Saving Jessica (3 page)

A sob knotted his throat, but he refused to let it out. He hadn’t cried since his brother Tom’s funeral, three years earlier. Jessica was alive and under good medical care. She was going to be all right. She had to be! He picked up
the phone and dialed the hospital. Jessica picked up on the third ring.

“How are you?” he asked.

“All cried out,” she told him. “They fed me supper and I can’t eat again after midnight.”

“When’s your surgery?”

“Seven in the morning.”

“I’ll be there.”

“It’s minor, Jeremy. You should go to school. Come visit in the afternoon.”

“No way.”

“You can’t keep skipping classes.”

“I’m a genius, remember?” His IQ was sky-high. He’d skipped a grade when he was younger and could have skipped another, but hadn’t wanted to start college at sixteen. He asked, “Don’t you want me there when you wake up?”

“Of course I do. It made a world of difference that you were here today when I got the bad news. My parents mean well, but they want to put me in a plastic bubble.”

He understood completely. Ever since Tom’s death, his parents had been hyperprotective of him too. And his father kept pressuring him to study and do well. He guessed he was expected
to take over his brother’s life role. “I told my parents about all you’re going through, and they’re really sorry. I don’t think they’ll hassle me over any time I spend with you.”

“I—I really want you with me,” Jessica confessed.

He felt a rush of protectiveness and wished he had the power to change what was happening to her. “You saved my life, Jessie. I want to help however I can.”

When they’d first met the year before, when he was just fifteen, he’d had recurring thoughts of dying. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the accident that had killed his brother. Even now the memory was vivid, a kaleidoscope of crystal-clear impressions: his older brother, Tom, a new cadet at Annapolis, home for the weekend. Riding with Tom to the movie. The wet road. The long skid. Tom turning the car to take the impact of a tree on his side of the car. Tom had died instantly; thirteen-year-old Jeremy had walked away with barely a scratch.

I should have been the one to die, he thought. Jessica was the only person he’d ever told how he felt. Because he was so smart, the high
school had placed him in an advanced English class, and that’s where he’d met Jessica. She was friendly, pretty and easy to talk to. It didn’t take him long to fall for her. And to explore with her his pent-up feelings about his brother’s death. They’d had long talks, far into the night when they were studying together, and slowly, haltingly, he’d opened up his heart to her.

“God doesn’t make mistakes,” she’d told him at the time. “You’ve been saved for a purpose. Maybe you should find out what it is.”

“I didn’t ‘save your life,’ ” she told him over the phone. “You just needed someone to talk to. I think you’re the most interesting guy I’ve ever met. I care about you.”

He knew she’d taken a lot of flak from her friends when she started dating a guy a year and a half younger, but she’d ignored them. He said, “I like being around you too.”

“Even if you can’t take me out to eat anymore?”

“What do you mean?”

“The dietician gave me some bad news.”

“Tell me.”

“The diet is the pits. No bananas. No orange
juice. And my love affair with potatoes is all but over.”

“No potatoes either?” He knew how much she loved french fries and potato chips.

“I have to watch everything I put into my mouth—even water has to be monitored. I don’t see how I can live this way.”

He heard a catch in her voice and longed to reach through the phone and hold her. “Okay, so you have to juggle your diet. We’ll do it. And if you can’t eat certain stuff, then I won’t either.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Says who? I can eat whatever I want.”

“Because I don’t want you to,” Jessica said. “I don’t want your life to get turned upside down too.”

“All right—then I won’t eat your favorite foods in front of you.” He desperately wanted to make her laugh. “And if we get served something you can’t eat, I’ll stuff it in my socks right there at the table.”

“My hero.”

He heard the hint of a smile. “Remember the long talks we used to have? When I was still so messed up about Tom?”

“I remember.”

“You told me that no matter how bad things got in life, if I’d just wait them out, life would get better again. It was hard to believe. But you were right, Jessie. Things have gotten better again, even though Tom’s not ever coming home.”

“I hate it when you give me back my own advice,” she said with a sigh. “Even when I know you’re right. I know it could be so much worse … I could need a new heart, or liver. There are no machines to fill in for those organs. I just don’t like the whole idea. It’s scary. To be hooked to a machine for … for maybe the rest of my life. What kind of life is that, Jeremy?”

He couldn’t answer her because he thought the idea appalling also. “You’ll make it,” he said fiercely. “You have to.”

“Why? What makes me different from the thousands of people already in dialysis?”

“Because I love you. And I won’t lose you, Jessie. I won’t.”

J
essica stared glumly at the tube snaking from the inside of her forearm resting on the recliner-style chair to the machine next to her. The compact dialyzer hummed, doing the work of her now-defunct kidneys. It cleansed her blood of wastes and toxins and returned it to her body purified and ready to begin the cycle of cellular waste removal all over again. She had been on dialysis for seven weeks now—three times a week, four hours a day. And she hated it.

“You look sad, Jessica.”

The nurse’s statement intruded on Jessica’s dark thoughts. She sighed. “Do you realize that I see more of this machine than I do my friends and family?”

The nurse, Pat, pulled up a stool next to Jessica’s recliner. “I know how limiting this can be for a girl your age. Most people who come here are elderly or diabetic.”

The dialysis unit was a large room with about twenty recliners and dialysis machines. Nurses and social workers made their way down the aisles, visiting with patients, checking lines and medication flows, attending to those unable to leave the confines of the chair during the dialysis process. TV sets were suspended from the ceilings, and most people watched the afternoon soap operas and game shows. Jessica was the only person under the age of fifty, and she felt like a freak and a foreigner.

She turned toward Pat, being careful to keep her arm steady. “I still throw up after most sessions. And the headaches are awful. Dialysis isn’t making me feel as good as the doctors said it would.”

“Sometimes it takes a while to work out a balance.”

Dr. Witherspoon had changed mixes and medications several times already. Jessica took a fistful of prescription pills, plus vitamins,
measured every morsel she ate, and still had problems. “Well, at least I’ve learned to knit. I’ve been knitting a ski cap that’s five feet long for Jeremy’s Christmas present and it’s only May. Imagine how long it’ll be by December twenty-fifth.”

Pat smiled. “A positive attitude really helps, you know.”

“Well, as they say around here—consider the alternative.” Jessica studied Pat, then asked, “Have you known many patients who got transplants?”

“Several. A few drop by now and again to say hello.”

Jessica had been thinking about transplantation more and more, and the idea both attracted and frightened her. While it would be wonderful to be free of the machine, it was scary to contemplate a life with the ever-present threat of rejection. She asked, “What if I did get a transplant, and then it rejected on me?”

“Then you’d go back on dialysis until we found you another kidney.”

Jessica couldn’t imagine getting to live like a regular person again, then having to return to
dialysis. It seemed terribly cruel. How many chances would the doctors give her? How many kidneys would they allow her?

“So, how’s Jeremy?” Pat changed the subject. “Is he taking you to your prom? My daughter’s been looking for just the right dress for her prom for a month, and she’s not even been asked yet!”

Jessica was glad to shift her thoughts to her favorite topic—Jeremy. “No prom for me. I really don’t want to go.”

“But you’re a senior. You should go.”

“You sound like my mother. But I get the cold shivers when I think about having to find a dress that covers my arms, or picking a restaurant and having to think about every bite I put in my mouth, or getting sick right in the middle and having to rush home.”

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

“No will, no way,” she confessed.

“Still, it’s only one night,” Pat said. “I’ll bet you could make it.”

“Proms aren’t simple little dances anymore. Around here they’re two- and three-day marathon parties. Kids move from party to party, even from city to city. One guy in our senior
class has parents who own a horse farm, and he’s invited a third of the class there for picnicking and riding all weekend. Another friend’s father owns a boat, and she’s having a gang come for an overnighter on the Potomac.”

“Gee, what ever happened to simplicity?”

“It’s passé.” Jessica looked up to see Jeremy walking down the rows of recliners toward her. As always, her heartbeat accelerated. He meant so much to her, and she regretted that his life had changed because hers had. She wondered often why he hadn’t started looking for another girlfriend.

“Am I early?” he asked, dipping down to kiss her lightly on the lips.

“No, Boris and I are about through for the day.” She motioned toward the blue-and-white machine that shuttled her blood back and forth. “He’s made me squeaky clean again, and I don’t have to look at his smiling face for two whole days. That’s the best part about Fridays.” Her routine was to come every other day after school, with weekends off. Except on Mondays, when she arrived at six in the morning so that she could dialyze before school. But after a weekend away from dialysis, she was
sick and puffy with water weight and built-up toxins.

Jeremy waited while Pat unhooked Jessica and bandaged her arm. “We’ll see you Monday morning,” he said to Pat when they were ready to leave.

Outside in the bright sunlight, Jessica sucked in the fresh air to drive out the medicine smell of the dialysis unit. Sometimes she felt as if the odor clung to her body permanently and no amount of bathing could wash it away. She drenched herself in cologne daily.

Jeremy pulled out of the parking lot and merged into the fast-moving traffic, heading toward her house. “You up to a movie tonight?”

“Maybe. I’m feeling a little light-headed. All this clean blood, I guess.” She leaned her head against the seat, fighting down nausea.

Concerned, Jeremy glanced over at her. She looked pale, and his stomach constricted. He’d thought that dialysis would make her well again, but it hadn’t. She still had many days when she could barely function. She tried her best to hide it when she felt sick, but he could always tell when she was faking it. “You want
to stop for a snack? Maybe you need to eat something.”

“Eating isn’t much fun anymore. Too many restrictions.”

“How about something to drink?”

“Same thing.” She had to measure every ounce of liquid. If she drank too much fluid, it built up, put pressure on her lungs and made it harder for her to breathe. “Look on the bright side. Since I don’t drink much fluid, I don’t go to the bathroom very often.” She patted his hand. “Now isn’t that a bonus? No more waiting on me while I go to the ladies’ room at the movies or the mall.”

“I’d wait for you outside a bathroom for three days if you could be well again.”

She felt a headache beginning to build, leaned her head against his shoulder and mumbled, “If only.”

At her house, Jessica’s mother insisted that she lay down until suppertime. She helped Jessica up the staircase while Jeremy stood at the bottom and watched helplessly. He would have traded places with her if he could.

“Stay for dinner,” Jessica called down to him
from the top of the stairs. “After supper, if I feel better, I’d like to go to that movie with you.”

Her mother added, “Yes, please stay, Jeremy. Go on in the kitchen. I’ll be there as soon as I get Jessie settled in.”

He wanted to stay. He wanted to be with Jessica. His father was working late and that morning his mother had driven up to New York for a couple of days on business. Going home and being alone didn’t appeal to him at all. He went into the roomy kitchen and settled on a bar stool at the counter.

The kitchen island was piled with scrubbed vegetables and the makings of a salad. Roasting meat and freshly baked bread smelled delicious and made his stomach growl. On one wall there was an elaborate chart detailing the foods and their nutritional content along with the levels of calories, protein, sodium, potassium, calcium and phosphorus that a kidney patient could eat. Next to the chart was a memo board with a special pen where Jessica’s mother planned out every meal, factoring in the amounts of each nutrient Jessica had to have in
exact proportions. It looked complicated and reminded him again of the difficult course her life had taken.

Ruth McMillan breezed into the kitchen. “She’s resting, but she made me promise to wake her in an hour.” Her brow furrowed. “She wants you to be here when she gets up. Can you stay?”

“I can stay.”

Ruth looked preoccupied.

Jeremy said, “I thought dialysis would make her better.”

“She is better.”

“But she’s not as better as I figured she’d be.”

Ruth looked up from her work with the food, her eyes dark with concern. Jeremy’s heart thudded, then accelerated its pace. “What’s wrong, Mrs. McMillan? I know something’s wrong.”

Her gaze flitted away, but he could tell she wanted to tell him what was on her mind. “You’re right—Jessica isn’t doing as well as she should be. She isn’t doing very well at all.”

“H
ow do you mean?” Jeremy pushed off the stool and walked around the island to face her.