Zeke Blackwood sat in the small room, staring at the floor as he tried to come to terms with what he was about to do. Sure, it seemed like the right thing, and objectively speaking, it definitely was, but that didn’t make it any less terrifying. In fact, it probably made it worse, because that knowledge made him very much ashamed that all he really wanted was to gather his things and run far, far away. But he knew he couldn’t do that. He didn’t dare. After all, his little brother was depending on him.
With a sigh, he stood up and unbuttoned his shirt, hanging it in the small, wooden locker nearby. Next came his pants. Then his underwear. Everything ended up in a neat pile inside the locker. Before he knew it, he was slipping on the hospital gown and struggling to tie it closed in the back. However, after only a few moments of struggle, he managed to get the job done. Not long after that, a nurse appeared at the door.
“You ready, sweetie?” asked the matronly woman. She was a bit portly, but she had a kind face and a nice smile.
Zeke nodded, saying, “Yeah. As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess. How’s he doing?”
“He’s good,” the woman said, leading him to the next room. “He’s holding steady.”
“Good,” Zeke said, following her to their destination, where a hospital bed waited. He climbed onto it, stretching his long legs. It barely fit him. “I wish I could talk to him before I go under.”
The nurse frowned apologetically. “I’m sorry, but that’s not possible,” she said.
“I know,” was Zeke’s response. He’d already said what he needed to anyway. Anything else would just be an effort to delay the inevitable. Still, he very much wanted to talk to his little brother, Tommy, if only to assure him that everything was going to be okay.
Of course, there was no guarantee that Tommy would believe him. The kid was only twelve, but that was old enough that he could see the score. He knew that this transplant was his last hope. Without it, he would die. He might not make it, even if everything went exactly according to plan. Things were that bad, and Tommy no doubt knew that.
Zeke shifted on the bed, wishing for all the world that he hadn’t been put in this situation. After all, he liked having both of his kidneys. And he was deathly afraid of going under the knife. The last time he had, his life had been ruined. Who was to say this time wouldn’t be even worse? But Zeke had no intention of letting his little brother down, so the moment he’d found out that Tommy needed a kidney, he had volunteered without even a hint of hesitation. However, just because he wholeheartedly wanted to save his brother’s life, it didn’t mean that he wasn’t incredibly afraid of doing so.
It made him feel like a coward. All his life, he’d taken his role as a big brother very seriously, and despite the fact that Tommy had always been sick, Zeke had tried to teach him all the things he needed to know about being a man. God knew their father hadn’t really made any efforts in that arena – especially with Tommy. For the most part, he’d been there, sure, but the moment the man had discovered that his youngest was defective, he’d lost most of his fatherly instincts. No – aside from their mother, Zeke was all Tommy had. So, every time the idea of just getting up and running away crossed his mind, Zeke had to forcefully push it aside.
Zeke knew that the fear was rational. It wasn’t a split-second decision, like saving someone in the heat of the moment. That would’ve been better. Easier. Rather, it had been brewing for months, while Tommy had been waiting on the transplant list, while he steadily got worse and worse until their mother relented and allowed Zeke to make the sacrifice for which he’d volunteered in the very beginning. Ever since then, the fear had all but enveloped him. What if he died? What if Tommy didn’t make it? What if he someday needed the kidney he was giving up? A million different scenarios, each worse than the last, had flashed through his mind. For weeks, it had been like that, slowly eroding his confidence. Slowly smothering his courage. And by the time he’d trudged into the hospital to make good on his offer, he felt like a weakling. A coward. A selfish and terrible person. It made him sick just to remember the doubts that had assailed him during that period of weakness.
But he was here, wasn’t he? That had to count for something. Even if he wasn’t the courageous savior he’d always imagined himself to be, he had at least shown up. Not everyone could say that. Not even their father, who should’ve been the first in line.
He shook his head, dispelling that line of thought. He didn’t want to think about their deadbeat dad. Not now.
As those thoughts flowed through his mind, the nurse set up an I.V., then started a saline drip. Over the next hour or so, various doctors, nurses, and anesthetists stopped by to assure him that everything was going to go perfectly. He nodded. He smiled. He tried to put on a brave face. But he knew they all could see through him. He knew they could tell just how terrified he was.
None of them were worse than his mother, Janette, who came by about twenty minutes after the nurse started the I.V. She asked, “How are you holding up? Do you need anything?”
Zeke shook his head. “I’m fine, mom,” he replied, glancing at his mother. She was a small woman, thin and a bit ragged around the edges. But that was to be expected, given everything she’d had to deal with in her life. If it wasn’t enough that she’d married a loser like Zeke’s father, she’d also been forced to deal with a child who’d skated from one illness to another. The fact that she was still standing was a testament to how strong she really was, despite her frail appearance. “How’s Tommy?”
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“He’s good,” she said. “Scared, I guess. But that’s understandable. You know he appreciates what you’re doing, right?”
Zeke nodded. “I know,” he said. “I had a long talk with him last night. Can you believe he actually asked me not to do this? He still thinks the transplant list will come through.”
“It actually could,” Janette said.
Zeke snorted in derision. “You know that’s not true,” he said. They’d actually bumped him down a few tiers because of what they considered “genetic defects”. As if he had any less of a right to live than anyone else. He knew the administrators were simply doing their job and giving replacement organs to the people who had the best chance of living through it, but reason didn’t really stand a chance against his love for his brother.
“Yeah, probably,” she said. “I just wish…”
She left the statement hanging in the air. Zeke knew what she would say. He’d thought the same things. They wished that Tommy had been born healthy. They wished the various treatments he’d received throughout his life had worked. They wished it hadn’t come to this. But wishes didn’t affect reality. Magic wasn’t real.
If it was, Tommy wouldn’t be waiting on his big brother’s kidney, just for a chance at a few more years of life.
“Any of your friends come by?” she asked.
Zeke shook his head. “No,” he said. “I talked to a few of them yesterday. It’s fine. They all wished me luck and said they were praying for me.”
That wasn’t entirely true, because the only friends Zeke really kept up with were the ones he played video games with. Most of them had no idea who he really was, much less that he was about to undergo a very dangerous surgical procedure. It hadn’t always been like that, but after high school, he’d lost touch with most of his old friends as they went on to college or jobs or whatever other big plans they had.
“Well, that’s good,” she said, patting his arm.
They talked about small things for a few more minutes until yet another nurse came by and told Janette it was time for her to go back to the waiting room. After a tearful goodbye, she assured him that everything was going to be fine, then left Zeke alone with his own thoughts. Inevitably, mostly due to his mother’s mentioning of his friends, they went back to why he’d put his life on hold.
The simple fact of the matter was that he had no idea what to do going forward. Once, he’d had everything planned out. He’d been a hard worker. He had been dedicated. But after one little accident, his dreams had been shattered, and he’d scarcely had the time to wrap his head around it, much less pick up the pieces of his life plan.
As he lay there, waiting on them to wheel him back to the operating theater, Zeke’s mind made a beeline back to the day the course his life had irrevocably changed. The car had come out of nowhere, sideswiping his truck and pushing him off the road. Later, he would be told that his truck had flipped six times, but all he remembered was a cacophony of noise, metal grinding against metal, shattering glass, and his own screams. After that, he’d blacked out, and when he had finally come to, it had only taken one look at his mangled arm to know that his days as a baseball player had come to an end.
It had taken six surgeries over the course of a year just to give the thing fifty percent range of motion. So, the idea of throwing a baseball ever again was ludicrous. For most people, it would’ve just been a speed bump. After all, it was just a game, right? But for Zeke, it had always been more than that. Playing baseball had been his entire life. From the time he was five years old, he’d practiced almost every day – usually with his father playing a combination of coach, taskmaster, torturer, and drill sergeant. But one car accident, and all his hard work, all his time and effort had been flushed down the proverbial toilet. In an instant, his dreams of playing at a collegiate – or even a professional – level had ended. His dreams had been torn asunder. And without that, he had no idea what to do with the rest of his life.
Even more than that, most of his friends had been other baseball players. They probably hadn’t made a conscious decision to stop hanging out with him or anything, but most of them were like him. They lived for the game. And now that he wasn’t one of them, they’d moved on. Some had gotten scholarships to play in college. Others had gotten drafted into the major leagues. All except Zeke, who’d been left behind to wallow in his own depression. It was disgusting, and he hated himself for the way he felt, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted to move on. He’d tried so hard to do just that, but it never worked.
“You ready, kid?” came a gruff voice, drawing him out of his reverie. Zeke looked up to see a bear of a man wearing hospital scrubs.
Zeke nodded, “I guess.”
With that, the time had come. Zeke’s stomach clenched as the burly orderly wheeled him through the hospital corridors. A dark premonition came over him as he imagined the myriad ways such a surgery could go wrong. But he blocked it out, instead trying to focus on his surroundings. The florescent lights. The antiseptic smell. The white tiles on the floor. He noticed a thousand little details he probably never would have before, all in an effort to distract himself from the fact that there was a very real chance he was seeing his last sights. In fact, the feeling of impending death became so strong that he had to constantly remind himself that he couldn’t back out, that he couldn’t abandon Tommy. If he did, he would never forgive himself.
Eventually, they made their way to the operating room. It wasn’t a big place, and it was jam-packed with hospital staff, all wearing scrubs and surgical masks. There must’ve been ten people there, scurrying around as they went about their various tasks. After a few seconds, he was picked up and transferred to another bed in the center of the room. Bright lights bore down on him as another man – the doctor who would be performing the surgery – said something to try to calm Zeke down. It didn’t work. By the time the anesthetist placed a plastic mask over his face, Zeke’s heart was beating a thousand miles-per-hour. Thankfully, that all came to an abrupt end when the anesthesia started to kick in. Darkness closed in around him, and all the while, Zeke comforted himself with the fact that he had made the right decision. Unconsciousness soon overtook him, and not long after that, he died.