The Arrival of Someday

by Jen Malone

  “Hello?” I answer on an exhale, keeping my gaze on Will. His expression is guarded, revealing nothing about his reaction to our interrupted kiss.

  “Amelia Linehan?”

  The voice isn’t familiar and it isn’t robotic. It steals my focus instantly. “Yes? This is she. I mean, me.”

  “Hi. My name is Kendall Spinks, and I’m a transplant coordinator at Mass General.” It’s so quiet on the beach that her words spill out across the sand and Will’s mouth forms an O. Then my attention snaps away from him again, to the woman speaking in my ear.

  “I don’t want you to get your hopes up too high, because we’re calling you in as a backup to a primary recipient who’s already been identified, but . . . is there any chance you could get here tonight? Now, I mean?”

  She pauses, then speaks pure magic. “We might have a liver for you.”

  21

  EVERYTHING SLIPS. THE SEA WITCH FROM MY SKIN, THE PHONE from my hand.

  I am a jellyfish, spineless and limbless.

  My cell lands on my crumpled jeans, where I stare at it, willing myself to react, but I can’t. Will takes over, swooping it up and introducing himself to the transplant coordinator as a family friend.

  “Would it be possible for you to filter things through me temporarily? I think the shock is hitting her,” I hear him say, from the other end of a tunnel.

  I sink to the ground, sand glomming to my underwear and against the fresh sweat on the backs of my knees.

  I am plankton, infinitesimal, assailable.

  Will uses his free hand to drape the blanket around me, then tucks the mouthpiece against his shirt. “She wants me to walk you through the risk factors. If the primary recipient can’t make it to the hospital in time, or if there are any complications precluding them from accepting the liver, you’ll need to have determined whether you want to accept it or not.”

  I blink myself back into my body. “What?”

  “I don’t know! She said it’s protocol.”

  This breaks the spell and I snatch the phone from him. “I accept it!”

  “I understand,” the woman says. “But it’s important that we provide some background information on the donor’s health history, so you can make an informed decision. Would you prefer to go over this with the surgeon in person, once you get to the hospital and have had a chance to process things a bit more?”

  “I—yes. Yes, please.”

  I hand my phone back to Will and he puts it to his ear, using his own cell to take notes as she goes through a list of instructions with him. In the empty night air, I can hear her speaking clearly as I wrestle my sweater over my neck and tug damp legs into my jeans, but the words are all a series of consonants and vowels without actual meaning. I slog through the sand, following Will to our umbrella, where we pause to scoop up our things, then start for the street. My brain is scrambled. I know the woman said “backup,” but . . .

  The only thing repeating in my head is, Could this nightmare possibly be over?

  Will is steadfast and solid and does everything you would want someone to do in the midst of a stressful situation.

  He holds the car door and smoothly deposits me inside.

  He cranks the heat and aims the vents at me.

  He climbs behind the wheel and steers us toward the hospital.

  He calls my parents.

  Me, I squeeze the sea from my hair. The kiss we shared dissolves alongside the water droplets in my palm. A product of the moment.

  That moment is gone.

  “Breathe,” Will instructs, as he skillfully maneuvers the car through traffic until we’re streaking straight up to the emergency entrance of Mass General. When I spot Mom and Dad waiting on the sidewalk, everything about the last time I saw them—everything I overheard—vanishes and I step from the car straight into my mother’s arms.

  My wet underwear has soaked through the butt of my jeans and left a spot on my car’s seat, ringed with sand. I know it’s no big deal and that it will dry soon, that the sand can be vacuumed away, but I can’t stop staring at it as we linger beside the open door while Will briefs my parents on the coordinator’s instructions.

  “She said Amelia shouldn’t eat anything, so her stomach is empty for the anesthesia,” Will says. “She wasn’t sure if they’d have a room for you guys or if they’d want to keep Amelia in the waiting area until they knew more about the primary recipient and whether he’d be a viable candidate.”

  My mother tightens her grip on my back, bundling me against her. “We talked to our doctor on the drive here—they’re admitting her so they can get her prepped and ready, just in case.”

  Just in case.

  The words wash over me, bathing me in promise.

  A room sounds nice. Warm. Dry. Am I having surgery tonight? Will this whole thing be over by tomorrow? Wait, am I having surgery tonight?

  I’m not supposed to be having surgery tonight. Should we be calling anyone else? Sibby! Sib and I are in a fight. I don’t care—she’d want to be here. I want her here. No, she’s on a train to New York by now. Alex. Did anyone tell Alex?

  Somehow this forms on my lips as “T-rex?” and Mom squeezes me tighter. “He’s on standby for the first flight tomorrow. We called Babi too; we told her to wait to hear back before booking hers, but she’ll come if . . . when . . . I mean, once we know whether—”

  “Okay,” I murmur, interrupting her before she’s forced to speak the words aloud.

  Will holds up the car keys. “Um, do you want me to park while you take her in, Mr. Linehan? I’m happy to bring these up to you after or leave them at the nurses’ station. I can even drive the car back to Cambridge for you if that would be better?”

  My dad snaps to attention. “Sorry, Will! I wasn’t even thinking about the car. No, no, don’t be silly. Wait—do you need a way home?”

  Will shakes his head emphatically. “Don’t worry about me; campus is a straight shot on the Orange Line.”

  Dad’s shoulders relax. “Okay then. We’re incredibly grateful to you for getting her here so fast.”

  “Yes, truly,” my mom adds.

  He shrugs and tucks his hands into his jeans. “No problem.”

  Poor Will. He thought he was doing a simple favor for his best friend, and look at all the drama he got dragged into. Not just my behavior earlier tonight, but being stuck in the midst of all this too. He looks so uncharacteristically helpless and out of his element that my heart squeezes with sympathy.

  When he glances up, I meet his eyes. “Thanks,” I whisper.

  He stares back and swallows, a rueful smile on his lips.

  I want to reassure him that I’m good, that we’re good. That the kiss on the beach was good, even if it wasn’t actually about him, not really. Except we don’t have a language between us beyond flirty, insubstantial banter and my parents are watching, so I have to leave all that unsaid.

  “I know I can text Alex for updates after he gets here tomorrow,” he says, his eyes on me. “But if you hear anything in the meantime and you’re able to . . .”

  He trails off when I nod. I still can hardly allow myself to believe there might be something worth sharing.

  “We’ll keep you in the loop,” Dad promises, accepting the car keys and shaking Will’s hand before sliding into the driver’s seat. “I’ll meet you two inside,” he tells Mom and me, and eases the car from the curb.

  Mom releases me to give Will a quick hug, and I step close to do the same once she finishes hers.

  “Thanks again,” I murmur into his neck.

  He squeezes back—too tightly—and whispers, “Be okay.”

  I let Mom steer me toward the double set of automatic doors, and when I turn to wave bye to Will, he’s still standing in the same spot, staring off into the distance, lost in thought.

  Why does a disease only one person is afflicted by get to affect so many people?

  Mass General’s campus is enormous, but my regular doctor’s appointments are here,
in the Pancreas and Biliary Center, and the corridor Mom and I walk to the Blake Building is that same path we always take. The only deviation comes when Mom pushes the elevator button for Blake 6, instead on Blake 4. The label beside it reads “Transplant Center” and seeing the words makes me shiver.

  This might really happen.

  We’re greeted at the nurses’ station and ushered to a room. There’s a second bed in it, but it’s made up tight and there are no signs of anyone’s belongings, so I guess for now we have privacy. I sink onto the edge of “my” bed while Mom pokes around at the controls, trying to adjust it to a less reclined position.

  Dad slips in just as the nurse is telling me, “I’m going to send someone in to start an IV and draw some blood so we have baseline labs. But that might take just a bit because we’re short staffed, so settle on in and get comfy in the meantime, okay?”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  When she leaves, my mother heads directly to the full-length cabinet, carrying the beat-up duffel bag I use when I crash at Sibby’s. She unzips it and begins unpacking my belongings.

  “Should we wait until we know if—” Dad begins, but Mom levels him with a look. “Or we could do it now!” he chirps, turning away from her so she can’t see the face he makes at me. The laugh I bite back is the first sign of normalcy to creep in since my cell rang.

  “When Will said on the phone that you’d been swimming at the beach, I thought he was kidding,” Mom calls over her shoulder. I open my mouth to deliver some type of explanation, but she stops me before I can speak. “Never mind, I can’t decide if I even want to know. But your hair is soaked and your clothes are damp, and you can’t catch a cold right when we need your immune system as strong as possible. Do you feel up to a hot shower?”

  “Okay.” I’m still shell-shocked and I can’t seem to get more than a word or two at a time out.

  “I’ll take this opportunity to make a coffee run so you can have some privacy,” Dad says, but Mom seems reluctant to offer me the same, to even let me out of her sight. She trails me into the bathroom, turns on the water, arranges the folded hospital gown on a narrow shelf above the toilet, and sets out tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner. She stops just short of helping me out of my clothes.

  When I glance up to nod my thanks, it’s to find her biting her lip. “I can’t believe we got the call,” she says, almost reverently.

  “I know.”

  Eventually, she backs out of the bathroom and I finish undressing, inadvertently dumping a small hill of sand that had collected in my clothes.

  The longer I stand under the pulsing showerhead, the more the fog clears from my brain. I might be getting a liver!

  Though with that thought comes a barrage of others I’ve been keeping firmly at bay. This is major surgery and I have no clue what to expect. I mean, yes, I’ve thoroughly read the patient education guide Mass General offers everyone expecting a transplant, because my denial has its limits. But the only real image I have of an operating room is what I’ve seen on TV; I have no idea what to expect in any real kind of way. What if it hurts? I mean, of course it will hurt, but . . . how much? What if I can’t handle it?

  I know my first thought should be gratitude because this is the scenario we all wanted—and that feeling is there too—but I’m suddenly apprehensive about what could come tonight. Or what might not. Because there’s a good chance I won’t get this liver, and I’ll have to find a way to be okay with that too. Can I?

  I turn the shower off, dry myself, and dress in the hospital gown. Fortunately, it wraps all the way around, kimono-style, as opposed to the ones that flap open in the back.

  I’m vigorously towel-drying my hair when Mom calls, “Lia? The surgeon is here, honey. Can you come out?”

  We were supposed to be going to an information session with all the transplant doctors next week, so we’d have a chance to meet them ahead of time, put faces to names, and ask any questions we might have. Instead, I open the door to a stranger.

  “Hi, Amelia. I’m Dr. Somnath.”

  Her hand is cool and baby soft, which I guess is something you want in a surgeon, but her eyes are warm and that sets me at ease a little.

  “Nice to meet you,” she says. “Probably a little surprised to be here tonight, huh?”

  Even though the gown itself is discreet, I still wrap my arms around me to draw it tighter as I lean against the bathroom’s door frame. “Um, yeah, a little.”

  Her smile is soothing. “Well, the first thing I want to be clear about is that there is a primary recipient designated for this liver.” She expands her gaze to include my mother and we both nod.

  “I don’t mean to sound indelicate,” Mom says, “but what is . . . are you allowed to say what that person’s situation is? Uh, does it seem likely he will be able to— I’m not sure how to ask this without it seeming like—”

  Dr. Somnath cuts her off. “I understand what you’re asking. I spoke to his doctor briefly on my way in. The patient has something called hepatocellular carcinoma and—”

  “I’m here! I was in line when I got the text that you’d arrived!” Dad says, entering the room out of breath. “The elevator stopped on every single floor between the cafeteria and this one.”

  Dr. Somnath waves off his apology. “Not a problem. You didn’t miss much. I was just starting to tell your wife and daughter about the primary recipient.”

  My dad crosses the room and shakes the surgeon’s hand before moving next to my mom. Both of them lean against the long windowsill that forms a bench of sorts. I slide past Dr. Somnath and perch on the far edge of my bed, tugging my gown around myself as best I can.

  “As I was saying,” the surgeon resumes, “the primary candidate has a condition called hepatocellular carcinoma.”

  I know this term. It’s essentially a fancy way of saying liver cancer. I’m tested for it sometimes because people with biliary atresia have a greater chance of developing it.

  “The concern is that, when they open him up, they’ll find metastatic disease.”

  “Does that mean his body would be likely to reject the liver?” I ask.

  “It would mean the cancer spread elsewhere,” my mother murmurs.

  Dr. Somnath nods. “We may determine it wouldn’t be the best use of a recovered liver, in that instance.”

  The mood in the room is somber, and I’m guessing all of us are reflecting on the poor man on the operating table. I squeeze my eyes in a silent wish that he’ll be okay, but there’s a small voice that whispers, “If he is, then you’re not.”

  I feel evil even forming the words in my head, and it makes me remember what Dad said about the siren passing the hardware store. I swat away the ugliness. I want this liver so badly my stomach aches. It doesn’t seem fair that that guy would have to get bad news in order for me to get good.

  Not that any of this is fair.

  Tears prickle behind my eyelids, but when Dad clears his throat the sound brings me back to the room. I glance over to find his eyes on me, and he mouths, “Are you okay?”

  I nod, swallowing thickly, then force my attention back to the doctor.

  “There’s an equal chance they’ll open him up and it won’t have metastasized. I don’t want to give you any false hope.”

  “No such thing,” my dad whispers. I’m struck by how quietly he speaks. I know it’s not an occasion for goofy jokes or anything, but I rarely see my father this subdued, earlier tonight being a definite exception.

  “Sorry?” Dr. Somnath asks.

  “Oh. It’s, uh, just a line from the show West Wing.” He’s clearly embarrassed she heard him, but he nods at me and continues, “This one here has a thing for presidents, so we binged it a couple years back, right, Sunshine?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, now you have me curious,” Dr. Somnath says.

  Dad concedes. “In one of the later seasons, the presidential hopeful announces his candidacy with a speech that talks about how we might be li
ving in cynical times, but hope is one thing that’s not up for debate. He says something along the lines of: there’s false science and false promises and false starts, but there is no such thing as false hope. There is only hope. Lines from TV shows don’t usually stick with me, but that one always has.”

  “With good reason. It’s a keeper.” Dr. Somnath touches my knee. “As are you, Amelia. So settle in and we’ll see how tonight goes, okay? I’ll check in periodically to deliver any updates I get from the OR. Sound good?”

  “Sounds good.” I muster a smile.

  My mother chimes in from her spot by the window. “Is there anything special we should be doing?”

  “Nope,” the doctor says. “Things will pick up pretty dramatically if it does look likely we’ll be operating tonight. A nurse will be in shortly to place an IV and draw blood. Meantime, no food or drink for our patient here—we’ll need her stomach empty. And otherwise, just . . . wait. I’ll be back once I have any news.”

  Once the doctor leaves, Mom busies herself retrieving my things from the bathroom and returns holding my damp jeans. “Okay, I think I want to know now—what earthly reason would you have to go swimming in the ocean in April?”

  Fortunately for me, a nurse comes in just then and saves me from answering (as if I could ever find a rational explanation). He suggests distracting myself with TV while he inserts the IV and seems perfectly content to hang out making small talk with us afterward. Once he does leave, I turn up the volume on a rerun of Friends and pray my mother doesn’t resume her line of questioning. Fortunately, she merely scoots my feet aside to claim space at the bottom of my bed, while Dad takes the chair on my other side.

  We watch and we wait. One episode. Two.

  Alex keeps calling in for updates until we finally just put him on speakerphone so he can listen to the TV with us.

  Dr. Somnath pops in after about an hour and a half to say the liver safely arrived on-site and that it looks “beautiful.” I’ve seen enough pictures of organs in Anatomy to know that’s not an adjective I would ever attach to one, but honestly, I don’t care if it looks beautiful, so long as it works beautifully. Inside me.