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“Yes. But I’ve been dying before. I wanted to know if any of my ‘spare parts’, as you describe them, would be useful to anyone. Obviously, cancer ruled that out completely.” He paused and looked down. “And you know it was discussed when Emma…”
That conversation had been a difficult one. Neil had been adamant that at least some part of Emma continue on—Michael’s family had donated his eyes and some tissue for that very reason—but Valerie had been too distraught to even contemplate the same. And Emma’s organs had been too damaged by the accident and surgery.
“Yeah. And I know it bothered you.” I reached over and squeezed his hand. “Because you’re a good guy.”
“But I don’t want you to feel like a bad guy if you can’t donate your kidney for some reason,” he said firmly. “The fact that you’ve even come all this way and done all these tests… I can’t say that I would have done the same. Considering what Sasha told you.”
Neil had taken the revelations about my father’s reasons for abandoning me almost as hard as I had, but he’d gotten furiously angry about it. It was only by reminding him that this was about me, not him, that I managed to prevent him storming over to their suite and giving Sasha a piece of his very agitated mind.
“Be nice when you see her today,” I pleaded. “Especially if this doesn’t go well.”
Before I could get his promise—not that I really needed it—the office door opened, and a nurse stepped out. “Sophie?”
I stood and smoothed the hem of my striped scoop-neck tee over the top of my mint-green slacks. “Yeah, that’s me.”
I gave Neil a panicked glance, and he took my hand in his to walk back with me.
They didn’t weigh me or ask the first day of my last period or anything routine like that. I’d already had an exam in New York, and my doctor had faxed over all the records and test results. Instead, the nurse led us straight to Dr. Robinson’s office.
Dr. Robinson was a tall, dark-skinned black man in his late forties, with a bald head and a boyish face. He was one of the top transplant surgeons in the United States, and lucky for my sister, he was as local as transplant surgeons tended to get in Michigan. He stood when we entered and leaned across his desk to shake our hands.
“I apologize for keeping you waiting,” he said, gesturing to the chairs in front of his desk. “It’s been a busy day around here.”
“Well, this should be fast,” I said, with painfully forced cheerfulness. “You can give me a yes or a no and boot us right out.”
He smiled uncomfortably, tapping a few keys on the laptop beside him. “It’s actually not that simple.”
A sense of the world shrinking made me shrink, too. Everything closed in on me, from the walls and the ceiling to my own bones, my own spirit. The universe drew up to a pinpoint of realization: I wasn’t a match.
I looked slowly to Neil. He knew it, too.
“Blood type, crossmatch, tissue type, those tests came back exactly the way we’d want them to look,” he said, turning the laptop to show me the screen, as though I’d understand the same charts he was looking at. “So, you are a match.”
I breathed an audible sound of relief, and the doctor’s face fell.
“But you have other factors that preclude you from donating.”
I couldn’t give Molly my kidney. I’d failed her.
No. I was going to fix it. “Okay, what about those donation chains. I donate my kidney to someone else, their loved one donates to another person, their loved one donates to us,” I rambled desperately.
Dr. Robinson shook his head. “No. You can’t donate anything to anyone.”
From the corner of my eye, I noticed Neil’s chest rising and falling in short, rapid breaths. He squeezed my hand so tight it almost hurt. “Why not? What are these other factors?”
I’d been so concerned with Molly and how to help her that I’d glossed frantically past those “other factors”.
Oh, no. I’ve had so much unprotected sex with El-Mudad. What’s the failure rate on those stupid IUD things?
The doctor turned the computer back so he could read. “It looks like your first glucose test was a little high.”
“Right, so they did that second one,” I said, chewing my index fingernail.
“And that one also came back high.” He folded his hands on the desk in front of him. “Your glucose tolerance test had you at a blood sugar of one-forty. Your A1C was six-point-eight percent. You’re diabetic.”
I pressed my fingertips to my temples. “Oh, thank god.”
“Sophie!” Neil barked in surprise.
I held out my hands desperately. “What? I thought he was going to say I was pregnant. I get to be relieved!”
“Not about having diabetes!” he snapped.
