Page 4 of Fortuity
ChapterTwo
Faith
Since I was alreadyat the hospital, I didn’t have much to do to prepare for the surgery. They transferred me from the pediatric unit where I’d been staying to the transplant one a couple of floors down so they could get me prepped. The nurses told me it was going to be a few hours before the kidney would be available for transplant. They also warned me that if the kidney didn’t meet their standards once it was harvested, then the transplant would be called off. Up until that point, I hadn’t thought about the possibility that it would be my turn and I still wouldn’t get mykidney.
I spent the next few hours reading, trying with all my might not to focus on the chance that this was a false alarm. That fate would be so cruel as to finally hand me a second chance only to take it away again. The nurses checked back in with me often and when one of them walked in with a huge smile on her face, I knew the news was going to be good. The kidney was healthy and a perfect match so it wouldn’t be long before I’d have thetransplant.
It had been years since I’d allowed myself to cry. Not since the day I had found my mother dead in our apartment and the rug had been pulled out from under me. I cried tears of joy for the first time in my life. There was no controlling them as they flowed from my eyes and down my cheeks as I sat alone in a hospital bed and learned my prayers had beenanswered.
But as happy as I was for myself, my thoughts turned to my donor and I hoped when they had passed away that they were surrounded by a family who loved them. Although nobody could hear me, I whispered my gratitude to them softly and promised to honor their sacrifice as best I could. By the time they came and took me to the operating room, I was ready to face my future—whatever mightcomenext.
My confidence held up as we rolled down the corridor. It didn’t waver as they hooked me up to all the monitors. Or when the surgeon walked me through what he was going to do during the transplant. None of it was new information because my medical team had already walked me through all of it, insisting I be ready for the surgery when it happened...even though in my mind it had always beenifand neverwhen. But as the anesthesiologist got ready to put me under, my calmness fled in a rush of panic. I’d reached the point where I accepted my own mortality, but I wantedtolive.
Desperatelyso.
Even though I was utterly alone in theworld.
But I didn’t fully trust the miracle that had been granted to me. There was still a voice inside my head, screaming that things never went the right way. Not for me. That something was about to go horribly wrong with the surgery, and I’d never wake upagain.
My distress didn’t go unnoticed by the doctors. The surgeon bent low, his gaze locked with mine. “Everything’s going to be okay, Faith. I’ve got you.” The confidence in his green eyes was the last thing I saw before the anesthesiologist pushed the drugs into my system and knockedmeout.
When I woke up afterwards, I was told the transplant was successful, but that there was one complication. A month prior, I had developed an irregular heartbeat that the doctors had been treating with medication, an atrial fibrillation they’d called it. Apparently, my heart went haywire while I was under, and my blood pressure dropped dramatically. The only way to fix it was to do a procedure they had explained when my heart first started to act up. A procedure that had totally freakedmeout.
While I was under, they used metal patches on my chest to pass an electric current to my heart. The current reset my heart's rhythm back to its regular pattern. In other words, they shocked my heart and stopped it to try and make it beat normally again. Luckily, I was knocked out when it happened and the procedure worked without me even knowing about it. They told me my heartbeat went back to regular again after a few minutes. I hoped like hell it stayed that way, and I never had to go through it again since just the thought of the procedure made my heart go haywire onitsown.
Before I knew it, I had spent a week recovering at the hospital and they were ready to discharge me. It was hard to believe they had cut me open, put a part of someone else inside me, and were ready to kick me out so soon. To me, it seemed impossible to fathom, but to the medical team, it was just what they dideveryday.
I only had a few months to go before my eighteenth birthday, and I was petrified about being discharged. I had started to pester Sarah about where I was going to go a few days ago and she just kept telling me she was working on it. They couldn’t just discharge me to some random foster home since I still had a lot of recovering to do, so the hospital’s discharge planner talked to me about long-term care facilities. They’d be able to provide the around the clock help I needed for a little bit longer. Knowing what most foster homes were like, one of the facilities sounded pretty damn goodtome.
The day before I was due to be discharged to the facility, Sarah came for another visit. Our relationship had changed since I had gotten sick. We were on a first name basis, something I’d never seen another caseworker allow with any of the kids under their watch. I knew it was partially because of the guilt she felt for what had happened to me. She had placed me in the home where I had gotten sick and was devastated by the idea that it was her fault for not keeping a closer eye on my foster mother. I had gone through a stage where I had blamed her too, but eventually, I realized it was the system that had failed me and notSarah.
“Hey, kiddo,” she greeted me. “You ready to finally get outofhere?”
“That depends on where I’mgoing.”
“Well,” she sighed. “I’ve looked into the facilities your discharge planner recommended, and I’ve got good news. One of them accepts Medicaid, and they’re willing totakeyou.”
“Then get meouttahere!”
“Will do,” she laughed. “But before you go, I wanted to talk to you aboutsomethingelse.”
My body froze, and the smile slipped from my face. I braced myself, waiting for bad news. “Aboutwhat?”
“Yourfuture.”
It wasn’t going to be long before I aged out of the system and had to figure out what to do with the rest of my life now that I actually had one to live. But I hadn’t given much thought to my future beyond recovering from the transplant—probably because it was damn scary to think about being on my own with only a high school diploma and a strict prescription regimen that I needed to follow. But if Sarah had a plan of some kind, I trusted her enough—just barely, although I’d come to believe in her more than I had any other person before—to at least listen. I offered her a weak smile. “Whataboutit?”
“Have you given any thought to college?” My stunned disbelief must have shown on my face because she hurried to explain, “I know you have a lot on your plate right now, but time is running out if you want to apply. I’d love to wait until you’re fully recovered and back on your feet, but you only have two weeks to get everything turned in if you want to start in the Fall with the rest of the freshmanclass.”
“Sarah,” I paused, trying to think of a nice way to word what needed to be said. “College just isn’t—I couldn’t—no, I haven’t given any thought to college because I didn’t think I was going to be alive long enough to worry about how I’d be able to afford it if I ever managed to get acceptedanywhere.”
She sat down on the chair next to the bed and leaned forward with her forearms on her thighs. “Then now’s the time to start worrying because you are going to live long enough to think about it. And you’ll get accepted—you have a solid GPA, high test scores from when you took the SAT last year, and a compelling story to tell in your admissionessays.”
“Butthecost—”
“You didn’t listen to a word I said about the state’s tuition waiver when I mentioned it to you earlier in the school year,didyou?”
“I’m sure I listened”—she snorted, and I couldn’t blame her because I didn’t sound convincing at all—“since it kinda sorta rings a bell.” A super distant one, but a bellnonetheless.
