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“Great. I’m the pediatric surgeon, and I’ll be assisting in the surgery today. Before we go any further, I’m going to need help from my handy assistant…” I only notice now that he has a hand behind his back, and when he pulls it forward, I can see that he’s holding a plush teddy bear with a bandage over its head. “This is Rex, our recovery bear. If you’d like, you can hold him while I go over the procedure with the adults.”
“I’m twelve,” Otto says, deadpan and unimpressed. “Not a baby.”
“Alrighty!” Dr. Caulder pulls up a chair in front of me and Pearl, the bear sitting in his lap. “Let’s talk.”
“How’s Donovan?” I ask.
“As far as I’ve been told, the surgery is going smoothly. They’re about halfway through, which is when we want to get started prepping Otto. That way, the kidney has less time floating around before it’s transplanted. Now, a couple things you should know—”
He walks us through it. Complications that can arise during the surgery. Complications that can arise after the surgery. And then, once he’s prepped us on everything from kidney rejection to shark attack, he clasps his hands together and says, “I’m going to give the three of you a couple minutes, and then we’ll come in and start prepping Superman here.”
He gives Otto a fist bump on his way out, which Otto half-heartedly returns.
Pearl hugs Otto tightly and tells him how brave he is.
It’s strange. I spent so much time wanting this moment, waiting for this moment. But now that it’s here…the thought of putting my son’s life in the hands of a surgeon is terrifying. Even if that surgeon is Jason King.
I pet Otto’s long hair back from his forehead. “I really should’ve trimmed this.”
He blows at his bangs. “I like it.”
I press my lips together. “How are you feeling?”
He shrugs. Then he admits, “A little scared.”
“I know.” I hold him. I don’t want to let him go. “I love you, little man.”
“You’re my bacon, Mum,” he says, and I don’t even want those words to leave my ears.
The surgery takes over ten hours.
Jason opens Donovan, removes the kidney, and then carts the organ over to Otto’s room, where he stitches it inside my baby.
I only know this because doctors come by periodically to keep me in the loop with small, hopeful updates.
As the clock ticks on, I start to feel like my soul has completely left my body. The only thing keeping me grounded is Pearl, who slips her hand in mine and holds it.
We sit in a private waiting room and watch the minute hand click on the clock on the wall.
I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I take Jason’s advice and replay a recording I made in voice notes over and over again. It’s a simple sound, just my own voice telling me, “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
It’s two in the morning, and just when I think I’m going to completely lose it, a familiar face rounds the corner.
Jason is sweat-soaked and pale, and for a second, my heart lurches in my chest and nearly climbs out my mouth.
But then he smiles, that crooked, boyish grin of his. “Surgery was a success,” he says. “Otto is coming out of sedation now. He’ll be out in a few minutes—”
I don’t let him finish what he’s saying. I launch myself at Jason and wrap my arms around him. I hold him as tightly as I can, curling up into him, and he hugs me back, holding me.
“Thank you,” I whisper, and my voice comes out as a sob. “Thank you, thank you…”
Otto is drowsy. Otto complains that he can taste the saline. But Otto is alive. My boy is alive, and his body is no longer poisoning him from the inside out, and everything is going to be okay.
I can’t stop looking at him. I can’t get close enough to him. I can’t stop touching his hair, to the point where he swats my hand away with a whined “Mum.”
For him, he just woke up from a long nap, and now he’s got a strange scar up his abdomen. For me, I feel like I’ve been stuck in the foxhole in the middle of a war zone for the past ten hours.
Eventually, Otto and I fall asleep curled up in his hospital bed.
