The Donor (The Full Novella) Read online

  “They keep dying,” he says, and I can’t tell if he means to say it to me.

  I don’t want to interrupt. I think I’m maybe not supposed to be in his space. I still don’t know how this donor thing works, especially under my circumstances.

  As I'm about to back out of the room, he turns, dripping net in hand. He positions it away from me, full of whatever is inside, and walks into the kitchen where I assume he throws it out.

  “What was it?” I ask when he is back in the living room.

  “Seahorse.” He walks past me and sits on the couch, taking his laptop from the coffee table and opening it. “Do you want to sit?” he asks as an afterthought.

  I sit down and he types something into his computer. “Does that happen a lot?” I ask, unsure of what else to say.

  Jonah glances at me, his expression telling me he's surprised that I want to know. “It's a recent problem,” he says. “I'm working on resolving it, though.”

  “Oh,” I say, even more uncertain of what to say now.

  “Is there something you need?” he asks.

  The tone of his words combined with how he isn't looking at me almost hurts. I wonder vaguely if it's because he knows about me now.

  “No,” I manage to say, though my chest aches when the word leaves my mouth.

  Maybe I’m not acting enough like a donor. I should be in my room, waiting until he needs me, not trying to make friends. I’m replaceable, just like the seahorses.

  Now his full attention is on me. “Casey?” He places the laptop back on the coffee table and takes my hand, which is sitting in my lap. “What is it?” The coolness of his fingers slows my heart rate. I know I probably shouldn't let myself like how his hand feels in mine so much, but I can't help it.

  I don’t know what tips him off to my uneasiness; maybe it’s a non-human thing. I clear my throat, trying to not think about it. “Nothing,” I say. “My head kind of hurts.”

  He doesn't seem convinced, but he lets it slide. “You can lie down as I work,” he offers. “I shouldn't be long. A few hours at most.”

  “Okay,” I say, pulling away from him and standing.

  Jonah tugs gently on my hand. “Where are you going?” he asks with a slight smile. “You can stay here.”

  I smile a little. I sit back down.

  Jonah moves over so I can stretch out next to him. I curl onto my side and place my hands under my head, which is right near his legs. I like the feeling of being close. Of feeling human for once.

  He lifts my head with one of his hands and places a throw pillow underneath. “How's that?” he asks.

  I smile up at him. “Perfect.”

  Jonah retrieves his laptop and continues typing. The soft sound relaxes me. “What do you do?” I ask. I hadn't bothered with the question when we met online. It didn't seem important to me then.

  “I own my own company,” he says. “It deals with mainly sending out emails and keeping track of inventory. Most of the time it's pretty boring.”

  “Inventory?” I ask, watching the tank in front of us, one seahorse short now. “You sell stuff, like you own a store or something?”

  “It's mostly web based,” he says. “But technically yes.”

  He didn't really answer the question I want him to, which is what does he exactly sell, but I decide that it doesn't really matter right now. Whatever it is, it provides me with money I can send back home. I shouldn't care about much else.

  I think about my parents, who despite the short phone call I have with them once or twice a day, are probably wondering why I’ve been out here so long. I have to think of something soon, something that will put them at ease while the days I’m away from home tick by. The thought of coming up with yet another lie to tell them causes a dull ache in my stomach.

  “Are you feeling okay?” Jonah asks.

  There's a dull throb in my temples, but it's nowhere near as bad as it could be. “Yeah, why?”

  “Your expression changed just now.”

  I try to push away the fact that while I've been studying the fish tank, he's been studying me. “Oh,” I say.

  “What's on your mind?”

  He’s still typing, but he stops when my eyes settle on him.

  “I didn't come here so you could worry about taking care of me or whatever,” I say. “I don't want you to look at me like...” I can't finish.

  “Like you're sick.”

  My voice is raspy when I turn away. “Yeah.”

  Jonah gently closes the laptop and sets it aside. I sit up so we can face each other. “Is that why you’re here?” he asks. “Why you don’t want your parents to know?”

  I take a deep breath. “I guess,” I say. “At least part of it.”

  He nods, seeming to think it over. His hand grazes mine again as he turns toward me. “I promise,” he says. “I’ll try to treat you like you’re not sick.”

  I smile a little. “Thanks.”

  “But as my donor, I’m responsible for you,” he continues. “It’s in the contract and everything.” He smiles. “Technically, you have to do whatever I ask as well, but that’s never been me.”

  I fold my hands in my lap.

  “So if you’re not feeling well, you need to let me know.”

  “I already told you no hospitals.”

  Jonah shakes his head. “I’m not talking about that. Honestly, I don’t like hospitals either.” He hesitates, but he smoothes a piece of hair behind my ear. Little goose bumps form on the back of my neck. He smiles again. “I just don’t want anything to happen to you,” he says. “If I can help it, at least.”

  I understand where he’s coming from. I honestly didn’t know what I was expecting. Maybe if I had chosen one of the creepers in my inbox on MyTrueMatch instead of him, I would have been matched with someone who didn’t care. Someone who didn’t treat me like I was sick, but didn’t treat me like I was human either.

  His hand rests on my neck and I grasp it, squeezing slightly. “Okay,” I agree. “I’ll tell you when I don’t feel good.”

  Jonah smiles to himself. “Good.” He picks up his laptop again and my skin is cold where his hand just was.

  ***

  The day they told me what the diagnosis was, it was quiet. When I didn’t respond to what the doctor was saying, a silence so long and so…final stretched from phone line to phone line. Birds were chirping outside, a lawnmower sounded in the distance. I stared at the clock above the stove. It was in the shape of an owl, the belly filled with numbers. I bought it for Dad with my allowance money for his birthday when I was ten.

  Miss Williams?

  Miss Williams, just because it’s inoperable doesn’t mean we don’t have options.

  I stared at the tablecloth, the same torn, stained, flower-printed thing we had since I was in middle school.

  Miss Williams?

  I blinked a few times. How long? How long had I had this thing growing inside me, choking off blood to my brain, killing me? I wanted to ask, but I didn’t really want to know.

  And he had said we. We had a tumor. We only had two months to live. We were going to die.

  Miss Williams, I know this is a lot to take in, but talking about it will help. We can make an appointment and discuss options.

  Yes. Our options for our cancer.

  Miss Williams?

  I slowly hung up the phone, pushing it all the way across the table until it clattered to the floor.

  ***

  Jonah is in front of the fish tank again. This is after he makes us both dinner and refuses to let me leave the table until I eat mine and at least one third of his. I don't mind. For someone who doesn’t really eat, he’s a really good cook. He clears the dishes and instructs me to wait for him in the living room, which I also don't mind. I want to stare at the fish tank without him staring at me, studying me.

  I watch as a black and yellow striped fish swims past my face and then through a hole in the bright purple coral. I search for the remaining seahorse and
after a few seconds find it, anchoring itself to a different piece of coral in the back. It suddenly jerks forward when Jonah is beside me; I hadn't heard him leave the kitchen. When I look at him he’s staring at the same thing I was.

  I move aside slightly, wanting to stare at him for a while. I can't explain why. I think it’s maybe because I had spent so long trying to get here, in this place, in this house, making money for my family. When I first started out with MyTrueMatch.com, I would have taken anyone that was remotely sane. From just talking to him, I knew Jonah was far more than that. I was only expecting to be something like a live-in hooker with a twist, but what I got was more than I had imagined. I like Jonah. I like him a lot.

  Jonah dips a blue net into the water and catches the seahorse. He’s so gentle with it, as if it’s a newborn floating in water. Then he places it in a clear plastic cup filled with water that’s sitting on the lid to the tank.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, suddenly alarmed. Is this one sick too? Will this one die as well?

  He turns to face me, smiling a little. “I have to take him out,” he explains.

  “Why?”

  He places the net in a bucket under the tank. “He isn't eating,” he says softly, like he's afraid the fish will hear him. “Everything I've researched says that if they aren't eating, they should be in a tank by themselves.”

  “Oh.”

  Jonah turns completely around now. “I have a different tank upstairs,” he explains. “I was hoping to have it done for before you came, but it wasn't ready until last night.”

  I still can't tear my eyes away from the little brown figure in the cup he is now holding. For some reason, I don't want him to move the seahorse. I want things to stay as they are.

  “Want to come?” he asks.

  I nod and follow him up the stairs. We pass my room and walk down the hall to somewhere I haven’t gone before. When Jonah opens the door, a master bedroom greets us. The room is all white: walls, bedding, carpet. The furniture is black wood, and there are matching pillows on the king-sized bed. There are a lot of windows in the room as well. They take up most of the walls, and gentle light shines in.

  His room. Shit. I’ve never been in a guy’s room before.

  “You can sit down if you want,” Jonah says, already concentrating on the small tank in the corner of the room. I almost didn’t notice it.

  There’s a bench with pillows at the foot of the bed. I decide that’s my best bet.

  Jonah turns his back to me and a square of yellow light hits him in the shoulder, illuminating his grey shirt as he gets to work on placing the seahorse in his new home.

  “So, the whole sunlight thing…” I say awkwardly.

  He doesn’t look away from what he’s doing. “It’s tempered glass,” he says. “UV rays can’t penetrate it.”

  I have to hand it to him, I hadn’t thought about that.

  Jonah gently pours the seahorse into the tank, studying it for a few seconds before he speaks again. “As soon as I knew I could have windows, I had the entire room re-done with as many as possible.” He smiles to himself. “If I could make all of the walls glass, I would.”

  I laugh. “It’d be like you’re in a fish tank,” I point out.

  Jonah finally turns to me. “I never thought of it that way.”

  I smile. He smiles. It’s an incredibly comfortable conversation given the situation. I turn my head to look out the window where the snow still hasn’t completely melted. The sunlight off of the white surface almost gives me an instant migraine, so I turn back to Jonah, who is staring at the seahorse. We both watch in silence.

  ***

  I came to hate hospitals and doctor’s offices. After I received the phone call to end all phone calls, they were relentless in trying to get me to come back in to see them, to get more tests that would lead to more dead ends. There was no need to go back; I knew how much time I had left and I wasn’t about to waste it in a sterile environment where everyone gave cheerful words of encouragement with sad eyes.

  But when the nosebleeds became worse, when the headaches lasted days instead of hours, I started to get scared. I started wondering if I should maybe listen to all of the voicemails the doctor’s office left. Maybe they had made a mistake. Maybe I could be cured.

  One time, I had five piled up in my inbox and I sat at the back of the bus on the way home from work listening to them. Surprisingly, there wasn’t a person on the other end telling me that it wasn’t over or that we’d get through this together. The sound that came out of the receiver was mechanical, a recorded message over and over.

  [South Sacramento Medical Center]: This is South Sacramento Medical Center calling to remind you to schedule an appointment with Doctor Andrews. Our hours are nine am to six pm, Monday through Friday, and nine am to three pm Saturday. If you would like to schedule an appointment, please call during these times. If you would like to cancel our automated service, press one.

  I didn’t think twice as my finger found the number and pressed down. Hard.

  ***

  Eventually, my head starts to hurt more so I lie down on the bench at the end of the bed. If Jonah minds, it doesn't show. He fiddles around with the tank some more and watches as the seahorse bobs up and down. The tail curls around a piece of coral and the tiny fin on its side propels it just enough to stay balanced. The sound of water bubbling inside the tank is soothing. It's almost enough to distract me from the slight throbbing behind my eyeball.

  I don't realize I've closed my eyes until my head is being lifted. My eyes pop open. Jonah's calm expression greets me as he places a pillow under my head. He leaves the room and I hear water running across the hall. I sit up slightly, the dizziness gone for the moment. There's a small table next to the bed where there's a framed picture of a young girl. I strain to make out the features in the photograph, but all I can see is a girl with light brown hair, about ten or eleven. She's wearing a dress with some cartoon character painted in the center of her chest and she's smiling widely at the camera—the person behind the lens. What sticks out the most is the space under her nose where a plastic tube is, like the ones they give you for oxygen in a hospital.

  Jonah comes back into the room, so I turn my gaze to him. His expression tells me he's seen me looking at the photo, but he says nothing about it. He smiles and opens a drawer in his dresser, producing a prescription bottle and an empty plastic bag—the kind he filled with my blood a week ago.

  “Do you feel well enough?” he asks, setting down the bag and what I'm assuming is a needle sealed in its own plastic. “You don’t have to if you don’t feel well.”

  “I feel fine,” I say.

  Jonah opens the bottle and takes out a white pill. When he hands it to me, I shake my head.

  “I'm not scared,” I say.

  He smiles again and slides the pill back into the bottle. “Would you like to sit on the bed?” he asks. “You're a little scrunched up over here.”

  I uncurl my legs and move onto the bed, carefully lying on top of the soft comforter. Jonah isn't far behind me, lining everything up on the nightstand, right next to the picture of the smiling little girl. Again, he sees me staring at it, but he doesn't say a word. I scoot back so my head is against a pillow and my skirt rides up to my thigh. I'm about to fix it when Jonah does it for me.

  To avoid any awkwardness, I stick out my arm for him and he wraps a rubber band around it.

  “You're not afraid of needles?” he asks.

  I laugh a little. “No. Are you?”

  He unwraps said needle and smiles. “I suppose not.”

  Jonah feels around my arm a little, studying the veins there before he sticks the needle in. It's only a slight pinch but it still surprises me. He tapes the needle to my arm and I watch as dark red liquid rushes out, down a thin tube, and into the bag next to my hip.

  I'm more tired now, watching the whole process. Maybe it has to do with not sleeping well last night or the blood loss, but I find myself fi
ghting to stay awake.

  I glance at the picture of the little girl again notice that she has dark circles under her eyes, like she hasn't slept in a while either.

  Jonah finally acknowledges my staring. “That's Myra,” he says. “She's my daughter.”

  ***

  I knew I wanted to become a marine biologist from a very young age. Despite the fact that we never had much money, Mom and Dad invited my whole class to the aquarium for my sixth birthday. I know that there were a lot of kids running around and laughing, there was a cake shaped like a whale, and balloons. But those are just fuzzy background images compared to what I actually remember about that day.

  We walked into this dark room where there were huge tanks with different colored fish swimming around, then turned a corner to walk through a tunnel made completely out of glass, like we were walking on the ocean floor as fish swam above and all around us. My classmates were enamored with the sharks and sturgeons that swam by, making loud noises that echoed all around me. It wasn’t until after we were through the tunnel, when I found the small octopus tank, that I fell in love.

  It was smaller than I thought it would be, that much I remember. It was a deep red and covered most of the light above its tank with one suctioned tentacle. It didn’t really move, just sat there waiting for something I couldn’t guess. Mom picked me up so I could get a better look at it.

  I was engrossed, watching the animal behind the glass, not wanting to miss the moment when it actually moved.

  “Dolly,” Mom read the plaque under the tank, giving the Octopus a name that made me smile. “The average life span of an octopus is a few months to five years,” she said thoughtfully. “Huh, that’s not very long.”

  In my small, six year old world, I thought time was a thing that grownups talked about. People who needed to worry about stuff like getting to work and paying bills on time. I didn’t have any concept of death, or how long anyone or anything lived, but I remember thinking that five years was a long time, but a few months was nothing.