The Donor (3 page)

I think it’s pointless to ask these questions when the proof of my birthday and age are right in front of him, but whatever. “February third.”

He raises his eyebrows. “That’s soon.”

My smile feels tight on my face. “Yup.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“I wouldn’t be doing this if I did.”

He smiles to himself before checking off something else.

“Why do you need to ask me this stuff anyway? You know everything already.”

He shuts his folder containing his notes so he can look at me. “It’s for legal reasons, in case something should happen and you want to sue me,” he says with an edge of humor. “I’m nearly done.”

“Oh.” I honestly hadn’t thought of that.

“Do you have any health problems I should know about?” He re-opens the folder. “Heart conditions, things like that?”

“No,” I answer quickly. “I mean, I get headaches sometimes, but it’s no big deal.”

“Okay…” The scribbling of his pen against the paper becomes faster. He’s writing it all down.

“Why are you consenting to do this?” He asks this when he’s not even done writing down the answer to the previous question.

I stare at my knees. “I don’t know.”

His pen stops moving. He glances at me for a second. “Yes.” He looks back down. “You do.”

I fold my arms across my chest. “The money, I guess.”

His pen stops again. “That doesn’t seem entirely true either.”

I sigh. “My dad’s sick.”

I hear the folder close so I look up at him. “With what?” he asks.

“That’s not on the form,” I say. “Is it?”

He just stares. When I don’t say anything else, he picks up the papers again. “And you’ll be here for two weeks?”

“Yes.” I say. “Uhm…” I try to find the words. “How often do you…need me?”

His smile is almost reassuring. “A few times a week.”

I nod, let that sink in.

“And…you’re still okay with only a few thousand?” he asks after a while.

I shrug. It would be enough to pay some of the medical bills at least. Enough so my parents won’t have to worry.
“‘Only
?’” I try to joke.

He surprises me when he laughs. “I know it doesn’t look like it, but I can afford to give you a few thousand for each session.”

I smile so he can’t see how uncomfortable I am. Hopefully. “That could work.” My parents could pay my medical bills as well as some of Dad’s that way.

Jonah turns his attention back to the folder, seemingly pleased about shoveling money at some girl he’s just met.

“Okay,” he says, handing me the folder and all of the papers it contains. “All you have to do is sign here, agreeing to the terms we’ve discussed, as well as agreeing that any false information will be a breach of contract, resulting in termination.”

He hands me his pen, and I sign the three lines he indicates.

Finally, he closes the folder for good and sets it on the coffee table. “Are you tired?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “Why?”

He moves a little closer.

I have to say, I could be doing this with someone a lot worse. He isn’t bad looking for an older guy, and he’s pretty nice, too.

“You’ve been staring at your legs for the past fifteen minutes.”

“Oh.” I laugh nervously. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” he says. “Want me to show you to your room?”

I nod before I can tell myself I should leave.

***

“So,” I said to Gina the day after I set up my profile page and information. “You met someone on MyTrueMatch right away?” We were in the bathroom this time. I had just spent the past ten minutes in a stall, unraveling a roll of toilet paper until my nose stopped bleeding. “How long did it take?”

She was fixing her lipstick in the mirror as I washed my hands. “Oh, I’ve met more than one,” she said. “It took a few weeks, I guess.” She shrugged like it was no big deal. “The guys on there are hungry. You’ll meet one soon.”

***

The room he shows me is upstairs, and he carries both my suitcase and backpack, walking ahead of me. He opens one of the doors, revealing a medium-sized room with a queen sized bed. It’s simple, like the rest of the house. White sheets and comforter, wood floors. Blank walls except for a brown dresser sitting against one of them with a matching nightstand on the right side of the bed.

There are two doors: one is to a closet and one is to a bathroom. He leaves me to change in there. Gina told me to wear something sexy for the first night I was here, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead, I slip into a tank top and blue sweatpants. I throw my hair in a ponytail as an afterthought.

Jonah is still in the bedroom when I emerge. I watch him lean over the bed and dig his fingers into the comforter as he lifts it back for me. I crawl into bed as quickly as humanly possible. He smiles again. He has a really nice smile. Innocent. Sweet. He sits down right next to me, his back leaning against my thigh. Our bodies are only separated by a few inches of fabric.

He takes a glass of water from the night table that I hadn’t noticed was there. Then he opens his palm and hands me a tiny white pill.

“Don’t be nervous,” he says as I take it from him. Gina told me that some of them give out pills so you don’t flip out the first few times. “It’s not that bad. I promise.”

I hand him back the empty glass. “This is a nice room,” I say because I have nothing else to say.

“I figured I’d leave it simple,” he says. “In case you wanted to make it your own. Whatever makes you the most comfortable.”

I smile, wondering if two weeks is really enough time to make anything my own. If there’s really enough time to do anything in life. And also if my vision is blurring because I’m about to get another headache or because the pill he gave me is working that fast. Suddenly, his hand is on my face. It’s not rough, or even particularly scary. I just hadn’t expected it to be so cold or so gentle.

“You’re very pretty,” he says quietly.

I smile a little, realizing that it is in fact the pill as I start to feel tingly all over. “You’re very…” I almost slur. “Forty.”

He laughs softly. “Thanks.”

Things start to move like we’re under water. His hand leaves my face. I lie all the way down. His hand is in the drawer of the night stand and I’m shutting my eyes to keep the room from spinning. So I don’t have to see what he’s doing.

***

A week ago, I started
really
getting nervous. The headaches and nosebleeds weren’t helping, but add to that the fact that I was going across country to see a guy I barely knew to do God knows what for money. It was too much. Gina apparently noticed how on edge I was and cornered me in the parking lot one day after work. I was already in my car, and she was tapping on the closed passenger’s side window, asking me through the glass to let her in.

I unlocked my doors. She sat down and slammed the door too hard, making my head pound. Not that it wasn’t already.

“So Monday’s the big day, huh?” she asked.

“How did you know?”

She flipped the visor in front of her so she could look into the mirror and check her hair. “You took off the next two weeks.”

“Oh.”

“Are you excited?” she asked, smiling like a teenager.

“I’m freaking out,” I admitted.

“Oh,” she said. “Don’t sweat it. It’s not that bad.”

“You realize the ridiculousness of that statement, right?” I said. “This whole thing is ridiculous, but that sentence is so ridiculous I could puke.”

She was silent.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “My head hurts.”

“Look.” She turned in the seat like she was about to tell me a secret. “You need the money to help your folks,” she said. “And I’ve got three kids and a deadbeat ex who doesn’t pay child support. There are worse ways to make money.”

And I remember thinking:
Are there?

***

I feel a pinch in my right arm. It’s not exactly painful, but it’s enough to make me jump.

“Sorry,” Jonah says. “I promise, that’s the worst part.”

I somehow doubt that.

***

“Here,” Gina said, unwrapping her scarf from around her neck. “I’ll show you.”

I had been to the forums on MyTrueMatch. I’d seen the bite marks on necks, thighs, and chests. Dozens of them. Gina’s were no different than any of the other scabbed over black and blue marks I’d already seen, so I was barely fazed.

“I don’t care about that part,” I said.

“Oh.” She wrapped the scarf around her neck again, canary yellow against bruised peach. “The sex isn’t so bad either,” she said. “After they give you that little pill, you can sleep through it if you want.”

My stomach turned and the pain behind my eye twisted. “I have to go,” I said. “I have a doctor’s appointment.”

***

When I open my eyes, Jonah is taking the needle out of my arm and placing a Band-Aid over the tiny hole he’s created. He sets a bag filled with my blood on the nightstand, and it somehow seems better than the alternate route this process could have gone.

“That’s it?” I ask.

Jonah crumples the Band-Aid wrapper and smiles. “That’s it.”

“You’re not going to bite me?” I almost cover my mouth with a hand. Those words sound so strange and blunt shoved together like that.

He raises an eyebrow, but his tone serious. “Did you want me to?”

I gulp and shake my head. “And you don’t…” My brain is having a hard time stringing together sentences. “Want anything else?”

Now he laughs. “We barely know each other, Casey,” he says. “I’m not like a lot of the guys on that site.

I smile, relaxed at how easy this conversation is despite how strangeness of the entire situation.

“Besides,” he continues. “I think I might be too young for you, being twelve years old and everything.”

I can’t give him more than another smile to show my appreciation at his jokes before my head rolls to one side and I fall into the deepest sleep I’ve gotten in weeks.

I wake up some hours later, but it’s still dark. My head is pounding, there’s buzzing in my ears, and I have to vomit. I blink a few times, but my vision doesn’t clear. The important thing is that Jonah isn’t here anymore, and I can stumble to the bathroom without him seeing me.

When I’m done puking up the small amount of food I ate on the plane, I head to the sink to wash my face and brush my teeth. My nose drips a red spot into the toothpaste around the drain. Somewhere between replacing the toothbrush in the holder and searching my cosmetics bag for aspirin, everything tunnels and begins to turn black. The last thing I see is that drain, and the toothpaste mixing with my blood causes a light pink bloom before it’s sucked down.

***

I went to about twenty doctor’s appointments in total. Some were with the same doctors, some were with specialists and some were for second, third, and forth opinions. I went for a consultation, blood work, MRIs, CAT scans, and stress tests. I was given pain killers, blood pressure medication, and a specific diet. They thought I had bad sinuses, anemia, or heart problems. But none of the treatments worked, all while the headaches increased and the nosebleeds kept coming. Then I started forming new symptoms. One day at work, someone handed me a stack of papers and my arms just collapsed. Another day, I was convinced there was a bee in the office and spent half the day looking for it. There wasn’t one.

But somehow, after my third MRI, when the doctor called to finally read me the results and what they had found, it was hard to be anything but surprised when he told me I was dying.

***

When I wake up, I’m back in bed. Jonah is sitting where he was before I fell asleep, his back against my thigh. I hope, briefly, that I might be dreaming, but that shatters when I look past him and see a balled up towel on the floor near the bathroom with blood on it.

“I came back to check on you,” he says. When I look to him, he’s staring at the spot on the floor where he must have found me. His voice is calm and quiet, but I’m still scared of what he might do. “You lied to me.”

After a few moments of him staring at me and not saying anything, I say, “I’m sorry.” There’s no point in asking what he thinks I’m lying about, no reason to lie any further.

“A brain tumor.” It’s not a question.

I allow myself to blink a few times; my eye sockets are sore. “How did you know?”

“Your doctor’s number is in your cell phone,” he says. He stares at the Band-Aid stuck to the bend in my arm before returning his attention back to my face. “I called, saying you collapsed and were brought into the hospital. I had to pose as a doctor to get the information.”