“I don’t know what to say. That’s awful. Did she know you weren’t the father?”
“She knew. She won’t admit it. But she knew from the start. Beck was born a few weeks early. I didn’t think anything of it.” He shook his head. “If it wasn’t for the surgery, I might never have found out.”
“God, Drew. You found out while he was in surgery. Talk about stress on top of stress.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t a good day. Turned out, it was one of many not-so-good days to come. The next few weeks got even worse.”
“What happened?”
“Alexa and I were over before I even left the hospital that night. The truth is, we were over a long time before the accident. But Beck and I…”
Drew turned his head for a few seconds, and I watched as he swallowed. I knew he was fighting back tears. He still had my feet in his hands, but he had stopped moving. I had no idea what I was supposed to say or do, but I wanted to offer what comfort I could. So I sat up and crawled into his lap. Wrapping myself around his body, I gave him the biggest hu
g I could possibly give.
After a few minutes, I pulled back and spoke quietly. “You don’t have to tell me any more. Another time, maybe?”
Drew gave me a small smile. “That day changed the way I felt about Alexa, but it didn’t change anything I felt about Beck. He was still my son.”
“Of course.”
“Anyway, a few days after Beck’s surgery, he sprang a fever. His wound was healing, but he seemed to be getting sicker again. They put him on IV antibiotics to treat a possible surgery-related infection, but they didn’t help. The doctors ended up having to open him back up and remove the portion of the kidney they’d left in. And in the meantime, the other kidney had started to show signs of having trouble functioning. It’s actually not uncommon after one kidney is removed, or partially removed, for the other to have difficulty working properly for a while.”
“The poor baby. He must have been in so much pain. A car accident, surgery, starting to heal, and then more surgery.”
Drew blew out a deep breath. “The days where he would get upset were actually more comforting than the days he was too weak to do anything. Looking at your child lying there and not being able to help is the worst feeling in the world.”
“I can’t even imagine it.”
“After another week, things weren’t getting much better. The infection had cleared, but the other kidney still wasn’t functioning great. They started him on dialysis, which made him feel better and he got healthier, but they also started to talk about putting him on a donor list if his function testing got any lower.
“People spend years on that list waiting. And taking a five year old who feels otherwise healthy for hours of dialysis every other day was tough. So I had them test me for a match. And amazingly enough, even though I wasn’t his biological father, my kidney was a good match. When he was healthy enough for more surgery, I donated one of my kidneys, which they transplanted to the left side where they’d removed the damaged kidney. That way he’d have two full kidneys, and if his other one didn’t ever fully kick back in, he had double the chance of one of them working at least.”
I remembered Drew’s back. “That’s what the scar is from?”
He nodded. “To make an already long story a little less long, the transplant was a success, and his other kidney kicked in and started functioning again a few weeks later. He’s as healthy as a horse now. But it was scary as hell at the time.”
The entire story was so much to take in. I had so many thoughts, but one of them was more prominent than the others.
“You’re a beautiful man, Drew Jagger. And I don’t mean on the outside.” I leaned down and trailed a line of kisses from one end of his scar to the other.
“You only think that because I skipped the part where I packed up Alexa’s shit and moved it while she wasn’t home,” he teased, although I could tell he wasn’t joking.
“She deserved it. I would have cut holes in the crotches of all her pants, the stupid bitch.”
Drew pulled his head back, his face amused. “Is that the relationship advice you would have given me if I’d shown up at your office seeking counseling?”
I thought for a minute. What would I have done? “I only work with couples that genuinely want to make it work. If I’d heard your story, saw the look in your eyes, I wouldn’t have taken you as a client. Because I’d basically be giving the party who wanted to make it work false hope in that case. Not to mention, it would be wrong to take money to do something I knew was never going to happen.”
“Has that happened to you before? Have you had clients where one wants it to work and not the other?”
“It has. It’s not uncommon, actually. I have separate sessions in the beginning so the parties can say things freely without worrying about hurting the other person’s feelings. I find I get more truth in those sessions than anything else. When I first started, I had a couple that had been married for twenty-seven years—a wealthy, very social couple with two grown daughters. The man was gay and living a life he felt he was supposed to live after growing up with ultra-conservative, religious parents. It took him until he was fifty-two, but he came out of the closet to his wife and told her they should separate. He felt terrible and had been staying because he loved her, just not in the way a husband should love his wife. I wound up counseling them to separate and helping her get through it.”
“Shit. Wish we’d been sharing space back then. I could have gotten her a nice settlement,” Drew joked.
I shoved at his chest. “Thought you only represented men.”
“How rich were they? I might have made an exception.”