Shifting Gears: The Complete Series (Sports Bad Boy Romance) (44 page)

I thought about what Tammy had said, but
then I quickly shook it off. I told myself that I was too smart to let that
nonsense Tammy was spewing to get to me.

“Aw,” I said. “How sweet.”

“What are you doing for dinner?” he asked
me.

“Well, I don’t know,” I told him. “I can’t
eat in the cafeteria because of my special diet. I haven’t talked to Megan yet,
but I’m sure her and Jake have plans…I’ll probably just grab a yogurt and eat
it alone…with some water…and maybe an old movie.”

He laughed, “Well I was going to go out,
and have dinner with a lot of people, but that sounds pitiful. I tell you what,
to keep you from being alone I’d be willing to stay in and cook.”

“You would turn down “a lot of people” for
me?” I said.

He turned serious as he said, “I’d turn
down all of the people for you.” I believed him.

I told him I would walk over, it was a
beautiful afternoon, albeit just a little cold. I went to my dorm first to
shower off quickly and change. I wanted to shave my legs…just in case. As the
shower warmed up, I sat down to go pee and the roof fell in.

It was hard, first of all. I felt like I
had to go, but it seemed like nothing would come out. I had already drunk five
bottles of water since waking up at Brock’s this morning, but I had been so
preoccupied I didn’t realize I hadn’t peed one time. I made a mental note to
pay more attention. Dr. Harris would be so disappointed. I sat there for a
while, finally giving up on it. When I stood up and looked down, what I saw in
the little hat wasn’t yellow. It was bright red.

“Shit!”

I have to admit, I considered just going
to Brock’s and not thinking about it until later. I may have too, but the left
side of my lower back started twisting into a spasm at that time, like it was
egging me on.

“Bastard kidney!” I said out loud.
 

I went out to where I had laid my phone
and I called Dr. Harris. He, of course, didn’t answer the phone, his nurse did.
I began the first of a hundred times I would have to tell the story over the
next few weeks. After I finished talking she said, “Molly, I’m calling him now,
but I think you should just get over here, okay? I know he’s going to want to
see you.” I sighed I wanted to go have dinner with Brock. He was going to turn
down “a lot of people” for me. I could feel the tears welling up. They weren’t
because I was sick, or scared, but because I just wanted to see him so bad.

“You don’t think it can wait until
tomorrow?” I asked her. “I’ll drink a lot of water, and come in first thing in
the morning…”

“Molly, hun…you know how serious this is.”
She was using that tone that medical people use to guilt you into taking care
of yourself. I hated that tone. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted
to throw things. Instead, I took another deep breath to steady myself and I
said, “Okay, I’ll be there in a bit.” I hung up, wondering what I should tell
Brock. He knows about my diagnosis now. Should I tell him the truth? I thought
about the last two nights and how beautiful they were, how normal. I finally
gave in to the impulse to have a relationship with this wonderful man. I didn’t
want the cancer to be a part of that already. Was I delusional, thinking that
if I got involved with him, the cancer would never come between us? Maybe a
little bit, yes. I know Brock well enough now to firmly believe in my heart
that he wasn’t going to run away. But wasn’t that another problem in and of
itself? Now who was not being fair? He was an amazing, young guy who was
beating cancer. The last thing he needed was to be dragged down by mine. I knew
if I called him right now and told him what was going on, he would be at my
side in minutes. As warm and wonderful as that made me feel, I couldn’t do that
to him. He deserved more. I thought about the Barbie…Tammy. I bet she at least
has two kidneys. After all, there was no Transplant Barbie or Dialysis Barbie
on the market.

I picked the phone back up and I called
Brock. As soon as he picked up the phone and said, “Hello, Beautiful,” I almost
lost it.

I forced myself to suck it up and I said,
“Hey! I have bad news.”

“What happened?” I could hear the worry in
his voice. It tugged at my heart and proved my point that I couldn’t tell him
what was going on.

“Nothing…to me, I mean.” Liar, liar, pants
on fire. “It’s my grandmother.”

“Oh, what’s wrong with grandma? Is she okay?”

“She’ll be fine,” I told him. Wow, he even
sounded worried about my grandma. I wish he would just once be a jerk and make
this easier. “She just has this thing with her hip, and she’s going to be laid
up for a couple of days. I need to go stay with her this weekend to help her
out. I’m sorry, Brock. I have to catch the bus tonight so I’ll have to cancel
on dinner.”

“It’s okay, Molly,” he said the words, but
sounded so disappointed. “Do you want me to go with you? Or at least drive you?
Suzie would be up for a little drive. Grandma told me she only lives about an
hour away, right?”

God, he was so incredibly sweet. Sometimes
I couldn’t stand it. “It’s really okay, Brock. I’m going to catch the six
o’clock bus. If I leave now I’ll just make it. I’m sorry again, about
cancelling.”

“It’s really okay. I’m just going to miss
you,” he said. “Tell Grandma I hope she feels better soon, and call me if you
need anything, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, really fighting the tears
now. “I’ll miss you too. Bye, Brock.”

“Bye sweetheart,” he said. I hung up
feeling crappier than crap. I hate lying, I hate cancer.

“Did you hear me, cancer?” I yelled at the
empty room like a crazy person. “I hate you!”

 
I
got out my overnight bag and packed what I would need. I’d bet my last dollar
that Dr. Harris was going to admit me…I had been right, he admitted me right
away and started running all of the fun and glamorous tests to find out if my
kidney had stopped working.

First came the IV, at least the nurse was
good, and gentle. As my body began to fill with the fluid, they stuck in the
urinary catheter, which I despise. Then there were MRIs and CT scans and Pet
scans and blah, blah, blah. Finally, four hours later, Dr. Harris was at my
bedside. It was already nine o’clock at night. By now I should be in Brock’s
arms.

“Hey Molly,” he said, like we just ran
into each other at the mall.

“Hey Doc,” I said, playing along.

“Where’s your grandmother?” he asked.

“I’m assuming she’s at home,” I said. “She
doesn’t get out much.”

He gave me that disapproving doctor look.
I guess sarcasm was uncalled for at a time like this. Then he said, “Don’t you
think we should call her?”

“I wanted to see what was going on first,
Dr. Harris. I don’t want to worry her unnecessarily.”

“Okay, fair enough,” he said. “You’re an
adult. Here’s the bottom line…your kidney is no longer functioning. The tumors
are rapidly multiplying now; they’re causing your nephrons to harden, and
they’re blocking blood flow which has caused the tissue in your kidney to die
rapidly.”

I wished that I would wake up from this
nightmare. He was telling me that my kidney was no longer working. It was gone,
dead, kaput. I wished that I would wake up all shaky and sweaty and even in
tears. Then, Brock would pull me over into his strong arms and tell me it was
all a bad dream and everything would be alright. I tried denial first, “So can
we just take out those tumors, the ones that are blocking all the stuff in
there?” I knew the anatomy of a kidney inside and out by now. I knew that
wasn’t possible, but what was I going to do or say? My brain didn’t want to
process this.

He looked at me like he was trying to
decide if he should call psych and order a consult. At last he said, “No,
Molly. We have to take that kidney out. If we don’t, the cancer will just
continue to spread to your other organs. This way, we at least get it out of
your body.”

“But….I can’t live without any kidneys,
Doc.” Jeez, he went to medical school. You think he would know that.

“We’ll get you on the donor list, Molly.
You’re an excellent candidate and I think you’ll place near the top. We will
also have to get you started on dialysis.”

I was trying hard to process this.
Donor list? Dialysis?
What my head
interpreted that into were medical issues…forever. I was never going to be
normal…not ever, and then I would die, probably very young.

What that horrible realization translated
to was that I was going to have to break up with Brock. I think I had finally
decided that I was falling in love with him. No, I know that I’m falling in
love with him, and if I have any concept of what love is at all, I have to tell
myself that the most important part of it is wanting the person you’re in love
with to be happy. What kind of a life can a man who is sitting in a hospital
with his sick girlfriend have? Worse yet, what about the guy who’s in his early
twenties and sitting at her funeral next to the grandmother who way outlived
her? A miserable life, that’s what he would have. I can’t be responsible for
that. I won’t be.

“So what’s first?” I asked him. I was
trying to be brave, but I was scared to death.

“I’m going to arrange for the surgery to
take place early next week. We need to have you complete a course of antibiotics
first. In the meantime we’ll also get the donor paperwork filled out, and get
you set up for dialysis. We’ll probably put in the Vas-Cath while we have you
in surgery to take out the kidney.”

I knew that a Vas-Cath was a tube that
went in through your main artery, near your heart. It would be where they would
pull out my blood and wash it and put it back in…two or three times a week. Dr.
Harris and I had talked about this before…just in case. Then after a while,
they would either put in a fistula which is another set of tubes in my arm or
they would let me do my own dialysis using a bag and a tube and…well anyways,
none of it was going to be attractive. It would hardly be a selling point on a
dating site: I like long walks on the beach and warm water in my peritoneal
dialysis bag.

“Would you like me to call your
Grandmother?” Dr. Harris asked.

It was nice of him to offer, but I needed
to be the one to tell her. I would actually rather tell her to her face. I knew
she would take it well like she takes everything. She would tell me everything
was going to be fine and not to worry. Meanwhile, she would do all the
worrying. She used to tell me that was her job and I shouldn’t try to take that
from her.

“No, I’ll talk to her,” I said. “Can I go
home and take the antibiotics?” I asked him.

“Yes, tomorrow,” he said. “You’re running
a temperature tonight. We’re going to keep an eye on you and give you some more
fluids.” He looked at me then for what seemed like a long, uncomfortable amount
of time. I actually think that he was considering the possibility that I was
suicidal. I couldn’t tell this older, professional man that my heart was
breaking though. I’m sure he wouldn’t understand. He finally said, “Are you
okay, Molly? Is there anyone I can call for you tonight?”

Brock please… “No, Doc. I’m fine, thank
you. I’ll call everyone who needs to know.”

“Okay, let us know if you change your
mind. I can get one of the counselors down here too.”

“Okay, thanks, Doc.” Thank you for telling
me that I’m going to lose the best thing that ever happened to me. I should
have stuck with my guns about not wanting a boyfriend. Or I should have gone
for it right away, and had more time with him. I don’t know what I should have
done. I do know what I have to do. As soon as I get out of here, I had to break
up with Brock. I wasn’t going to put him through this, and I’m not telling him
why I’m breaking up with him either. I could very well be dying…I couldn’t
stand to see the pain in those pretty blue eyes when I told him that. It wouldn’t
be fair; we barely got to know one another. If I break up with him, he’ll get
over it and move on. If I make him watch me die…we’ll that would probably
affect him for a long time.

I stuck out the night with the nurses
waking me up every hour like they do. When Dr. Harris came in the next morning,
my temperature was down, and I had plenty of fluids in me to keep from getting
dehydrated for a while. I still couldn’t pee, and I was already feeling the
bloating that Dr. Harris said I would get from retaining fluids. He gave me the
prescription for antibiotics and let me go home. I had an appointment the next
day with the transplant doctor, and one after that with the nurse who ran the
dialysis unit. It would be a busy week, but there were a few things I had to
take care of first.

I went back to the room, and Megan got
there not long after. She was surprised to see me.

“Hey. Brock told us you had to go help
your Grandma.”

I looked up at her and that was it, just a
look.

“Oh, Molly. You’re sick again, aren’t
you?”

I nodded. I hadn’t really cried yet, and I
was afraid if I tried to speak I would start. Megan came over and sat on the
bed next to me.

“Tell me what’s going on.”