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“Willa, I have some bad news.” My heart stopped. “Your kidneys have failed. Based on your numbers, you have chronic end-stage kidney disease. We will have to get you started on dialysis immediately.” My eyes widened in fear. “Don’t worry, dialysis isn’t scary. You’re going to be fine. This isn’t a death sentence.”
I stopped.
Everything stopped.
Not a death sentence?
I hadn’t even considered the fact I could be dying—that this could kill me.
He was right, of course, it wasn’t a death sentence, not since it was caught in time. Dialysis also wasn’t scary, but that didn’t mean it was easy. It sucked. It was exhausting, and most days all I wanted to
do was sleep. It made going to school impossible. I was home schooled after that. If it wasn’t for my best friend Meredith, I would’ve completely fallen out of touch with the “real” world. It was easy to shut myself away, but she forced me to get out. Sometimes, for a little while, I could pretend I wasn’t sick.
That was another thing. I didn’t look sick, not at all, but I was.
The dark shadows beneath my eyes from restless sleep were the only way to tell that something was going on with me.
Other than that, I looked like any other spritely seventeen-year-old now.
I felt more like I was seventy, though. Going through this had aged me—I understood more than most kids my age, and I’d come to terms with my mortality.
Everybody dies, you might as well live while you can.
I’d noticed a lot of people “died” before they actually died. They went through the motions, unhappy, and that wasn’t what I’d call living at all.
You could live without being alive, and that was one of the saddest truths I’d learned.
I spread my arms wide, like I’m making snow angels, but it’s sand instead.
It’s always sand in sunny Santa Monica, California. I love it, though, the warmth, the ocean, the pier. It’s magic, and no one can convince me otherwise.
The telltale grinding of the sliding glass door on our deck puts me on alert. But I don’t move.
I close my eyes and pretend to be invisible.
“What are you doing out here? You’re turning red.” There’s a shift in the sand beside me as my fifteen-year-old sister, Harlow, drops down next to me.
I crack an eye open and twist my head to face her. I sigh, envious of how effortlessly beautiful she looks. Her blonde hair hangs halfway down her back, way longer than mine, and is stick straight opposed to my slightly wavy hair that doesn’t want to be straight but doesn’t want to be curly either. She wears a pair of shorts and a loose gray sweater with sneakers. It’s a simple outfit but somehow, she makes it work. It looks effortless next to my ripped jeans and baggy as hell T-shirt to hide the tube in my stomach. However, I must admit the belt I wear to hold the catheter does a good job of concealing it as well as securing it. It’s not like you want something dangling out of your body to get tugged on something. I practically shudder at the thought.
“Hiding,” I answer her.
She glances down at me, stifling a laugh. “From who? Mom? What’s she doing? Trying to get you to take those weird vitamins some shaman gave her?”
I snort. “She knows I can’t have any of her weird health stuff. And I’m not hiding from anyone.”
“Then what?” She blinks against the sun.
I sit up and dust the sand off my back. “Life, I guess. It’s hard sometimes. Overwhelming.”
She frowns. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I force a smile, but it doesn’t take away the pain in her eyes.
As hard as my diagnosis is on me, I know it’s hard on my family too. No one in my family was a match, not my mom or dad, not my extended family, and my sister is too young to donate. Instead, the last few years I’ve been waiting for a donor. A deceased donor. I’m literally sitting around waiting for someone to die, and there’s something morbid about that. As much as I want and need a kidney, I hate the fact somebody has to die for me to get it.
It’s been three years since my diagnosis, and most days I’m happy. In fact, a lot of the time I feel relatively normal. But some days it catches up to me, the reality of it all, and I can’t help but go to a dark place in my head. Today, unfortunately, is one of those days. I don’t like having these days, but I know it’s not healthy to not have them, either. But most of the time, I’m able to choose being happy because while my disease has taken a lot from me, I refuse to let it take my happiness too. It won’t beat me. I’m stronger than that.
Harlow reaches for my hand. “I low you.” She gives it a squeeze. My hand is pale underneath hers. She spends way more time on the beach than I do, and her skin is tanned to a bronze color.
