“Doctor Bradley. Hi. Is everything okay?” my father asked.
“I wanted to come out here and give you guys an update. We’ve successfully detached the blood supply and we’re about to harvest the liver portion from the donor. I’m thinking now it probably won’t take the full twelve hours. Nine at the most. By four or five o’clock, we should be rolling her out of the operating room and into a recovery room.”
“But things are going okay for now?” I asked.
“They’re going very well. I think we can keep our heads above water with this one. Sit tight for a few more hours. We’re almost done,” the doctor said.
It was painful, waiting that long for my mother to get out of surgery. Apparently, they had to disconnect both the donor and the recipient’s liver from their own blood supply before the transplant could even take place. Then there was the matter of harvesting the tissue, putting it in my mother, stitching everything back up, and reconnecting blood supplies.
It was a lengthy process.
I paced endlessly up and down the corridor of the waiting room. Finally, at a little past four, the doctor came back into the room. He told us the surgery went well and Mom was in her own little room coming out of anesthesia now, which caused me to race past the doctor and my father in order to get back to her quicker.
“Mom? Mom! Where are you?”
“She’s in here,” a nurse said. “But be quiet. She needs a stress-free environment.”
She groaned and shifted around in her bed as I sat on the edge of it. I took her hand and brought it to my lips. Her eyes slowly opened, and I saw for the first time that they were white again.
“Oh, Mom. You look beautiful,” I whispered.
“I want you to schedule me an appointment for a rehab clinic,” she said.
She coughed and sputtered as my father came into the room.
“Sweetheart, how are you feeling?” he asked.
“I want you and Tyler to get me an appointment for rehab. I’m not doing this again. I can’t do this again. I’m not drinking anymore,” she said.
“How drugged up is she still?” I asked. I turned my head to look at the doctor as a smile slid across his face.
“She’s not. We have to wait a period of time between anesthesia and her pain medication so the two don’t overlap.”
“So she’s not currently drugged?” I asked.
“Not enough to put her in any sort of a dystopian state.”
I looked back at my mother and watched as my father leaned over to kiss her.
“Promise me you’ll find me a rehab,” she whispered.
“I promise, honey. We’ll find you the best one,” my father said.
“And we’ll take you straight from the hospital to there, if you want us to,” I said.
“That sounds good. The sooner I can get through it, the sooner I can get home,” she said.
“I’m proud of you, Mom. So, so proud of you.”
Bending over, I kissed her cheek as relief flooded my veins. We had gotten through it. My mother was alive, she was agreeing to rehab, and she was on her way to recuperating from this nightmare we had all found ourselves in.
I wanted to call Ana with the good news, even if I was still upset with her.
But just like she hadn’t all morning, not once did she answer my call.
Ana
My eyes fluttered open and I stared up at the same ceiling I had been looking at for the past three days. The rhythmic beeping of my heart monitor pulled me from my deep slumber, and I swallowed thickly. My mouth felt dry. My head spun from my nausea. The pain in my side was great, and it wrapped around my entire hip area as I struggled to find the button to release my pain medication.
I kept hearing my cell phone ring on and off, but I had been too weak over the past couple days to answer it. I knew who it was, though. I knew it was Tyler calling me. And I felt terrible that I couldn’t answer the phone. He needed me. He needed my support and guidance. My care. And I couldn’t give it to him because I was lying helpless in a hospital bed.
A nurse came in and checked my vitals, then helped me with a glass of water. She sat me up in bed, and I grimaced at the pain. I wondered how long it would take for it to dissipate. I gulped the water down and slowly felt some strength trickle back into my bones. Enough strength to reach for my cell phone. Twelve missed calls. I had twelve missed calls, and all of them had been from Tyler.
I quickly called him back and held the phone to my ear.
“Are you serious?” he asked when he answered the phone.