Our Year of Maybe

a

minute.

“You both need more rest,” the nurse says, and I fall into darkness again.

Then there are more doctors. So many doctors over the next couple weeks that I can’t keep their names straight. They’re optimistic. They talk about the anti-rejection medication that I’ll have to take for as long as I have the “donor kidney.” As though at some point I’ll give it back to her.

That’s what they keep calling it. The “donor kidney.” They remind me a kidney transplant is not a permanent fix. I know that. That one day I’ll probably be back on dialysis, back on the transplant list. The “donor kidney” has an expiration date, an average of fifteen years.

Sophie’s kidney, I mentally correct.

Part of Sophie, inside me.

Patchy stubble covers my face, and the hair on my chest and stomach starts to grow back, too. I had to shave it before the surgery. The nurses a

sk if I want them to shave my uneven beard for me, or if they should bring me a razor. I tell them no because I feel weirdly proud of it. Part man, part beast, one functioning kidney. When I get home, I’ll take it all off. If my life were a piece of classic literature, shaving my beard would be a symbol of a fresh start.

“Excited to go home?” asks Dr. Paulson, the doctor I’ve had for years, on my last day in the hospital. A kidney doctor is a nephrologist. I learned that word when I was six.

“I can’t wait.” There are more weeks of recovery ahead of me, and I’ll be back soon for a follow-up, but getting discharged is a huge step, like my body has finally aced a test it spent years studying for.

Dr. Paulson smiles. He’s large and blond and built like a Viking.

When I was younger, I thought all kids admired their doctors the way I did. After all, they were saving our lives. But then I realized I didn’t think about his lifesaving abilities as much as the intriguing sharpness of his features. His broad chest. I had crushes on girls, too, and other guys. Sometimes they overlapped. Sometimes they didn’t. For a year when I was twelve, I seemed to fall in love with anyone who spoke more than a sentence to me. Then, of course, there’s Sophie herself and the spiderweb of feelings I’ve had for her for the past half decade. The ones I used to think were love that I forced back into friendship. Still, they occasionally flared back into crush territory. Made me wonder what a relationship between us might be like. How would it feel to hold Sophie’s hand or kiss her again—for real this time?

When I found the word “bisexuality,” it fit. I liked that I had a word to describe myself besides “chronically ill” or “transplant list candidate.” It was a word that didn’t care what my body could or couldn’t do. It was sure of itself and unapologetic about that sureness.

“I think I’m bisexual,” I told my parents when I was fourteen, even though it was more than a thought at that point. I was someone who told his parents everything, because I’d always had to. When they didn’t respond right away, I explained, “I mean—I’ve had crushes on both girls and guys. And in the future, I might want to date a girl . . . or a guy.”

Talking about dating also made me feel less sick. It helped to imagine a future in which I could go on a date and not have to worry about my next exchange.

My mom actually smiled. “Peter. We know what bisexual means. Your aunt Kerri is bi.”

Hearing my mom abbreviate it was both oddly embarrassing and a tremendous relief.

“Oh—she is?”

My dad nodded. “Whoever you date, Peter, all that matters to us is that they’re good to you.”

Somehow, though, I couldn’t tell Sophie. Maybe because she’d been one of the many people I’d crushed on. Mostly, though, I think it was this: that when it came to Sophie, not talking about dating and relationships was safer.

“A couple final checks and you should be good to go,” Dr. Paulson says now.

I clench my teeth, waiting for him to find something wrong as he peers at my charts. But there’s nothing wrong. Sophie’s kidney is functioning like a champ, and I really am good to go. No more exchanges. No more dialysis.

My parents and I wait for the elevator, both of them too giddy to stop smiling. My stomach twinges as we get inside. It drops us down, down, down, closer to the start of my new life. I wonder if it’ll be a good summer, a warm summer. I wonder how much closer my mom is to finishing her book. I wonder what classes I’ll take in the fall.

Sophie already went home, but I saw her nearly every day she was in the hospital. Our conversations were mostly silly and superficial, our medications making us loopy. Every night she was on the other side of the wall from me, which somehow felt farther away than across the street.

Sometimes I wanted to sneak into her room and talk without a dozen people in scrubs nearby. But I worried what I’d say to her when we were alone. If “thank you” could ever be enough.

If this means things between us are different now.

OTHER TIMES

I WAS IN LOVE WITH her once. Five years ago, sixth grade for me and seventh for her, my last year of public school.

I would express my love through song, I decided. I wrote about her hair and her freckles and the way she kept me company on my worst days. It was called “Dancing through My Heart,” and honestly, I should have stopped right there.