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I draw my knees up to my chest and hold on tightly to the phone, dread icing over my insides. “Yeah, I know.”
My father’s been battling lupus for decades. His body has been at war with itself for too many years. At a certain point, it’s too much. I burst into tears. He’s done every treatment imaginable, from antimalarial drugs, to cortisone, to drugs that suppress his immune system. He was likely infertile from one of the experimental treatments he had. He’s fought this for so long. It’s flared up and then receded, but good God, I don’t want this to be the end. It can’t be the end. I can’t live without him. I refuse to.
Through blurry vision, I promise, “I’ll be there soon, Mama.”
Hanging up, I turn and bury my face in Marku’s chest. He embraces me, keeping me steady as he drops kisses on my head and face.
“How much longer?” he asks Soren.
“No more than ten minutes.”
My mind races through every possible scenario. It might be a lupus flare-up or it might be something else entirely. In an effort to protect me, my father doesn’t tell me every detail of his health. It’s complicated, that much I know. He’s off one drug, then on another. I can tell when he’s having a couple of bad days or weeks. There’ve been more and more of those lately. More bad than good. After all, this dramatic decline in his health was his main motivation for agreeing with my mother to force me to marry Marku.
At the hospital, I jump out of the car and fly up the steps to the main entrance. Marku is hot on my heels. We take twists and turns through the hospital and then up an elevator. When we get off on the right floor, I see my mother and Natalia huddled near a closed door. I rush up to her and hug her. She hugs me back tightly, sniffling into the crook of my neck.
“Have you heard anything?”
She nods, her trembling lips pinched together to stop herself from sobbing.
“What is it?”
She shakes her head, unable to speak.
Natalia wraps her arm around my mother and answers, “He’s had what they’re calling a rupture. It’s bleeding inside his brain. It seems he has ITP. I don’t know what it stands for exactly—”
A doctor that I hadn’t noticed steps forward and says, “Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura. Your father is a sick man and, as is common with lupus, has a variety of issues. ITP is a platelet disorder. That means that his body is attacking and destroying the platelets in his blood. One of the more dangerous potential effects of ITP is that his body can’t make enough platelets to close up a wound.”
“What are platelets again?”
“Platelets are tiny blood cells. When you get injured, they bind together to form a seal that plugs up your wound. When you have a low platelet count, you can’t stop bleeding. Your father has a wound inside his brain that won’t stop bleeding on its own. We’ve given him a transfusion of platelets, which should staunch the bleeding for now.
“He was taking various medications but had to get off them because they compromised his health in other ways. We’ve discussed removing his spleen, but with the issues in his liver and kidneys, that will leave him vulnerable to infection.”
My mind races to keep up.Spleen? Liver? Kidneys?
My mother says plainly, “He’s going to die. If he hurts his head, there aren’t enough platelets to stop the bleeding and it will kill him. If that doesn’t do it, then his kidneys and liver will fail because of the lupus.”
I turn toward the doctor. “How much time does he have?”
The doctor pulls his tie, tugs his collar, and I know, I just know it’s bad. “How long?” I repeat in a no-nonsense tone.
“It’s hard to say, but not long. If he doesn’t bleed out because of an injury or wound that can’t get treated in time, his internal organs will eventually fail. Transplants are a possibility, but they’re difficult to get. And more than one transplant is an even more distant possibility.”
I pull back in shock, my eyes flicking over to my mother who looks on stoically.Oh, so she knows.I turn back to the doctor. “You’ve spoken to him about a transplant.”
“Yes, and he’s aware that he is not an ideal candidate. It’s not certain that he’d survive the operation with the combined complications from both lupus and ITP. And then there’s the fact that he’s not sure he wants to get a transplant.”
My gaze darts to my mother. Her eyes spill over with tears and she turns away from me. “He’s not certain? What does that even mean?”
“It means that when someone like your father has been fighting for so long, they sometimes get tired. They want to rest. They want to enjoy the rest of their life for as long as they can. It’s a question of quality over quantity.”
“Quality?” I repeat in a monotone. “But he won’t be here,” I whisper. “Why wouldn’t he want to be here with me?”
Natalia rushes up to me, hugging me tightly. “Dear child, of course he wants to be here. He wants to be with you and your mother more than anything in the world, but sometimes, people no longer have the strength to fight against a tidal wave. They want peace.” She lifts my chin. “Don’t you want him to be at peace?”
“Of course,” I mutter, my brain stunned from the onslaught of information. It’s too much to process. I knew my dad was sick, but I pushed the truth away for as long as I could. My lips tremble. I don’t want him to die. I love him more than anything. He’s always been my champion, and even when he pushed for the marriage, I can now see that he only did it to protect me. Finally, I see his reasoning more clearly. He didn’t want me to be alone with my mother, without him. And he wanted me to have someone—a man who loves me, who understands me, who will support me and protect me like he has. But the idea of losing him is too much. It’s staggering in its magnitude.
“We have to support him, no matter what he wants,” Natalia continues, glancing over at my mother as if she’s repeated those exact words to her. “The most important thing is to put aside our emotions for the time being and be present for him. We don’t know how much time he has. You don’t want to regret anything.”
