Keep Me in Your Heart

by Lurlene McDaniel

  “My father’s getting a perverse pleasure out of this,” Jeremy told her the evening before he was to be discharged. They were sitting in a waiting area because he couldn’t stand being cooped up in his hospital room. “He thinks all this medical stuff—the needles and machines—will scare me off. But it won’t.”

  She’d had dialysis that day, but already a headache was gathering behind her eyes and her skin was starting to itch. “I feel bad for you,” she told him. “You’re going through so much just for me.”

  “If it were my brother who needed a kidney, they’d let me donate mine to him.”

  “But it isn’t your brother.”

  “Yeah. Tom’s dead. So I can’t do anything for him. But if he were alive, believe me, he’d be one hundred percent behind this.”

  “Well, all this may be for nothing anyway.”

  Jeremy clasped her hand. “No way, Jessie. The tests will show that I’m a compatible donor. I’m going through with the surgery.” He’d made up his mind to be a nonrelated donor one way or another. And he felt strongly that Dr. Witherspoon would take him in order to help Jessica.

  “Not without your parents’ permission.”

  “Why is it necessary to get their permission for everything? I hate being sixteen. I wish I were eighteen. Then I’d be emancipated. Then I wouldn’t have to ask them for anything.”

  “They’re just worried about you. They care about you.”

  “Big deal. I care about you.” She started to cry, and he took her into his arms. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” he apologized.

  “The whole thing’s upsetting, Jeremy. I feel like I have no control over anything. I’ve been accepted to Georgetown for the fall semester, but I’m afraid to make any long-term plans.”

  “It’ll work out, Jessie. I promise.”

  “I still can’t figure out why this is happening to me. Have I been a bad person? Did I do something to make God mad at me?” She couldn’t stop sobbing.

  “It’s just life, Jessie. Like Tom’s accident. Bad things happen, and nice people get crushed. There aren’t any answers. You just have to believe that whatever happens is under someone’s control, for some kind of purpose. If you don’t, you’ll go nuts.”

  She pulled away, staring deeply into his golden brown eyes. What she saw was no immature sixteen-year-old, but an insightful, comforting friend. What she saw was love, so open and honest that it wrenched her heart. She leaned forward and kissed him. And knew without a shadow of a doubt that Jeremy Travino was going to pass at least the psychological portions of his testing with flying colors. The rest of the test results would be in the hands of God.

  Chapter

  10

  “If I hadn’t read the results of the antigen test with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it.” Dr. Witherspoon’s voice boomed with enthusiasm.

  Standing in the doctor’s office with Jessica and her parents, Jeremy couldn’t stop grinning.

  “Are you saying I’ll make a good donor?”

  “An amazingly good donor.”

  Jeremy felt as if a weight had been lifted from him. His parents would have to reconsider his desire to donate his kidney to Jessica.

  Jessica’s parents were both teary-eyed. They kept hugging Jeremy and saying “Thank you,” but he scarcely heard them. He had eyes only for Jessica. She was sitting in a large leather chair, staring up at him in absolute amazement. He dropped to his knees in front of her. “Are you happy?”

  “Numb,” she confessed. “I never dreamed …”

  “I dreamed it for both of us,” he said softly. Despite the others in the room, he felt as if they were sealed off in their own private space.

  He thought Jessica looked frail. She’d been steadily losing weight despite her mother’s efforts to feed her properly. Yet her hands and legs were puffy and swollen with water weight. Her once thick and shining hair looked dull. Dark circles ringed her eyes. He knew instinctively that his compatibility as a donor hadn’t come a day too soon.

  Her gaze bore into his. “I want to be happy about it more than anything. But it’s so big, Jeremy. A new kidney. Your kidney. An operation. Recovery. Being free to eat the things I like again.”

  “I’ll buy you the biggest plate of french fries in Virginia when you’re well,” he said. She didn’t smile. “Hey,” he said, “you’re not going to back out on me in this deal, are you?”

  “You still have to get your parents to agree,” she said, hedging.

  “I’ll do it.” He wished he felt as confident as he was pretending to be. “Once they see how important this is, they’ll fall in line.”

  “But, Jeremy, you’re the one who’s important to them. Not me.”

  “Then they’ll just have to realign their priorities, won’t they?”

  She smiled. “You’re very stubborn.”

  Dr. Witherspoon came over and placed his hand on Jeremy’s shoulder. “I’ve been thinking; how’d you like me to talk to your parents about this first?”

  Jeremy rose to face the doctor. “You?”

  “I’m a professional, and I’m not involved to the same emotional degree as you are. I might be able to persuade them.”

  Jessica’s parents stepped up beside the doctor. “We understand their reluctance,” her father said. “It’s a hard decision for a parent to make.”

  Feeling irritated, Jeremy asked, “What’s so hard? It’s my body. I should have a say-so in what I do with it.”

  “One step at a time,” Dr. Witherspoon said. “Let me talk to them, explain the procedure. It isn’t without risks, Jeremy. Any time a person goes under anesthesia, there are risks.”

  “Such as?”

  Dr. Witherspoon glanced down at Jessica. “We can discuss them later.”

  “I don’t care about the risks; I want to donate my kidney to Jessie. My compatible kidney,” Jeremy added for emphasis.

  “I’ll call your father this afternoon and arrange for them to come to my office as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll come too,” Jeremy said.

  The doctor shook his head. “That might not be a good idea. Let me talk to them as calmly as possible in neutral territory. I’ll see what kind of progress I can make on my own.”

  That afternoon Jeremy returned to his father’s law office. He’d taken his father up on his offer to be a law clerk. Fortunately his father was in court, so Jeremy didn’t have to talk to him. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut about the test results, and he wanted Dr. Witherspoon to handle revealing the information. Also, he didn’t want another volatile confrontation. He hated to hurt his mother, but his father was being impossibly stubborn.

  Later Jeremy grabbed a burger at a fast-food drive-through, drove to Jessica’s and called his mother, saying he wouldn’t be home for dinner.

  She said, “Your father and I are seeing Dr. Witherspoon tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh? Well, let me know what he tells you,” Jeremy said as casually as he could.

  “Your father and I love you, Jeremy.”

  Caught off guard, Jeremy stammered, “I—I know, Mom.”

  “And we only want to do what’s best for you. Even … even if you don’t agree.”

  Her statement sounded ominous. “Everybody wants to do ‘what’s best,’ ” Jeremy answered. “That’s the problem. Sooner or later, someone has to give in.”

  Once he’d hung up, he took Jessica out to the backyard. Twilight was falling, and the June night closed around them like a soft whisper. Night-blooming jasmine perfumed the air. Overhead a violet sky was deepening to shades of midnight blue, and stars flickered on like fireflies. At the far end of the yard, between two thick tree trunks, a porch swing swayed. He sat Jessica down and settled beside her.

  She inhaled deeply. “I love the smell of summer, don’t you?”

  He was preoccupied and had to force his mind to change course. He was alone with Jessica in the light of a pale moon rising. He needed to forget their problems and
concentrate on her. “I love the smell of your hair,” he countered.

  “I have an appointment to get it all cut off next week.”

  “But why? I like your hair long, and you always have too.”

  “Because it looks terrible.” She fingered it. “Kidney failure is ruining it, so I’ll chop it off and stop feeling bad about the way it’s looking. It’s ugly.”

  “No—”

  “Jeremy, it’s okay. It’s only hair.”

  He could tell that cutting it would be difficult for her, but that she’d made up her mind to do so. “You can grow it long again after the transplant,” he said.

  “Right,” she said listlessly. “ ‘After the transplant’ is beginning to sound like some foreign planet, some faraway destination where I’ll never arrive.”

  “It’s going to happen, Jessica.” He hated to hear the sad resignation in her voice.

  “I worry about it, though.” She nibbled on her bottom lip. “It’s a big responsibility—taking someone’s organ from them. What if my body rejects it? Then everyone loses. You’re minus a kidney. And I’m back on dialysis.”

  “Is that what’s bothering you? You’re afraid you’ll reject my kidney?”

  “Yes.” She picked at peeling paint on the arm of the swing. “Dr. Witherspoon sent in a psychologist to talk to me. Some people aren’t good transplant candidates because they don’t plan on taking extra-good care of themselves.”

  “What’d you tell her?”

  “I told her taking care of myself wouldn’t be a problem for me. She said my fears are natural, that all recipients are uneasy about receiving another person’s organ.”

  “And there’s medication to keep you from rejecting.”

  “The drugs aren’t guarantees, Jeremy. Sometimes, despite all the best care, a person still rejects.”

  He could see how deeply she was troubled by the idea. “Are you upset because you’ll have to return to dialysis, or because you feel it’s necessary to keep my kidney safe and healthy?”

  She was amazed at his ability to instantly grasp her deepest, innermost feelings. At the bottom of her fears was the one about being inadequate, about being handed a responsibility that she might fail to live up to by default. “I don’t want to reject your kidney,” she mumbled.

  “You’re not less of a person if you do, Jessie. It’s not something to be ashamed of, like cheating on an exam or stealing from someone.”

  She sighed and leaned her head against his shoulder. “Aren’t you scared about losing an organ?”

  He didn’t answer immediately, and Jessica listened to the sounds of the night as she waited. Insects hummed, and water from the garden pond gurgled. Jeremy said, “It’s more like anxious than scared. With the surgery, I go to sleep and a few hours later wake up with a sore side and back. They tell me I’ll recover fast.” He paused, and she heard a dog barking far away. “Maybe it has something to do with Tom’s accident. I walked away with hardly a scratch while he died. I saw the car later; it was crumpled up like a squashed soda can. No one could figure out how I didn’t get hurt. I sure don’t know either.”

  She recalled the many discussions they’d had when their friendship was developing about his brother’s death. Over time, he’d expressed anger, guilt, depression. But now his voice was different, as if he’d come to some kind of peace with it.

  She listened as he continued. “You told me that God had saved me for a purpose. I’ve come to believe that the purpose was to help save you. Don’t worry, I haven’t got a God complex. But doing this for you is what I want to do. It’s what I need to do. In a way, it helps me make sense out of Tom’s dying while I’m still alive.”

  She could think of nothing to tell him that would fully express her gratitude. She slid forward, turned to embrace him, and kissed him longingly on the mouth.

  Jeremy was working in the law library the next day at noon, gathering books and articles for one of the attorneys in his father’s office, when a secretary stuck her head through the doorway. “You’ve got a call on line three, Jeremy.”

  He quickly picked up the receiver. It was Dr. Witherspoon. Jeremy’s hands grew clammy and his mouth went dry. “How’d the meeting go with my folks?”

  The doctor sighed heavily. “Not well. I couldn’t persuade them, son. I’m sorry. Your father is adamant about your not sacrificing your kidney, and there’s no way he’s going to relent.”

  Chapter

  11

  Jeremy hung up the phone. His parents weren’t going to let him be Jessica’s donor. In spite of all his pleading, all the information from Dr. Witherspoon, all the testing for compatibility, all the expressions of gratitude from Jessica’s parents, it wasn’t going to happen. Too numb to react, Jeremy sat and stared at the floor. He told himself to call Jessica, but he wasn’t up to talking to her. Not yet. He needed time to think.

  A rap on the law library door roused him from his stupor. His father stood in the doorway, his face a guarded mask. “I dropped your mother at her office. I thought you and I could discuss our meeting with Dr. Witherspoon.”

  “I heard about the meeting,” Jeremy said, ignoring his father’s offer.

  “Your mother and I did what we think is right. I know our decision isn’t popular, but it’s the one we felt was in your best—”

  “I know,” Jeremy interrupted. “In my best interests.”

  “I hope you can be civilized about this.”

  “Sure. My girlfriend’s dying and you won’t let me help her.”

  “That’s not fair, Jeremy. Her doctor will look for another donor. She’s in capable hands.”

  Jeremy gave him a cold stare.

  “Your mom and I aren’t the bad guys in this, Jeremy. We’re genuinely sorry about Jessica and we’re willing to support and help out in any other way but this.”

  “It’s my body,” Jeremy muttered stubbornly.

  “But it’s our decision. When you’re eighteen, you can do whatever you want—although even then I’d counsel against your donating. But for now, you’re our responsibility and we’re going to protect you from making an irrevocable choice.”

  “In two years, when I’m eighteen, Jessica may not be alive.”

  “You don’t know that. No one knows what tomorrow holds for them, son. You may have a child someday who needs a kidney and you’d be unable to help him. Then you’d regret this decision.”

  Jeremy shook his head in disgust. “That’s a far-fetched possibility.”

  “Anything can happen,” his father said. “Anything.”

  “You know what’s weird?” Jeremy didn’t wait for his father’s response. “I know you and Mom write a big check to the Humane Society and the Wildlife Preservation League, even that Save the Whales group every year. You have mercy on helpless animals, but not on people. You won’t do a thing to let me help Jessica, and she’s more valuable than any animal.”

  His father raked his hand through his short hair and sighed. “Listen, I’ve got a client coming in fifteen minutes. I can’t stand here and argue this out with you right now. If you want to discuss it at home tonight—”

  “No,” Jeremy said calmly. “I’m through talking.”

  His father looked surprised. “Well, if you change your mind …”

  “I won’t.”

  When his father had gone down the hall to his office, Jeremy sat fingering the stack of law books. So, the battle was over. He had lost. No! Jessica had lost. He picked up the phone and dialed her number.

  “I’m not mad at anybody, Jeremy.” Jessica’s voice sounded soft and breathy. Dr. Witherspoon had already called and broken the news to her family. “I don’t have long to talk because Mom’s taking me to dialysis soon, but I understand how your parents feel. I don’t hold their decision against them.”

  He did. “What about your parents?”

  “Mom’s pretty shaken up, but Dad’s more philosophical about it. He seems more understanding. He keeps saying we’ll find some other donor
.”

  “Can I see you later?”

  She hesitated. “Maybe it would be better if you didn’t come around for a few days.”

  He felt sick at her suggestion. And afraid they’d never let him see her again. “Why?”

  “Just until Mom calms down. She’s … mixed up … and angry.” He could tell it was difficult for Jessica to talk to him about this. “Give her a few days to get a better perspective on things. She’ll come around. I know she will.”

  “Things like me?”

  “Things like the unfairness of life.”

  “I love you, Jessie.”

  “I love you too. That won’t change.”

  He didn’t want to hang up. Didn’t want to sever the connection. He wanted to hold her, kiss her. Quietly he said, “It’s not over, Jessie.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m going to find a way to do what I want to do.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. I won’t let my father stop me.”

  Jeremy spent the next week working and keeping to himself. At home he hardly spoke to his parents. He was aloof and impersonal, and went out of his way to avoid them—leaving the room when they entered, eating no meals with them and staying in his room as much as possible. They didn’t pressure him, content to give him the latitude to nurse his hurt and anger.

  The worst part of his self-imposed exile was not seeing Jessica. If she didn’t answer the phone when he called, her mother hung up on him. In a way, he didn’t blame Mrs. McMillan. Her daughter was acutely ill, and her best chance for recovery had been snatched away. He had gotten their hopes up and then failed to deliver on his promise.

  It was only mid-July, but the remainder of the summer stretched before him like an unbroken chain of dreary days and endless nights. He knew he’d have to do something to turn things around, not only for himself, but for Jessica.