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I wrote a letter to Briana Ortiz.

Chapter 7

Briana

You move in with me or I call in Mom.”

It was seven p.m. and I was driving a discharged Benny home from the hospital after my shift.

He looked at me, horrified, from the passenger seat. “Why are you punishing me? Isn’t my life shitty enough?”

“I’m not doing this to punish you,” I said. “You need help right now, and I can’t be over at your place cleaning for you and making sure you’re taking your medications. You’re not paying your rent and you just put yourself in the hospital. You’re skipping dialysis. You’re not even showering.”

He leaned his forehead on the car window. He looked so frail and exhausted. So different from the healthy, fit, virile man he was just eighteen months ago, before this nightmare started for both of us.

You know what? Maybe Mom did need to tap in. I didn’t know if I had the mental and emotional fortitude to take care of him and me. But then I wasn’t sure I had the mental and emotional fortitude to deal with her either. Calling her was definitely the nuclear option, and I did not take it lightly.

When the lid blew off the Nick thing last year, Mom had flown in from Arizona, where she’d retired with her husband, Gil, and mothered me to within an inch of my life. I’d had to call Gil to physically retrieve her when she wasn’t showing any signs of leaving when the one-month mark hit. She never stopped cooking. Not for a second. She filled my entire freezer, then bought a deep freezer for the garage and filled that too. The day she left, she cooked hot dogs, put them in buns, and wrapped them in foil in the fridge like I couldn’t figure out how to assemble them once she was gone. I was still eating the leftovers a year later. It would be full-chaotic Mom energy if I summoned her home.

I turned onto the freeway. “It’s Mom or my place,” I said.

“I don’t want to give up my apartment,” Benny said tiredly.

“I know,” I said, merging into the left lane. “But your apartment looks like shit. You’re barely taking care of the cat. Just move in with me. It’s only for a little while. You can have your old room. You can have my old room, it’s bigger,” I said, trying to sell it.

He paused before replying like it was wearing him out just to conjure sentences. “I don’t want to mess up your dating thing,” he mumbled.

“There’s nothing to mess up. I’m like the most single person you’ve ever met. You seriously wouldn’t be cramping any of my style moving in. I have nothing going on right now.”

He didn’t reply and I glanced at him. “This is only temporary, Benny. You’ll get a transplant and you’ll get your life back.”

He stayed silent for a long moment. “I’m going to be dealing with this for the rest of my life,” he said quietly.

“It won’t always be this bad. Once you get a kidney—”

“I won’t. You know I won’t. You just don’t want to admit it.”

Now I went quiet. I didn’t know what was better. Trying to keep his hopes up or managing his expectations.

“Okay,” I said. “So let’s say you don’t get one and this is just your life now—it can still be a good life. It can be a great life. Why don’t we get you a home dialysis machine? You can do it at night while you watch TV. You only need to do it for two hours if you do it every day.”

There was no reply again, so I had to look over at him.

“I can do it from home?” he asked tentatively.

“Yeah, totally. You have a doctor for a sister. You can’t do it when you’re living alone, but if you move in with me, I’ll be there to sterilize the equipment, monitor your vitals.”

He looked slightly if not hesitantly optimistic.

“And if you do daily dialysis instead of three times a week, you can have restricted foods since the fluid won’t build up.”

He sat up. “I can have ice cream?”

I nodded. “Yup. We might even be able to get you off some of the meds with the more frequent dialysis. You’ll feel better, you’ll have more energy…”

I think this was the first time I saw him smile in months. Well, he sort of smiled. It was more of a neutral frown on the cusp of a smile—but still, it was progress.

“Benny, you can do this. You just need to get adjusted. I can help you.”