The Other Side of Tomorrow

by Micalea Smeltzer

  Copyright 2018 Micalea Smeltzer

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design © Copyright Letitia Hasser with R.B.A. Designs

  Photo © Copyright Regina Wamba

  Edited amp; Formatted by: Wendi “The Swirl Queen” Temporado with Ready, Set, Edit

  nbsp;

  For the doctors, nurses, and techs who are there every day for us dialysis patients. Your hard work doesn’t go unnoticed. We see you. We appreciate you. Keep rocking it.

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  In May 2017, at twenty-three years old, I got some of the worst news imaginable. I walked into an emergency room thinking there was something wrong with my gallbladder and learned my kidneys had shut down. I was literally dying. It was a shock to me to hear the words, “Don’t worry, you’re not going to die,” since it hadn’t even crossed my mind that I was dying. I later found out I had hours left to live and it was a miracle I came when I did.

  The next few days, even months were a whirlwind as my whole life changed forever.

  Dialysis is not easy. It’s so incredibly hard on your body and so tiring.

  When I was in the hospital, Willa’s story came to me. It kept nagging at me to write it, but I wanted to wait until I had a transplant so I could describe that part accurately too, but Willa was insistent and kept reminding me this was her story not mine.

  While there is a large amount of myself represented in the following pages, it is very much Willa’s story. Maybe one day I’ll write a non-fiction journal type story chronicling my own journey, but for now, there’s this. If it helps give hope to one person who’s on dialysis waiting for a transplant it’s worth it.

  I also want to thank Willa for giving me the strength to switch to peritoneal dialysis. It’s something I contemplated months before writing this book to do myself, but I kept hoping transplant would happen. Every week that went by with no news, the more I considered switching. Hemodialysis is extremely tiring on the body and hard on the heart. I want to believe I’m going to live a long life post-transplant, and I want to do everything I can to ensure that.

  Thanks, Willa. I think you saved my life.

  —Micalea

  Life can change in an instant…

  For Willa Hansen, this statement couldn’t be truer. One minute she was a seemingly normal fourteen-year-old, and the next, her life was turned upside down with only a few words. Three years later, she’s receiving a kidney transplant and can start living again, only now she’s not sure she knows how.

  Life can end in a moment…

  Jasper Werth knows this all too well, seeing as a drunk driver killed his little brother. He’s always been a carefree guy, never taking life too seriously, but losing his brother is a major blow, and he finds himself lost until Willa walks into his life.

  Life can mend the most broken parts of our souls…

  Willa and Jasper couldn’t be more opposite, but as fate brings them together they’ll learn maybe they’re not so different after all.nbsp;

  Sometimes what you need comes in a package you least expect.nbsp;

  I blink up at the sky. It’s bright—too bright—and I shouldn’t be staring at it, but it reminds me that I’m alive.

  I’m still here.

  I’m still breathing.

  Nothing will knock me down.

  I am strong. I am resilient. I will make it through this.

  I’ve repeated this mantra several times a day since I was fourteen.

  I remember the day so clearly that everything changed. I’d been sick for weeks, longer, really, but only then did everything come crashing down. The weakness was overwhelming. I could barely place one foot on the floor. My mom had been worried, I knew, but I kept making excuses—I’d been practicing dance too hard, school was exhausting; on and on, I blamed everything else. It was easier that way.

  Until it wasn’t.

  I was at the bowling alley with my friends when I collapsed.

  One minute I was upright, forcing a smile, trying not to think about how tired I felt, and the next I was on the ground. I didn’t open my eyes until I was being loaded into an ambulance.

  The horrified gazes of my friends are something I’ll never forget.

  The ten-minute ride to the hospital seemed endless.

  “What’s wrong with me?” I asked over and over, but no one could tell me anything.

  “Keep that on,” one paramedic scolded, putting the oxygen mask back on my face. I hadn’t even realized I’d removed it.

  We arrived at the emergency room and they wheeled me back into a room.

  My parents were already at the hospital waiting, one of my friends having called them, and they followed the paramedics as I was wheeled back, hospital visitor badges clipped to their shirts.

  “Oh, Willa,” my mom cried, trying to hug me as the paramedics wheeled me down the hall.

  I was put into a room and helped into a gown and ugly blue socks—which was mighty embarrassing as I insisted I could change myself, but since I fainted they wouldn’t let me.

  When the doctor came to see me, I immediately blurted, “I’m not sick. I don’t know why I’m here. I’m tired, that’s all.”

  The doctor paused, raised a brow, his lips twitching with the threat of a smile. “How about you let me determine that, okay?”

  I sighed but nodded. My mom and dad huddled in the corner, her with her hands clasped at her chin, with him rubbing her shoulders.

  “You look awfully pale,” the doctor remarked. “Stick out your tongue.”

  I did.

  “Mhmm.”

  “What? What does that mean?” my mom burst out.

  “Nothing yet,” the doctor waved away her concern. “I need to listen to your heart and lungs; can you sit up a bit?” he asked me.

  I did as he asked, feeling like this was all completely stupid.

  He continued to cluck his tongue as he checked my ankles. Finally, he said he was ordering blood work and left.

  It didn’t take long for someone to come to take my blood, and after that, we sat waiting.

  This all felt so silly to me.

  I was fine, my blood work would be fine, and then they’d send me home.

  But that’s not what happened.

  The doctor appeared in the doorway of the room. There was something different in his eyes, not quite sad but almost. Maybe he looked a little surprised too.

  He cleared his throat and walked over to the stool, sitting down.

  My parents stood at my side, waiting for what he had to say.

  He didn’t look at them. He looked at me. Straight in my eyes as he delivered the news.

  “Willa, I have some bad news.” My heart stopped. “Your kidneys have failed. Based on your numbers, you have chronic end-stage kidney disease. We will have to get you started on dialysis immediately.” My eyes widened in fear. “Don’t worry, dialysis isn’t scary. You’re going to be fine. This isn’t a death sentence.”

  I stopped.

  Everything stopped.

  Not a death sentence?

  I hadn’t even considered the fact I could be dying—that this could kill me.

  He was right, of course, it wasn’t a death sentence, not since it was caught in time. Dialysis also wasn’t scary, but that didn’t mean it was easy. It sucked. It was exhausting, and most days all I wanted to
do was sleep. It made going to school impossible. I was home schooled after that. If it wasn’t for my best friend Meredith, I would’ve completely fallen out of touch with the “real” world. It was easy to shut myself away, but she forced me to get out. Sometimes, for a little while, I could pretend I wasn’t sick.

  That was another thing. I didn’t look sick, not at all, but I was.

  The dark shadows beneath my eyes from restless sleep were the only way to tell that something was going on with me.

  Other than that, I looked like any other spritely seventeen-year-old now.

  I felt more like I was seventy, though. Going through this had aged me—I understood more than most kids my age, and I’d come to terms with my mortality.

  Everybody dies, you might as well live while you can.

  I’d noticed a lot of people “died” before they actually died. They went through the motions, unhappy, and that wasn’t what I’d call living at all.

  You could live without being alive, and that was one of the saddest truths I’d learned.

  I spread my arms wide, like I’m making snow angels, but it’s sand instead.

  It’s always sand in sunny Santa Monica, California. I love it, though, the warmth, the ocean, the pier. It’s magic, and no one can convince me otherwise.

  The telltale grinding of the sliding glass door on our deck puts me on alert. But I don’t move.

  I close my eyes and pretend to be invisible.

  “What are you doing out here? You’re turning red.” There’s a shift in the sand beside me as my fifteen-year-old sister, Harlow, drops down next to me.

  I crack an eye open and twist my head to face her. I sigh, envious of how effortlessly beautiful she looks. Her blonde hair hangs halfway down her back, way longer than mine, and is stick straight opposed to my slightly wavy hair that doesn’t want to be straight but doesn’t want to be curly either. She wears a pair of shorts and a loose gray sweater with sneakers. It’s a simple outfit but somehow, she makes it work. It looks effortless next to my ripped jeans and baggy as hell T-shirt to hide the tube in my stomach. However, I must admit the belt I wear to hold the catheter does a good job of concealing it as well as securing it. It’s not like you want something dangling out of your body to get tugged on something. I practically shudder at the thought.

  “Hiding,” I answer her.

  She glances down at me, stifling a laugh. “From who? Mom? What’s she doing? Trying to get you to take those weird vitamins some shaman gave her?”

  I snort. “She knows I can’t have any of her weird health stuff. And I’m not hiding from anyone.”

  “Then what?” She blinks against the sun.

  I sit up and dust the sand off my back. “Life, I guess. It’s hard sometimes. Overwhelming.”

  She frowns. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” I force a smile, but it doesn’t take away the pain in her eyes.

  As hard as my diagnosis is on me, I know it’s hard on my family too. No one in my family was a match, not my mom or dad, not my extended family, and my sister is too young to donate. Instead, the last few years I’ve been waiting for a donor. A deceased donor. I’m literally sitting around waiting for someone to die, and there’s something morbid about that. As much as I want and need a kidney, I hate the fact somebody has to die for me to get it.

  It’s been three years since my diagnosis, and most days I’m happy. In fact, a lot of the time I feel relatively normal. But some days it catches up to me, the reality of it all, and I can’t help but go to a dark place in my head. Today, unfortunately, is one of those days. I don’t like having these days, but I know it’s not healthy to not have them, either. But most of the time, I’m able to choose being happy because while my disease has taken a lot from me, I refuse to let it take my happiness too. It won’t beat me. I’m stronger than that.

  Harlow reaches for my hand. “I low you.” She gives it a squeeze. My hand is pale underneath hers. She spends way more time on the beach than I do, and her skin is tanned to a bronze color.

  “I low you too,” I reply.

  When Harlow was little, she couldn’t say V, so love always sounded like low, and ever since we’ve always said it that way to each other. Born two years apart, I can’t remember a time without my spunky little sister. I love her to pieces, she’s my best friend, besides Meredith, of course, and she’s made all this easier. She’s always here when I need to cry or scream or vent or whatever it is I need to do at that moment.

  People on the outside tend to close themselves off when they see something like this happening to someone. They think, “oh, that’s not bad,” or “it could be worse.”

  When, really, I think it’s best to acknowledge the fact that it freaking blows.

  So does cancer.

  And Alzheimer’s.

  Every disease out there, whatever it may be, sucks.

  Why sweep it under the rug and pretend it doesn’t exist?

  Just because it’s not happening to you, doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

  And yeah, it could be worse, I tell myself that all the time, but that doesn’t mean it should be brushed under the rug, either.

  I feel like we should support our fellow human beings instead of turning a blind eye. Why do people find it easier to turn away from the old lady struggling to reach for something on a high shelf in the grocery store than to take a few seconds to help?

  I don’t understand this notion many people have of pretending things don’t exist.

  They do. Stop being a pussy and face the facts.

  Harlow pokes her finger into my cheek. “You’re thinking too much. Snap out of it.”

  “Sorry.” I shake my head and flash her a smile.

  I’ve always lived in my head way too much. It’s easier there, less scary.

  “Are you going to sit out here all day?” she asks.

  I shrug and pick up some sand, watching it fall through my fingers. “Maybe.”

  She shakes her head. “Come on, we’re going somewhere.” She stands up and offers me her hand.

  “You can’t drive,” I remind her.

  She rolls her eyes. “You can.”

  “Where are we going?” I reluctantly take her hand and let her lift me up. I shake the sand off my body, but, of course, I can’t get rid of all of it. Sand is as dangerous to be around as glitter.

  “To get ice cream, of course. Ice cream makes everything better.”

  “You know I’m not supposed to have ice cream.”

  Since I do peritoneal dialysis, my diet isn’t quite as restricted as it was in the early stages of my diagnosis when I was on hemodialysis. But that doesn’t mean I can go crazy and eat whatever I want.

  Our kidneys do a lot for our bodies.

  My fourteen-year-old self thought all they were good for was gathering urine and sending it to my bladder.

  Wrong.

  Your kidneys clean all the blood in your body—when they fail, toxins build up in your bloodstream and can ultimately kill you. Your kidneys do more than that too. They also tell your body to absorb vitamin D. Therefore, when your kidneys don’t work, you could stand in the sun all day and not get any vitamin D.

  Honestly, I’m a full-blown kidney expert at this point. It’s amazing the things you learn after you get sick.

  Harlow groans and tilts her head to the sky for a moment before facing me. Sometimes it’s jarring looking at her with her one blue and one green eye. It’s almost like looking at two people at once.

  “Willa, one teensy-tiny cup of ice cream isn’t going to kill you.”

  I give her a look.

  “Bad joke, I know.” She takes my hand. “But come on, let’s get out for a while. Mom and Dad won’t be home for a while yet, and I hate seeing you sad.”

  “Why are you home?” I ask, suddenly realizing it’s the middle of the afternoon and she should be at school. It’s May, and her school doesn’t end until June.

  I finished up my home schooling back in De
cember and graduated. It was nice being done nearly a year and a half early, but it also made me that much more confused.

  I wanted to go to college, right? But how did I do that with all the extra baggage I had? It wouldn’t exactly be easy, or sanitary, to dialyze in a dorm room. The thought alone made me want to shudder.

  It was possible I could enroll at the community college and continue to live at home, but … I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted.

  Lost, that’s the only way I could describe myself at the moment.

  It seemed like my whole life was on pause, waiting for the day I got a kidney. For the day when I could really start living again and didn’t have to think about dialyzing or anything that goes with it.

  There wasn’t a day in the last three years where I didn’t have to think about something regarding my illness. There was no escaping it. It was there all the time.

  While at times, like today, it was hard, most of the time it was such a part of my routine I didn’t even think about it.

  But for the moment, I was having a major case of the poor me’s.

  “We got out early today,” she supplies. “Parent-teacher conferences are tonight, the teachers need time to prepare. I’m sure they have to give a lot of bad news.” She claps her hands together and tilts her head to the side. “I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, but it looks like little Tommy is going to fail,” she mocks in a high-pitched voice.

  “Is it that bad?” I ask, picking up my flip-flops and heading up the deck steps and into the house.

  “You have no idea,” she groans. “Half the kids there don’t do anything. They expect a free ride or Mommy and Daddy to pay their way. All they talk about is partying, drinking, and sex.”

  “Sounds like I haven’t missed much.”

  “Eh.” She shrugs, sliding onto one of the barstools. “It can be entertaining at times, but it’s mostly annoying.”

  “Let me go change, and then we’ll go,” I tell her.

  There’s no way I’m going anywhere with sand in my crotch. I don’t know how it always manages to find its way inside my clothes, but it does.

  “I’ll be here.” She kicks her legs up on the counter.