Otto, Pearl, and I are waiting with bated breath when the exam room door finally opens up.
A doctor I haven’t seen before steps in with a big smile and far too much energy. “Hey! I’m Surgeon Elliot Caulder.” He glances at me and Pearl. “I’ll guess you two are twins. And this must be Otto, right?”
Otto nods shyly. “Yep.”
“Great. I’m the pediatric surgeon, and I’ll be assisting in the surgery today. Before we go any further, I’m going to need help from my handy assistant…” I only notice now that he has a hand behind his back, and when he pulls it forward, I can see that he’s holding a plush teddy bear with a bandage over its head. “This is Rex, our recovery bear. If you’d like, you can hold him while I go over the procedure with the adults.”
“I’m twelve,” Otto says, deadpan and unimpressed. “Not a baby.”
“Alrighty!” Dr. Caulder pulls up a chair in front of me and Pearl, the bear sitting in his lap. “Let’s talk.”
“How’s Donovan?” I ask.
“As far as I’ve been told, the surgery is going smoothly. They’re about halfway through, which is when we want to get started prepping Otto. That way, the kidney has less time floating around before it’s transplanted. Now, a couple things you should know—”
He walks us through it. Complications that can arise during the surgery. Complications that can arise after the surgery. And then, once he’s prepped us on everything from kidney rejection to shark attack, he clasps his hands together and says, “I’m going to give the three of you a couple minutes, and then we’ll come in and start prepping Superman here.”
He gives Otto a fist bump on his way out, which Otto half-heartedly returns.
Pearl hugs Otto tightly and tells him how brave he is.
It’s strange. I spent so much time wanting this moment, waiting for this moment. But now that it’s here…the thought of putting my son’s life in the hands of a surgeon is terrifying. Even if that surgeon is Jason King.
I pet Otto’s long hair back from his forehead. “I really should’ve trimmed this.”
He blows at his bangs. “I like it.”
I press my lips together. “How are you feeling?”
He shrugs. Then he admits, “A little scared.”
“I know.” I hold him. I don’t want to let him go. “I love you, little man.”
“You’re my bacon, Mum,” he says, and I don’t even want those words to leave my ears.
The surgery takes over ten hours.
Jason opens Donovan, removes the kidney, and then carts the organ over to Otto’s room, where he stitches it inside my baby.
I only know this because doctors come by periodically to keep me in the loop with small, hopeful updates.
As the clock ticks on, I start to feel like my soul has completely left my body. The only thing keeping me grounded is Pearl, who slips her hand in mine and holds it.
We sit in a private waiting room and watch the minute hand click on the clock on the wall.
I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I take Jason’s advice and replay a recording I made in voice notes over and over again. It’s a simple sound, just my own voice telling me, “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
It’s two in the morning, and just when I think I’m going to completely lose it, a familiar face rounds the corner.
Jason is sweat-soaked and pale, and for a second, my heart lurches in my chest and nearly climbs out my mouth.
But then he smiles, that crooked, boyish grin of his. “Surgery was a success,” he says. “Otto is coming out of sedation now. He’ll be out in a few minutes—”
I don’t let him finish what he’s saying. I launch myself at Jason and wrap my arms around him. I hold him as tightly as I can, curling up into him, and he hugs me back, holding me.
“Thank you,” I whisper, and my voice comes out as a sob. “Thank you, thank you…”
Otto is drowsy. Otto complains that he can taste the saline. But Otto is alive. My boy is alive, and his body is no longer poisoning him from the inside out, and everything is going to be okay.
I can’t stop looking at him. I can’t get close enough to him. I can’t stop touching his hair, to the point where he swats my hand away with a whined “Mum.”
For him, he just woke up from a long nap, and now he’s got a strange scar up his abdomen. For me, I feel like I’ve been stuck in the foxhole in the middle of a war zone for the past ten hours.
Eventually, Otto and I fall asleep curled up in his hospital bed.
I don’t know how long we sleep for. When I wake up, I notice it’s dark outside the window, and the curtains are drawn. They’ve turned off the overhead light, too, but there’s still a light from the adjoining bathroom, and the light that filters in through the box window in the doorway.
Pearl sleeps in a cot beside the hospital bed.
Otto’s arms are splayed about in all directions which is, somehow, his most comfortable position to sleep in. By some miracle, he hasn’t pulled out any of the IVs or wires attached to him, and I’m soothed by the consistent beep of his heart monitor.
I hear muffled voices in the hallway. Through the door window, I can see Jason talking to another doctor. Jason rubs his hand over his mouth, his forehead creased with concern.
Carefully, I peel myself out of the hospital bed. My clothes are wrinkled, and they feel stiff and uncomfortable. I hang my legs off the side of the bed, slide into my shoes, and quietly exit the room, closing the door behind me.
In the bright light of the hallway, I feel a little strange and out of place—like a little girl who crawled out of bed in her pj’s to interrupt the adults’ raucous nighttime party.
“Hey,” I say, and both turn to look at me. I hug my arms around my chest. “Everything okay?”
Jason glances at the other doctor and then pats him on the shoulder, which seems to be his cue to leave. He turns to me then and says calmly, “It’s Donovan. The surgery went smoothly, but his blood pressure dropped during recovery, and—”
My ears block the rest of his noise, turning it into a fuzzy tangle of sounds. I can’t hear any more doctor-speak. I know the sympathetic turn of the eyebrows. The pinched corner of his mouth. The way he clasps his hands to keep himself from nervously rubbing them together.
I know what he’s saying, what he’s really saying.
Something went wrong. Donovan is in trouble.
“When can I see him?” I ask, breaking through the fog.
“Now,” he says. “If you’d like. We haven’t been able to get him to wake up yet, but you’re welcome to see him.”
“Please.”
Jason slips a hand to my back.
He guides me through the hospital. This building never sleeps—many rooms are dark, turned out for the night, but there are still plenty of nurses and doctors at their stations, checking in on patients, working at the computers.
He leads me to a room and opens up the door but lingers by the doorway instead of coming in.
Just when I thought I couldn’t possibly have any more room for anxiety, it swoops in again, birds low-diving in my stomach. Donovan is lying in the hospital bed, strapped up to monitors and tucked under a white blanket. He’s Donovan alright, but the nothingness in his face terrifies me. If it wasn’t for the slight rise and fall of his chest, I wouldn’t be certain he was alive at all, and that thought chills me.
“Do you want me to stick around?” Jason asks gently.
“No…it’s okay. I need a second.”
He nods and then gives my arm a small squeeze. “I’ll be right out here if you need me.”
Then he closes the door, giving Donovan and me some privacy.
There are a couple of chairs in the room, and I pull one up to sit beside Donovan’s bed. His skin looks so pale, like wax. I find myself transfixed on his chest—the hospital gown opens low, and I can see his necklace bunched up. His mother and father’s wedding rings close to his heart.
I reach over and trace one of the rings with my fingertip. “Hey…it’s me,” I say, the words sounding strange out loud. I feel like I’m leaving a voicemail instead of talking to a living, breathing human. But in case he can hear me, I push forward. “You’ve got to wake up…Otto is recovering well. He wants to thank you for his new kidney. We couldn’t have done any of this without you.”
I press my lips together and then get to the truth of it. “I couldn’t have done any of this without you. My whole life I’ve been afraid to fall in love…terrified of trusting other people. Then I found you and Jason. You loved me. Without any strings. And that…scared the hell out of me.” I take a breath. “But more than that…it scares me to think that I could lose you and you’d never know how I felt. You’re the other half of me. You get me. In a way no other human ever has. You’re my best friend…my soul mate…and I love you.”
The words don’t sound strange, or forced, or wrong. They sound right, so I lean forward on Donovan’s bed and reach over to draw my fingers through his hair.
“I love you, Donovan…”
Suddenly, he moves. His eyebrows knit, and his mouth curves downward. “Ow…”
“Donovan?” My heart jumps in my chest. I leap forward and catch the side of his face in his face. The backs of my eyes burn with unfallen tears. “It’s okay, I’m here…what’s wrong? Do you need me to get Jason?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “You’re…leaning on my catheter line…”
Immediately, I sit up, removing my arms from the bed. “Oh…my God. I’m so sorry.”
He lets out a wheezed laugh. “It’s okay. It was less painful than your heartfelt declaration.”
A laugh escapes me now, too, even though my eyes are glassy. “Jerk.”
“Slut.”
He looks up at me. Those deep, dark eyes look at me like they see straight into my soul.
“You scared me,” I whisper. “I thought I lost you.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Ever.”
Then he hooks his fingers through mine. He squeezes. I squeeze back.
“How’s Otto?” he asks, a hint of alarm trickling into his voice.
“Great, thanks to you. They say he’s recovering well.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
He looks back at me, those eyes flickering over me. “How are you?”
“Better, now.”
He pauses for a moment. “I want to kiss you,” he says, “but sitting up hurts, so if you’re into that sort of thing, you’re going to have to meet me halfway…”
Immediately, I lean over and catch his lips gently in mine. He lets out a soft sigh into my mouth. I feel complete. Like, finally, the last piece of the puzzle has slid into place.
Our strange little family is whole again.
