The Donor (6 page)

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 fighting 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.

***

We're silent as Jonah takes out the needle and places a bandage over the bend in my arm.

A daughter.

I don't know why this fact about Jonah surprises me. Maybe it's because it never occurred to me that he could have a kid. Maybe because the fact that someone has a child implies that they've been with someone else in order to create that child.

“She would be seventeen now,” he says, setting the bag on the nightstand next to the picture. He places two fingers on the frame before turning to me.

“Would be?” I ask.

He smiles weakly. “I'm not allowed to see her.”

I stare at my knees, fiddling with the hem of my skirt. “Oh,” I say. “I'm sorry.”

Jonah shrugs when I look back up at him. “My ex-wife thought it was ‘inappropriate.’”

“Inappropriate?” I ask, unable to hide the shock from my voice. “What does that even mean?”

He swallows hard. He doesn't want to talk about it.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “It's none of my business.”

Jonah takes my hand and helps me up. He doesn't let go as we walk back to my bedroom and I like how cold yet calming it is, having a hand to hold. Maybe that's all he wants too.

“I was turned by accident,” he finally says as he unmakes my bed and I climb in. I don't bother arguing with going back to sleep. I'm exhausted and I haven't even done anything. I’ve never been tired multiple days in a row with a headache. Usually it was just a day from hell with a migraine and that would end in a nosebleed and then I’d be fine. Somewhere in the back of my head, there's a little red flag raising, the small sound of some kind of alarm, but they're both too far away for me to focus on. Jonah is right here, right now. He isn't the future, he isn't what happens next or after.

“I was a donor,” he says quietly, sitting down next to my legs. “The person feeding from me went too far and they had no other choice.”

“They made you...”

He cuts me off, “Yeah.”

Neither of us says the word.

Jonah clears his throat. “Anyway,” he says. “Myra has fibromyalgia. It affects her lungs and eventually she won't be able to breathe on her own.” He takes a deep breath. “She’s on a waiting list for a lung transplant, but even then if she gets it before it’s too late, there’s a high risk that she won’t survive surgery or that down the road, her body will reject them.”

I notice that his hand curls into the blanket underneath him. I place my hand on top. He stares at me at this contact, his expression softening.

“I came home and told my wife what happened, how I could cure Myra with this...” he gestures to his body and that's enough of an explanation. “She told me that if I left and never contacted them again, she wouldn’t tell anyone my secret.”

I give his hand a light squeeze.

“She wanted nothing to do with it,” he says. “Or me.”

***

My parents were proud of me when I graduated high school. I would be the first person in our family to go to college, as long as the financial aid and loans I applied for went through. I was accepted to three really good schools, all with great marine biology programs. All I had to do was wait as everything fell into place.

Then the nosebleeds started, I was denied financial aid (apparently owning a trailer was proof that we had enough money to send me to college) and the only loans I was approved for wouldn’t even cover the cost of books. I decided that I would stay home a year and save my money so I could go the following semester. Then Dad broke his back, so most of my checks went to Mom and him so we could continue living in the trailer and not in a shelter. Then, well…the diagnosis happened. There was no money and no point. Instead of saving for college, I saved for Mom and Dad, but I wasn’t making enough.

Until MyTrueMatch and Jonah.

“I don’t understand why you have to leave now, Casey,” Mom said when I told her I was going to Boston. We sat at the kitchen table eating spaghetti and meatballs that had come out of a can. “I didn’t even know you were still planning on going to school.”

I took a sip of water. I had already prepared exactly what I would say, formulating what my parents’ responses would be for weeks. “I know,” I say. “But Boston University only has tours so often and I want to go before I blow through all my savings.”

Mom sighed, Dad coughed from the living room. “How long will you be gone?”

I understood that without me she was alone in trying to support the family, but I was a little hurt that she was annoyed I was leaving. If I was actually looking at schools and not making her money, I would have been a lot more hurt.

“Two weeks, give or take.”

Mom took that in. “What do you mean give or take?” she asked. “A tour is only for a weekend at most.”

I was prepared for this too. “I might check out other schools while I’m there,” I said. “I have enough money to support myself, maybe even take a mini vacation.” I smiled, but added on quickly. “And I’ve already set aside enough money for the bills for the month.”
Mom seemed to relax a little at that, her hand loosening around her fork. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said. “I’m just stressed.”

“I know,” I said.

“If you get the chance to take a vacation while you’re out there, you take it. For me, okay?”

“Okay, Mom,” I said, laughing.

Mom caught my eye and smiled. “We’re so proud of you, Casey.”

I smiled too, but it was forced. “Thanks Mom,” I said, but the words were hollow, echoing through my chest and out of my mouth as the spot behind my eye ached.

***

When he doesn’t say anything else, I say, “I’m so sorry, Jonah.”

A small smile plays in the corner of his lip, but it never fully forms. “It’s hard sometimes, you know?” He stares at my arm. “All of these things changed all at once in my life. I had to completely rebuild everything.”

He finally glances at me. “How long ago did that happen?” I ask.

“Eight years,” he says simply. “But it feels like last week.” I watch as he takes in a deep breath and slowly pushes it out. “The hardest part is that I could help her,” he says. “I could
save
her…and I won’t even get the chance.”

Jonah’s expression turns blank, like he’s thought about this many times but never actually said it out loud. He sits down next to me on the bed, leaning his back against the headboard. “She always wanted fish,” he says quietly. “From seven years old.”

I suddenly feel really bad for Jonah. Is this why he allows me to stay? Why he has seahorses? So he can take care of some living thing without being afraid it will be taken away?

“I liked fish from a young age too,” I offer in a whisper. “I first went to the aquarium when I turned six. Then it was tradition to go on my birthday every year after that.”

His hand finds mine on top of the comforter. “Are the aquariums really big where you lived?”

I nod. “Huge.”

Jonah smiles a little, settling into the mattress next to me. “Tell me about them?” he asks.

And I do. Our hands don’t come apart.

***

Mom and Dad drove me to the airport when I left California. The sun was so bright that day that I had to break out my sunglasses for the first time all winter. Dad sat with the passenger’s seat leaned back so his spine was comfortable, and he was wearing sunglasses too. When I got out of the car with my suitcase and opened his door so I could hug him, I realized he wasn’t wearing them because of the sun.

“You have fun and be safe,” he said into my ear. “And don’t come back until you’ve decided on a really good school.” His voice was tight and when I tried to move away, his hug became even tighter. “Don’t worry about the money, okay? We’ll figure something out.”

I nodded, too afraid that if I spoke I’d start crying as well. For more than one reason.