“Give me the broad strokes.”
“Okay,” he said, leaning back in the booth. “Well, all the standard surgical risks. Pain, infection, hernia. Bleeding, blood clots. General anesthesia, two-to three-hour surgery for a laparoscopic nephrectomy. Afterward, a couple of follow-up visits. No driving for two weeks, no lifting anything over ten pounds for a month. That’s it. Donors have the same life expectancy as non-donors. You’ll go on with your life.”
I sat back in my seat. “I need to think about this.”
“Of course.”
“It’s not really a good time for me. I’ve got wedding stuff for the next few months.”
“We can schedule it when you want.”
“And I don’t know if Gibson will give me the time off—”
“He will. I already asked him.”
I snorted.
“Look, I’m not trying to pressure you,” he said. “But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hope you did it. This is the best possible scenario for this kid. And Briana’s a friend of mine, and I want to see her relax a little bit. It’s been hard on her.”
Briana. That was a bonus to doing this, if I was being honest. I liked her. Not that she’d know it was me if I did decide to do it. I wanted to donate anonymously.
“I need to think about it,” I said. It was a big decision.
He nodded. “Okay. But I’m just sayin’. This would definitely get you a wedding date.”
“If I do it, I don’t want anyone knowing it’s me.”
He looked at me like I was speaking in tongues. “Why not? Man, you’d be the hero of the whole ER. They’d probably throw you a damn parade—”
“That is exactly why I don’t want anyone to know. I wouldn’t be doing it for the recognition. I’d be doing it to help him. I don’t like that kind of attention.”
I didn’t even tell anyone it was my last day at Memorial West. I didn’t want anyone to make a big deal about it. I didn’t even like people singing “Happy Birthday” to me. Getting tearful thank-yous from Benny’s family and backslaps and handshakes from strangers was my idea of hell.
“If I do it, we’re doing it anonymously and we’re doing it at the transplant center down at the Mayo in Rochester, not here. I don’t want anyone poking their head into my recovery room.”
He let out a sigh. “All right, all right. It’s your thing, I will respect it. But I still think you should ask her.”
I rubbed my forehead tiredly. “I can’t ask her to do this,” I mumbled.
“Why? What’s the worst thing she can say? No?” He took a swallow of his old-fashioned. “Just tell her what you told me. Level with her. Plus your family’s fucking hilarious. She’d probably have the time of her life over there.”
I let out a long breath. “She’d probably think we’re a bunch of weirdos.”
The idea of her being submerged into that chaos was enough to give me heart palpitations. Grandpa trying to run people into the bushes in his electric wheelchair, Mom talking about sex toys and lubricants, while Jafar squawked profanities. No. God, no.
Zander swayed his tumbler at me. “Your family is awesome. Hell, I’d be your date if I could. And I wanna see if you can pull this shit off.” He chuckled into his glass.
I looked at my phone and the string of texts. They didn’t even need me for this conversation, they were off to the races all on their own. They bought this hook, line, and sinker. And why wouldn’t they?
It felt like some strange self-fulfilling prophecy, like I’d created Briana by speaking the lie into the universe. She was exactly the kind of woman I would like to bring home to my family. Smart, successful, likable—beautiful. And she worked with me, just like I’d alluded to when I told them I was seeing someone. Absolutely nobody would feel sorry for me because my ex was marrying my brother if I showed up with this woman on my arm. She was, for all intents and purposes, perfect.
But I had no idea how to broach this subject with her. At all. And part of me worried that if I did, she’d be so turned off or weirded out by it that she’d stop talking to me altogether.
This new friendship was the only good thing happening to me at the moment. I didn’t want to jeopardize that.
Still, the idea of admitting to my family that there was no girlfriend…I couldn’t tell which scenario was worse: the one where I maybe scared off the only friend I’d made since coming here, or the one where I showed up alone while Amy married Jeremiah and everyone watched to see if I’d die of a broken heart.
“How did I get myself into this situation?” I breathed.
Zander shook his head. “Just ask her. Trust me. She’s one of the coolest people I know.”
I glanced at my phone again. This time Dad had texted. Can’t wait to meet her.
Everyone wanted me to be okay. They were so happy because this was proof that I was okay, that I’d moved on, that I was whole. It was permission for them to let the Amy/Jeremiah thing go, to be excited for them, to accept this new reality. I could feel the elation coming through my phone, the collective sigh of relief that this was a real thing, a real woman—real closure to what had happened.
If I’d had any doubts about how badly my family needed this, this was the answer.
I glanced at Briana across the restaurant. This time she was looking back. She waved, and leaned in and said something to Hector. He looked over at me and waved too. Then she jumped off her barstool and headed in our direction.
I got instantly nervous. Like she’d somehow know about the miscommunication with my family and demand an explanation. I felt myself clamming up the closer she got, like my ability to speak was being sucked into a vacuum.
“Hey,” she said as she got to the table. “You came.” She smiled at me in a way that made her whole face light up.
Luckily I didn’t have to answer, because Zander broke in. “Sit,” he said, scooting over.
She slid into the booth, set her purse next to her, and plucked one of Zander’s french fries off his plate and ate it. “What are you guys talking about over here?” she asked, chewing. “I can hear you laughing across the restaurant.”
Zander pushed his plate toward her and nodded at me. “Talking about the time Jacob carried an injured ATV driver out of the woods a few years ago.”
I blinked at him. That was not what we were talking about. It was a true story, but we hadn’t brought it up in years. What was he doing? Was he wingmanning me?
Briana arched an eyebrow at me. “Oh yeah? What happened?”
I cleared my throat. “He crashed it. Broke both feet. We couldn’t get a signal to call for help.”
“And you piggybacked him?”
I nodded. “It took three hours.”
“And that was funny?” she asked, looking back and forth between us.
Zander didn’t skip a beat. “The guy threw up down his back on the hike out.”
Briana choked on her giggle. Well, so much for the wingmanning.
“That was nice of you, though,” she said, still cracking up. Then she leaned in a little. “Just so you know, I forbade Hector to come over here.” She nodded back to the bar. “That’s today’s drunk extrovert.”