Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)(11)

These friends were easy. Not all of them were.

Different people had different energy demands. Some people took more from me than others. Dad, for example, was low energy. I could spend days with him in his workshop and never feel like I needed a break. Jill and Jane were easy too. But Mom and Jeremiah and Jewel? They were high-energy people who could drain me in a matter of minutes. There was only so much of them I could handle.

Amy was the highest-energy of all. There was never silence. She had to fill every moment.

In the beginning, I liked it. I didn’t have to be charming or force conversation. She’d do it all, and I’d get to sit and listen and laugh at her stories, and she never needed me to contribute. Listening was my contribution. When we went to parties, she handled all the small talk with everyone and I got to just be there. It took pressure off me. My family loved her. It was easy. I think my reserved personality made her feel listened to and the center of attention, the way she liked. And it made me the opposite. She made me invisible, the way I liked.

But then one day I realized I knew everything about her and she knew nothing about me. Nothing. And I was lonely, even though I was with someone. So I finally brought it up to her and…well. Here we were.

Gibson nodded to Zander. “Did I see Benny come through today?”

“Yeah. Infected catheter.”

I sat up. “Briana told me about him,” I said, suddenly interested in participating in the conversation. “Autoimmune disease.”

“Man, shit luck for that kid. Zero to kidney failure in eighteen months.”

“Is his sister donating a kidney?” I asked.

Zander took a swallow of his bourbon. “Not a match. So far nobody is.”

Gibson shook his head. “Poor kid. Lost his job, girlfriend broke up with him.”

“That pissed me off,” Zander said, tipping his glass at Gibson.

“Why’d she break up with him?” I asked.

“Couldn’t handle it,” Gibson said. “No end in sight, didn’t want to wait it out.”

I shook my head. “How long does someone like that wait on the transplant list? It can’t be that long.”

Zander bobbed his head. “Depends. Can be anywhere from three to seven years. But he’s got a rare blood type—the rarest blood type, actually. Might be longer for him.”

I sat back in my seat. “Longer than seven years,” I breathed. “God, I can’t imagine.” No wonder his sister was so upset.

I hadn’t meant to be insensitive with my comment about dialysis. I’d meant it to be reassuring—because it was true. Dialysis would keep him alive. But the quality of his life would suffer in the meantime. Today had been a prime example of it.

Besides the health roller coaster, he’d be strapped to a dialysis machine for four hours a day every other day. He couldn’t have too much liquid, since his body couldn’t get rid of it. No soup or ice cream or watermelon. No drinks with friends. Not even a Coke. Nothing salty because he wouldn’t be able to handle the sodium, nothing fried. He couldn’t do the thing I was doing right now, eating random appetizers and thinking nothing of it.

“Will his autoimmune disease damage his new kidney when he gets one?” I asked.

Zander shrugged. “We got it under control. Only about a ten percent chance of recurrence. He’ll have a normal life if he gets a donor. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

I went quiet for a long moment.

I thought about what Briana said, how her brother just wanted to be normal. I knew what it was like to have your life controlled by an outside factor. My anxiety was limiting too. But this? It had to be hard. Especially for such a young man.

What had I been doing at twenty-seven? I took that backpacking trip to Machu Picchu with Zander, went camping a lot. Things I took for granted. Things that wouldn’t be possible on dialysis, that’s for sure.

“He’s got a better chance of getting a deceased donor,” Zander continued. “But the organ won’t last as long, and they don’t take as well either. Higher chance of rejection. Ideally he’d get a living donor, but none of the family’s a match, and with his blood type…”

“What’s the recovery like for a living donor?” I asked.

“Not too bad. Couple of weeks. Why? You thinking about it?”

“I’ve always considered it after Mom.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot about that,” Zander said. “That was—what? Twenty years ago now?”

I nodded. “Just about.”

Mom had lupus. She’d gone into kidney failure when I was in high school. Never got to the transplant list, though, because her best friend, Dorothy, stepped in and gave her one of hers. Mom was lucky. She never even had to do dialysis.

We were all kids at the time, so none of us could help, and Dad wasn’t a good candidate because of his high blood pressure.

I’d been deeply moved by the gesture.

“I always promised myself when I was old enough, I’d pay it forward,” I said.

“What’s your blood type?” Zander asked.

“O.”

He sat up a little straighter. “Universal donor.” He seemed to study me now. “Any health issues?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Want me to set up the labs? Just to see? No commitment. The family won’t know.”