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“I have to give more blood? I thought the problem was I didn’t have enough?”
The doctor still read my chart. “Yeah, well… it’s that.” He focused on my eyes again. “You don’t have enough blood cells. The counts of white and red and also your platelets were low on the complete blood count.” The doctor’s eyes shifted back and forth between us, and the smile of his friendly greeting flatlined. “Drake, we really need to get a bone marrow biopsy ordered. Like, today.”
My gaze moved immediately to Maeve. The terror on her face was more than what I felt in that moment. I grabbed her arm. “Maeve.”
Her eyes turned from the doctor to mine. I offered my hand, and she took it.
“Babe, I feel fine. It’s probably just procedure. It’s just procedure, right, Doc?” I tried to reassure her.
Maeve didn’t try to pretend the way I did. “I only know one thing that a bone biopsy is used for, Dr. Chidozie, and it’s not iron deficiency.”
“Where Drake’s bloods are at right now, we’re testing for blood diseases and leukemia.”
All the strength left her body Maeve’s hand went limp in mine.
“We’ll get this all done and dusted real soon,” Dr. Chidozie tried to comfort us. “The sooner we get to the bottom of it, the sooner we can treat whatever it is that brought you to us yesterday.”
“You make it sound inevitable,” I said. “Start my treatment? I feel great now. Maybe I just let myself go and get a bit too stressed. I wasn’t eating right…”
I sounded like a person pleading at the gallows. Fuck. I needed to man up. “Look. It’s all good. Let’s just get on with the tests and, I mean, there’s nothing we can do by talking, right? What exactly are you looking for? You know, so I can Google it.”
I tried to make a joke, if only it would lighten Maeve’s heart. This was harder for her than it was for me. I couldn’t believe I was now the third person in the past year to mess her up with worry.
Only the doctor laughed. “Nice you have a sense of humor. A lot has been proven around mindset and healing, Drake. That’ll serve you well.”
He glanced at Maeve again. I bet he didn’t see any humor there, but I hadn’t dared gaze at her face just yet. I knew she’d be in pain. I knew this was the worst possible fucking timing in our lives to introduce a fucking disease.
Dr. Chidozie pulled a chair away from the wall and toward the bed. He sat, finally making me feel like we were equals. “I currently suspect aplastic anemia over leukemia. It’s when your body doesn’t produce blood cells properly. Bone marrow produces blood cells. Reds to carry oxygen, whites to prevent disease. When you don’t produce those cells, your body malfunctions. Can I ask? Have you had any bruising over the past few weeks? Short of breath?”
I nodded.
Maeve grimaced.
Now I regretted not telling her. This was a hell of a place to find out just how shitty I’d been feeling. She hated surprises. This was up there with the absolute worst kind. Surprise! You have a disease.
But it didn’t make sense either. I had to protest. “I really don’t get how that can suddenly happen. I’m gonna be thirty in a minute. Apart from some killer hangovers, I’ve hardly even had a cold in my life. Don’t you think I would have noticed a long time ago if something was wrong? This just came on maybe a couple months ago now.”
Dr. Chidozie had a good bedside manner. He nodded sympathetically, but my intuition told me he just waited for me to finish begging him to change his mind. It was ridiculous that I thought anything I could say would change the science of a total blood count. I wondered if this was what El was like. He probably made his desperate patients feel validated even though they talked shit out of their asses like I did.
Dr. Chidozie answered respectfully to my BS. “The onset of aplastic anemia has so many possible causes. In your case, we may never know. Exposure to toxic chemicals, pesticides, a virus, or it can be down to a completely unidentifiable factor. Let’s wait and see. We’ll do the biopsy today. It’s good timing as often we need to do a transfusion afterward in cases like yours so, we need your consent this morning. Ideally.”
“This is not what I had planned for today.” I shook my head and took the clipboard from his hands.
Today, I was supposed to be planning my engagement in Thailand.
As I signed the consent paperwork, Maeve smoothed her fingers along my arm. “It’s going to be fine, babe. The important thing is that we just find out what it is. Then we can fix it. Right?”
She gazed at the doctor hopefully. Desperately. Tortured by the very hope she clung to. I wished she’d believe me when I said I felt fine now. I did. And maybe that was why my signature came out fluid, perfect, and unbothered on the page handed over to me. Whatever it had been that had been knocking me for six over the past few months was gone. By somebody else’s blood, I’d been cured. I still didn’t really believe that after being a picture of perfect health for so many years that this all wasn’t just a freak moment in time caused by major stress and me not eating right.
When I handed back the paperwork, I promised myself I’d donate blood to someone one day myself. Some stranger had saved me. I intended to do the same.
Five days later, I found out that was the first promise I’d ever break.
