all lead to different outcomes.
In the end, you’ll never know. You don’t get to travel the path not taken. You don’t get the chance to voice those unsaid words ever again.
You just get to watch from the sidelines as your life implodes.
No second chance.
No mercy.
Kaboom.