Chapter
25
It was Monday afternoon when the phone rang at Dr. Fergeson’s
house. Sighing, she picked it up.
“Hello?” she said wearily.
“Hi, Maggie?” came a voice.
“Yes,” Dr. Fergeson replied.
“It’s John Douglas, from the surgical ward at the hospital. Look, I’m very sorry to be calling you. I know this must be a hard time for you, but
I thought you might want to know that it looks like your liver transplant
patient is rejecting.”
“Oh, no, he is?” she asked, sighing in despair. The past few days had been the hardest of her
life. Just the day before, she had
watched her only son be lowered into the ground, and now this. What else could go wrong?
“Yeah,” Dr. Douglas said.
“He woke up this morning spiking a temp, and now he’s got a rash
too. Plus, his skin’s turning yellow
again.”
“Great,” Dr. Fergeson muttered.
“Just great.” She felt
hopeless. She had given her son’s liver
to help this man live, and now he was rejecting it. “What are you doing for him?”
“I’ve increased his immune suppressant dosage, but so far, his
fever’s just gotten higher,” Dr. Douglas said.
“How’s his family taking it?” Dr. Fergeson asked.
“They’re crushed. It’s so
hard for the families of patients like this to deal with this kind of
thing. I mean, just a few days before,
they thought he might die, and then he got another chance at life, only to have
it be taken away.”
“Yeah,” Dr. Fergeson said softly.
“I understand how they feel.”
“I know,” Dr. Douglas said sympathetically.
“Well, I guess I’ll be coming in to work today after all then,”
Dr. Fergeson said.
“You don’t have to do that,” Dr. Douglas said. “I was just calling to let you know, since
he’s your patient.”
“No, no, I need to come,” Dr. Fergeson said. “He’s been my patient for months, and I need
to take over his care.”
“Well, okay, if you insist,” Dr. Douglas said.
“I’ll see you later,” Dr. Fergeson said, and hung up. Her head lowered in grief and defeated, she
trudged up the stairs to get ready to go to the hospital.
***
“I can’t believe it!” AJ said angrily. “He was fine yesterday and Saturday, just
fine! I thought he was getting better,
and now this!”
He sat in the waiting room of ICU with Brian, Howie, Kevin, and
Nick’s siblings. They had just been told
by Dr. Douglas, the doctor who was taking care of Nick that day, that Nick was
rejecting the new liver. Nick’s parents
had gone to Nick’s room, leaving the four remaining Backstreet Boys and Nick’s
younger brother and sisters in the waiting room.
They were all depressed and very worried about Nick, and on top of
it, AJ was just plain mad. He knew it
wasn’t really anyone’s fault, but he felt like he had to blame someone for
it.
Unable to sit in that room anymore, he jumped up and stalked
out.
Howie, Kevin, and Brian exchanged worried glances, and Howie got
up as well. “I’ll go see where he’s
going,” he said, following AJ out of the room.
He hurried down the hall to find AJ standing at the very end of
the hall, near a row of vending machines.
Without warning, AJ’s face contorted into anger, and he punched the
nearest soda machine, letting out a cry of frustration as he did so. It had taken just that one punch to release
some of his pent-up anger, and it was enough for then. Without a word to Howie, AJ leaned back
against the wall and slid down it until he was seated, his back pressed up
against it.
“Aje, you okay?” Howie asked gently, sitting down beside his
friend.
“I’m just upset,” AJ admitted.
“Of course you are,” Howie said.
“I am too. We just all have
different ways of dealing with it.”
AJ nodded. “It’s so hard,
having to deal with this happening, and for no reason at all. Why did this have to happen? The worst part it, it’s not anyone’s
fault. It just happened, and that
sucks.”
Howie nodded. “I know,
AJ. Life does this to us all sometimes,
and it’s not fair, and there’s nothing we can do about it. We just have to deal with it and get through
it the best we can.”
***
