“My wife and son were in a car accident. They were brought in by ambulance,” I yelled through a round hole to the woman behind thick Plexiglas.
“Last name?”
“Jagger.”
She looked up and perked one eyebrow. “Those lips, I have to ask. Any relation to Mick?”
“No.”
She made a face, but pointed at a door to my left. “Room 1A. I’ll buzz you back.”
Blunt abdominal trauma. That’s what the doctor had told us two hours ago. Alexa had needed a few stitches in her head, but Beck wasn’t as lucky. His car seat had felt the full impact of the collision when a floral delivery van lost its brakes and ran a red light into moving crosstown traffic. He’d swerved to try to avoid the crash, but ended up colliding with the back driver’s side of Alexa’s car. Exactly where Beck had been sitting.
The doctors had assured us his injuries didn’t appear to be life threatening, but an ultrasound showed there was damage to his left kidney—at least a small nick that needed to be repaired right away. I was now waiting for the nurses to bring me consent forms for surgery. Beck slept peacefully as I sat by his bedside. Alexa was getting another neurological exam in the room next to us.
After the doctor came in and told me the risks of the procedure, the nurse brought me in a stack of forms to fill out. Medical consent, privacy act, insurance authorizations, the last form was for directed blood transfusions.
The nurse explained that there wasn’t time before Beck’s surgery to collect blood from us, so in the off-chance he needed blood, he’d be given blood from the blood bank. However, we could donate our blood and store it for him for future use, if necessary. I filled out the form to get typed and cross-matched while we waited and asked the nurse to have Alexa sign everything next door. I didn’t want to leave Beck alone in case he woke up.
The next few hours were hell while my son was in surgery. It took two hours for the assistant surgeon to come out and speak with us. He pulled a paper mask down.
“Things aren’t quite as simple as we’d initially thought. The damage to your son’s kidney was more extensive than the CT showed. Right now we’re attempting to repair the laceration, but the tear is surrounding the vascular pedicle, which contains the arteries and veins that connect it to the aorta. I need you to understand that there’s a chance we won’t be able to make the repair well enough to safely leave the kidney inside your son’s body. If that’s the case, he’ll need to undergo a partial or full nephrectomy.”
He attempted to convince us that having one kidney was perfectly fine. I knew plenty of people only had one, but if we were born with two, I wanted my son to get the benefit of both, if at all possible.
Alexa and I had barely talked, other than my making sure she was okay. I was focused on Beck, and part of me blamed her for the accident. Not that it was her fault, but if she hadn’t been so concerned with buying another damn dress to go out tonight, none of this would have happened.
“I saw a machine down by the elevators. You want some coffee?”
Alexa nodded.
When I returned with two coffees, the nurse was already talking to Alexa. “Oh, Mr. Jagger. Here’s your blood card. It has your type on it if you should ever need it. We give it to everyone we run for blood donations.”
“Thank you. Am I a compatible donor with Beck?”
“Let me see his chart.” She walked to the foot of the bed where a metal chart was hanging. As she flipped through pages she said, “You’re type O negative, so that means you can give blood to anyone.” She stopped at a pink page. “You’re lucky. It’s not often a stepfather is a universal donor.”
“I’m his father, not his stepfather.”
The nurse hung Beck’s chart back on the bed’s foot rail and returned to the clipboard she’d brought in with her. A look of bewilderment crossed her face. “You’re type O. Beckett is AB. ” She frowned. ?
??You’re saying Beckett is your biological son?”
“Yes.”
She looked to Alexa and then to me, shaking her head. “That’s not possible. An O can’t genetically make a child with type AB blood.”
I was exhausted from one hell of a day, between burying my father and my wife and child getting into an accident. I had to have misunderstood.
“The lab made a mistake then?”
The nurse shook her head. “They’re usually pretty good…” She looked back and forth between me and my wife again. “…but I’ll have them come up and draw a fresh sample.” After that, she practically ran out of the room.
I turned to look at my wife, whose head was hanging down. “This is a mistake in the lab, right, Alexa?”
I almost vomited when she looked up. She didn’t have to say a goddamn word for me to know.
There was no mistake.