Changing Fate (14 page)

I wake up and my firm foundation is falling apart. My chest burns, rages with a fire that can’t escape. My world’s crumbling in a stream of pain. I’m falling, letting go of memories in order to focus on each breath. They don’t come. I claw at the bed and yell for Mom.

How did I get in bed? When did I fall asleep? Why isn’t she here yet?

Mom rushes in with a phone. I hear three beeps as she dials nine-one-one. My vision blurs and I can barely see through the black spots. Mom holds me until the ambulance arrives. The paramedics strap me to a bed and we race to the hospital. They’re talking to me but I can’t understand what they’re saying. It’s muffled and loud. It’s just noise.

Noise and pain.

A cough tears through the pain and comes out as red blood.

Someone wipes my mouth and holds me down to strap an oxygen mask over my face.

I try to breathe in again. One shallow breath, but it’s not enough. I can’t get it to fill my lungs.

I can’t focus, I can’t breathe. I can’t live like this.

I try to scream and everything starts slipping away.

The ambulance stops and they wheel me inside. I focus on the nurse, the tinted windows, the speckled ceiling. They mush together in one black blob that suffocates me.

I’m jostled to the side a
s my bed moves.

Or maybe I’m just moving…following the light and letting go of reality.

Mom, Giana, Kyler. They’re all gone.

I tried to stay, but I can’t hold on any longer.

* * *

My chest feels heavy and my arms are like dead weights. I can’t move, can’t think. I wonder if I’m dead or alive. This can’t be heaven. Heaven wouldn’t smell like bleach and soap. No, I’m alive.

I struggle to open my eyelids and glance around. My body is puffed up like a marshmallow and there are tubes in my hands, arms, nose, chest, and stomach. I think I’d rather be dead. I close my eyes and try to slip away again. I was gone…and I think I was okay with it. But now I’m alive. What if I have to go through that again? I breathe in and back out. My breaths are still shallow and the oxygen tube is bothering my ear.

What happened to me? I was enjoying a night with my friends and now I’m here. I must’ve fallen asleep.

I hear footsteps and Doc Perry’s voice says, “I see you’re awake.”

Opening my eyelids, I find him standing next to me. “What happened?” My voice is soft and scratchy and it hurts to talk.

“Your lung collapsed again.”

Of course it did.
There’s a tube coming out of my chest, tying me to the wall once again. Not only am I stuck in a prison, I’m shackled in place too.

Doc continues. “
It’s at a ten percent function level.”

What? Ten percent? The number flashes through my brain like the
time left on something almost done in the microwave.
I’m
almost done.

“And we found a new infection.”

My stomach knots up and panic rises in my throat. Tears sting my eyes and I refuse to let them fall.

“Kate. This is serious.”

Does it look like I’m laughing? If it didn’t hurt so bad to talk, he’d get a load of my mind.

“We’re doing all we can, but we might have to look at other options.”

We both know there’s only one other option. 

“Luckily we are a certified lung transplant center. Your information is being processed and will soon be ready for evaluation.”

I’m not surprised. We knew this was a possibility, but it’s always been the last option.  

Doc swallows. “Usually this process takes a considerable amount of time. Unfortunately, I don’t think we have that.”

In a nutshell…I’m as good as dead if things don’t work out. My mind wants to shut down, but I know I need to hear more. I clear my thoughts and put on a straight face. Just like Mom. She sits on the couch, her eyes glazed and her hand crushing a tissue. I need her to tell me to stay, to tell me I’m her favorite girl, and tell me that there’s still a best case scenario.

“We need to run a few more tests. I know how you must feel—
”

Yeah right.

“But you can’t be an active candidate for a transplant without a proper evaluation.”

And that’s when it begins. Doc wheels me down for more x-rays, blood tests, and an exercise test that I fail right away. I’m able to keep my emotions in check and treat myself as a lab rat. Do this, do that, don’t think about it too much or I might just drift away. Mom stays by my side; her face is a reflection of my
emotions. Shut off and in survival mode. We’re visited by multiple physicians and specialists then interviewed by social workers and a psychiatrist. Mom does most of the talking and I continue to keep a straight face.

With all the interviews, tests, and regular therapy,
I feel like a test patient. And each day I come closer to death. They won’t let my friends visit me yet, and even mom has to dress down in surgical coverings. If I qualify for a transplant, we still have to wait for a match to come in. That can take as long as a few years. And like Doc Perry already said, I don’t have three years. I don’t even have three months. I’ll be lucky to stay alive for three weeks.

Days later, the transplant surgeon finally shows up. He was out of town for another surgery and should be here in my room any moment. Mom’s pacing back and forth between the door and the window that looks over a cement courtyard. There are bags u
nder her eyes and her hair gets more frazzled each time she runs a hand through it.

“Mom, if you don’t stop, you’re going to be bald before he gets here.”

She turns to me. I’ve never seen her look so worried. “I know. But…I just
can’t
sit still. You don’t understand.”

I
cringe. She doesn’t think I’m worried too? Or maybe she doesn’t think I understand how serious this is. I’ve thought about it every single day of my life. Of course I would understand. Besides, it’s not her dying…it’s me. But maybe she’s worried about something else. I shouldn’t think the worst of Mom when she’s always been the best.

Maybe she’s worried about paying for all this. That has to be it. Why didn’t I think of it before? There’s no way my mom can afford a transplant. I don’t know exactly how much it costs, but it has to be thousands, if not millions. There’s no way I can stop her
, though. That’s like agreeing to my sudden death and her lonely life. Neither one of us want that. I close my mouth and let her pace. Her shoes click across the linoleum and I drum my fingers in a sporadic rhythm. 

Soon there’s a knock at the door. Mom flinches and turns with her hands clasped. Even then, they shake worse than a tree in a windstorm. Her worry makes me want to be calmer. If she can’t hold it together, one of us has to do it.

The door opens and Doc Perry comes in first, followed by a tall man with sandy-colored hair and pale skin. The man freezes right inside the door and his eyes flick back and forth between Mom and me. Only then do I realize how familiar he looks. Those eyes, the edge to his jaw, the way his hair falls across his forehead, just like it did sixteen years ago.

The silence is thick with tension and even Doc Perry notices something weird. “Do you know each other?”

Know? How about knew? I clench my fists tight and think of a million karate moves. Mom gave me permission to use them if Dad ever showed up, and here he is. But I don’t really feel like hitting him—the action’s just been engraved in my brain. Even though I know he tried to come back once, I never really thought I’d ever see him again. Especially here, like this. He’s a transplant surgeon? Apparently his fear of reality wasn’t enough to stop him in the medical field.

“Mom?” I say through clenched teeth, my eyes focused on her pale face. “Did you know?”

She nods once, small and short.
This
is why she was so nervous. Not because of the money and not because of the risk—it was because she knew Dad was a transplant surgeon and that he might be the one coming. Why didn’t she tell me? Now I’m mad at both of my parents. I grab a dart and roll it between my fingers with my eyes shut tight. I’m like a time bomb waiting to blow. If I look too hard at everything around me, the fuse will ignite and I’ll burst into a million pieces.

Don’t light. Don’t burst. Don’t throw the dart.

“I’ve reviewed your case,” Dad says. His voice is deep and serious. “It seems that you’re in great need of a transplant or your lungs will fail you completely.”

“Wait.” My eyes fly open, my breaths quick. The sadness in Dad’s
expression ignites the fuse and I nearly explode. “You reviewed my case? That’s all you’re going to say? No ‘Hi there? How are you?’ Is no one else freaking out that my dad’s my transplant doc? Is that even legal?” I clench my jaw.

Doc Perry goes rigid and he looks between the three of us. “It can’t be.” He turns to Mom. “You didn’t say anything.”

Dad raises a hand. “That’s not important right now—”

“Not important?” I ask, my tone rising with each syllable.

“No,” he says. “We’ll talk about that later. Trust me, I’m
very
interested to hear the details. But right now we need to get things going for your transplant. Getting you on the list is one thing, finding a match is going to be the tricky part. Your size is going to be a big factor. I can tell you right now there aren’t many people on the transplant list that are as petite as you. That
can
be a really good thing.”

Oh good. I was hoping there was a bright side to all this doom.

“The problem is that most donors are either smaller children or taller adults. We don’t see a lot of donors who would qualify to give you their lungs.”

A sliver of dread works its way through my heart. He ju
st sealed my fate. Will things ever go right for me?

Dad folds his arms. “We’re going to have a final meeting with the transplant team here and I’ll let you know when your status goes active.”

Doc Perry picks up my large file and opens the door. “Kate’s right about one thing. You can’t do surgery on your own family member.”

I stay quiet. Doc Perry has my back on this one.

Dad nods. “I’ll call Dr. Farrow today. He should be able to fill in. Until he gets here, I’m the only one who can lead this team. And if worse comes to worst, I’m going to do the surgery if I’m the only one here. Besides, I didn’t even know I
had
family.” Dad steps closer to Mom and me. “The first break I get, I’m coming back. We have some catching up to do and there are things I’ll explain, but I need some answers too.”

He turns quickly and exits the room. The door clicks shut and I face Mom with a million questions battling to escape the tip of my tongue. Finally, one gets free. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Mom’s head drops and she rubs her temples. “I just found out a couple of years ago. I didn’t know how to tell you. Besides, I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this point. At least, not this soon.”

“But you could’ve said
something
before he walked in the room.”

She shakes her head. “I wasn’t sure if it was going to be him
, Kate. Besides, it wouldn’t have done any good. You have enough to worry about already.”

“Oh, I see.” Not really. She lied to me. She could have told me about it a year ago when I was doing okay. At least then I would have known the reunion might happen at some point. And here we are, shoved together with Dad in a situation that could take months
, if not longer, to resolve. I want to be happy that he knows I’m alive but I don’t even know what he’s thinking or feeling. Ticked, I bet. 

I know nothing about him and he knows nothing about me. We were dead to each other and now we’re both alive—at least for a little while. And now I’m dependent on him to help me
survive. I’m his patient and he’s here to treat me as a surgeon. Yes, he wants an explanation, but that doesn’t mean he wants a daughter. Especially one who’s about to die.

If he ran before, he might run again
when this is all over. And if he doesn’t, there’s a chance I will. As it stands, I might die before he has the opportunity to leave.

“How’s my favorite girl?” Mom asks in a soft voice.

I close my eyes and breathe in. As mad as I am about the whole thing, I can’t blame it all on Mom. She’s always thinking of me and I know this isn’t an exception. But that doesn’t settle the anger bubbling inside me. Everything from the past few days has built up—meeting Dad was just the final blow.  

“I’m fine, Mom. I just need some time to digest everything.”

She pats my leg and I hear her retreat to the couch. I try to think of Dad but there are too many loose ends that don’t connect. My mind wanders, searching for something safe to focus on. Not Mom and not anything to do with my disease. Within seconds, I’ve found the perfect thing, but it takes all my remaining energy to push away the distractions and find Kyler’s face. I hold on tight to the image and listen to his voice. It clears my head of the mess I call my life.