What if I never met you?

“Authorities are still searching for the man responsible for the shooting of a healthcare CEO,” an anchorwoman with shoulder-length blonde hair announced from the screen.

A picture of a young, hooded man smiling flashed on the television in the hospital room. It was small, uncurtained, and a large window poured light over a man sleeping on the upright bed. His wristband read: SAM REEVE, KIDNEY TRANSPLANT, ANTI-REJECT MEDS, (626) 481-2123.

 As Sam, a twenty-two year old with unkempt hair and freckles, sat in the hospital bed, he turned onto his side, facing the window, which induced a sharp pain near his waist. The sun was cutting through the blinds, and he squinted to adjust his eyes to the light. Muffled sounds from the tv overhead were in the background. 

A nurse came in quietly, taking his vitals. She smiled warmly.

“Well someone’s finally awake,” she said in a singsong voice. He grunted in response, “Where is she?” At the sound of the “she,”  something emotionally crept up inside of the woman. She took a deep breath, “I can’t say anything concretely, I think that the doctor should be the one to discuss that with you.” She walked out of the room before he could further investigate. 

Yesterday, he had been blindsided by someone whom he spent the best day of his life with. Taking a moment, he closed his eyes to recollect it all, on the pier of Santa Monica. He shifted in his bed, trying to adjust himself to a more comfortable position. Looking around the room, he saw a bed of spring flowers, a couple of cards, one from his parents. The other had his name written over it. He reached for it, and opened the envelope. Inside was a folded, handwritten page. 

Dear Sam,

I often ask myself this question, “what if I never met you?”

I had things all planned out to a “t,” but you came along as something that could almost deter me from those plans.

My name is Mireya Serrano. I am twenty-five years old. I was born with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. I come from a single family household, and my mother died when I was a teenager from the same disease. I am below middle class, and was denied health insurance to cover the costs of treatment. This is how I started planning for my eventual death. 

 I vowed that I would dedicate my life to helping whoever I could when my time was up. We matched up because we both received treatments from the same hospital. I found out that you were on dialysis, and that you would be the one to receive my kidney.

He closed his eyes again, remembering their first encounter:

Sam had just finished a dialysis treatment, and was angry, resentful of most things, looking for a place to pour it all out. Angry at the high copay for his treatment, the fact that he battled with this at all. He was angry at his Mom for leaving a fifty second voicemail on his phone before every treatment that we would have to listen to and erase. Nature, things bigger than himself, always seemed like the viable answer. He decided to go to Santa Monica Pier, his current private spot every week for the last month.

He started among the crowds of people, shuffling past different vendors selling fruits, trinkets, hats, keychains. He was aimless in his amble, trying to find a spot away from everyone, to look over the balcony and at least catch the sunset. His life had found a way to conveniently slide downward for the last year, hitting every blockade that could worsen it. In four years, he had lost his scholarship to Penn State because he needed to stay local for treatment, his girlfriend of three years, who had broken up with him in preparation for college. He was definitely at odds with his Mom, with all of the sour goodbyes he had left her with. En route to an open space of balcony, he was stopped by an obnoxious woman asking him to sit for a sketch. At first, he pretended to ignore her. 

“Hey, you!” she called out. “With the cap and frown!”

What made it worse was that she called out through a speaker, making every stander-by perk their heads in his direction.

“No, thank you,” he responded, trying to move forward.

She was pretty, and he normally wouldn’t have stopped for someone trying to invade his privacy so much. It was her eyes that caught him; soft, unapologetic, open. He threw his arms up in surrender as people started egging him on. He approached the wooden chair with a small cushion, and looked in her direction.

“Is this okay?” he asked gruffly, uninterested.

“Perfect,” she responded. She pulled a new page from her sketchbook and squared her shoulders. After a few movements of her pencil, the questions started: “what is your name? Why are you here today?” Then, after playing some choice music on the speaker behind her, and finishing the drawing, she started to pack up.

“I would like to have a drink with you at this bar,” she said without pretense. Her confidence is what drew him to her. He didn’t even inquire about the sketch. The woman dressed plainly, light jeans, a white shirt, a cap, tennis shoes. A type of natural, undressed beauty is what she carried. Something that said to the world, she was okay with who she was at the moment. 

Sam found himself astounded that his night had taken such a turn, and that he was with this stranger who he was allowing himself to follow. If anything, he would have a good night, he thought to himself. 

He followed her through the crowds moving through sets of crosswalks that led out of the pier, and closer to the shops on main street. He felt it out of place to ask her name given that they were already sitting down to dinner and a drink.

After a second paloma, she leaned over the small table with her elbows, revealing small tattoos over her forearms, and asked him:

“What are you afraid of?” 

The first thing his mind went to was when his father had left and he remembered seeing his Mom broken down. He remembered himself as a kid, trying to stave off the feeling he felt of losing his Mom too. 

“Being alone,” he replied. The girl nodded in understanding, not asking anything further of it.

“What are you looking forward to?” she continued.

He looked at her blankly, taking inventory of his life. 

“Nothing,” he said quite honestly.

“It would make my night if you came up with something,” she encouraged, her eyes welling up a bit, as if there was some stake in the answer being uplifting.

“Maybe taking a girl to dinner. Having sex again.”

She smiled in acknowledgement. This must have been a satisfactory answer.

“Well, I thought you said there were three questions you wanted to ask me?” he prodded a bit, seemingly more interested in her story.

“What is your story?” he almost accidentally asked.

“Nothing I can make a difference with yet. Just trying to squeeze out every bit of life.”

After her smile, and a couple more drinks, they did leave. They went back to his apartment shared with roommates near the beach, and he found that she was gone in the morning.

By the afternoon, he got the call from his doctors that he had a match, and should prepare for surgery. 

At least, he thought, if it was going to be his last day, or if something could go wrong with the operation that he had been waiting for, he had a last good night with a pretty woman. All of his resentment simmered down at the thought of it possibly being the last day. All of the paperwork and waiting he had to do with his insurance. Sam had waited eight years to find a match and to be applicable to have the procedure performed. 

He remembered seeing his Mom, holding her hand as he was ushered into the operating room. The thought of the girl’s full smile, her doleful eyes, were the last images he saw before he was taken out by anesthesia. The doctors hovered before him, telling him to count down. He counted down the moments he could remember with her, because they were the most vivid. From being stopped on the pier to being taken out, and asked such invasive questions by a stranger. 

Then, he woke up. He was here in the hospital bed, wondering where she was, and how his life had taken such a turn. Now, he could fulfill the years at Penn State, he could be a more present and less resentful son to his Mom. This surgery was everything that he was relying on to be able to move forward in his life. He sat in the hospital bed, looking out at the day that presented himself before him, and read the rest of her letter:

“I don’t know you, Sam. I hope that my life means something to yours in the end, and that what I’ve chosen won’t be in vain. Live your life, we only get one, and we have so much against us as it is. The last question I would have asked is “what if I never met you? You have, so please make everything count until the last moment. 

She signed her name. The second page was the sketch she had done of him. It was pretty striking, and not as cartoonish as he expected. This was how she saw him. Just before he felt himself become emotional at the thought  of a complete stranger researching him, choosing him, knowing his medical needs, and offering herself to him before her death, the nurse came back in. 

The tv showed a young man in a jumpsuit being taken into custody. He was struggling and yelling out something as the authorities took him into custody. The picture of a CEO for an insurance company showed up after. 

“I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it to be done.” were the highlighted words on the screen.

Sam sunk into the hospital bed. He closed his eyes and thought about the possibilities of what his new life could encompass. The state of the world was one in which he found himself lucky to be sitting where he was. So many people in his state never got the chance.