Mom was generous enough to lend me her headphones so I can listen to music or watch movies on my phone. Which is good, because I need the distraction.
Dialysis is a pain in the…well. Kidneys.
My mom rolled me in a wheelchair down the hall to the infusion room. I’m one person in a row of twenty getting infusions. I sit in a thick, plush chair as the dialysis machine whirrs and churns beside me.
Bad blood out, good blood in.
I can feel my kidney. It’s not something you should be able to feel, but I can feel it—the outline of the thing, a poisonous, heavy sac in my side. It feels swollen and tender, and I imagine it like a bruise, purple and ugly.
I cup my hand against my side the way a mother might hold her unborn child. Except the thing I’m pregnant with is actively trying to kill me.
The sound of a chair scraping across the floor wakes me up. I quickly pull my hand away from my side, as though I’ve been caught in the act.
But it’s just Donovan. He’s pulled up a chair and sits across from me. He leans forward, lacing his fingers together.
I pluck out my headphones. “Hey.”
“Hey. Thought I’d check in. See how you’re doing.”
I glance down the room. Most of the chairs are empty—no one wants to go through treatment on Christmas Eve. There are two other people in here besides me, an older man who has fallen asleep in his chair and a woman with her head in her phone.
“I feel like I’m on the set of The Walking Dead.”
Donovan’s mouth pinches in a wry half-smile.
“Otherwise?” I continue. “I’m great.”
My body disagrees with a throbbing pinch that twists in my gut. I’ve broken out in a fever sweat that collects at my forehead and under my pits. I wipe at my hairline, trying to ignore it.
“I talked to your sister,” Donovan says. “She’s on the plane.”
My jaw sets. “Tell her she’s wasting her time.”
Donovan folds one leg over the other. He nods toward my phone.
“What’re you watching?”
I turn the screen toward him so he can see.
“Dr. Who?”
I nod. “Yep. It’s my comfort show.”
“Number Four. Classic. My favorite Doctor.”
“Yeah. I know.” I chance a glance at Donovan. He’s staring down at the screen in my lap, watching the episode play out. I hesitate, then say, “Do you remember Camp-Outs?”
A small smile curls Donovan’s mouth. “How could I forget?”
My voice is forceful, a train barreling through this conversation. “Every Friday night, we’d blow up the mattress in the living room. One of the adults would stay with me, and we’d watch movies, eat s’mores, and pass out on the mattress. It didn’t even matter when Joan was born, because by the time she was old enough to pick movies for Camp-Outs, I was too old for them.
“Mom always made them fun. Jason always let me watch whatever I wanted to watch and eat as many cookies as I wanted to eat. But with you, it was like…every time, you came in with a purpose. You always had some bizarre, 1970s sci-fi movie that no one else had ever heard about, and you were so eager to share it with me. Like your entire life, you’d been waiting for someone to sit down and watch Forbidden Planet with you. And then afterwards, when the movie was over, you’d let me talk—and I could talk about anything. You’d listen. You wouldn’t offer advice or tell me how to feel or what to do. You’d just listen.
“I always tried to stay awake on your nights. I never wanted them to end.” I shake my head. “Of course, years later, I realized it wasn’t exactly special Otto time but more like…special date-night time. It was your way of giving each other space.”
Donovan presses his lips together. “It was both,” he says. “Two of us had date night. The other had Otto-time. Both were special.”
I let out a breath. “Maybe I should’ve given you more time with them. Less time with me.”
Donovan blinks at me. “What makes you say that?”
“Can we be transparent right now? Can we just be two people who are completely transparent? No bullshit.”
Donovan nods. “Alright. No bullshit.”
“Are you breaking up with mom and Jason?”
Donovan looks down.
“No,” he says. His voice is low, firm. “What we’re going through right now…it’s hard. Yes. But we’re not splitting. And even if we did…I’d never leave you. You know that, don’t you?”
“Why not? You don’t have anything tethering yourself to me.”
Donovan stares at me, and there’s genuine shock on his face. “Otto, that’s not true—”
I stay quiet at that. I don’t know if I can get any more words out without bursting into tears, so I hold them all in. I hold everything in.
The doctors used to call me such a strong boy. Such a brave boy.
Such a numb boy. That’s what I really was.
So-fucking-good-at-repressing-everything boy.
But I guess that didn’t fit as neatly on a Get-Well card.
Donovan is relentless, though. He presses the point home with “No matter what happens…I’m not going to leave you. That’s a promise.”
I suck in a breath. I have my strength again. My numbness.
“I’m tired,” I say. “I think I’d like to be alone now.”
Donovan hesitates, but he knows better. My walls are up now, and there’s no scaling them.
“I’ll come back later,” he says. He gets up, then rakes his fingers through my hair affectionately and adds, “Love you, buddy.”
Then he’s gone. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. If I do, I might break down.
So I stay completely still and completely numb. I shove my headphones in my ears, turn the volume up all the way, and let the seconds tick by, painfully aware that every second that passes, I’m getting weaker.
