The Donor

THE DONOR 

#3

Kiera Rose lay in the hospital bed and watched the drip, drip, drip of the I.V. as it ran down the pole and into the back of her hand. She turned her head slowly and carefully to the right and noticed a huge bouquet on the table parked at the foot of the bed. Further to her right a window sill covered with multicoloured roses filled her view.  A virtual bower of heady floral displays and dark leafy foliage. The scent was somehow overpowering, cloying and slightly nauseating. They were all roses, of course, her signature flower. All her life people had been giving her roses. Her parents had started the ball rolling by giving her roses when she graduated from kindergarten. She didn't remember the occasion, but there were a dozen or so pictures in her photo album and on the mantle at her parent’s home. Every singing competition, every dance recital, and every play that she had ever been in, (and there had been a lot) were accompanied by  congratulatory roses. Red roses, pink roses, yellow roses, roses in rare colours, long-stemmed, short-stemmed, rose plants. The rose theme seemed to go on to infinity and beyond.  

Almost every date she had been on had, of course, started out with a rose bouquet on the first date. Every Valentines Day, a dozen and sometimes even two dozen roses were waiting for her to ooh and awe over. It took all the acting lessons that her parents had paid for over the years, for her to give a simulated act of complete surprise and wonder. Roses, what a surprise and how lovely, how thoughtful. How original for someone whose last name was Rose to receive roses. Yes, those acting lessons had proved useful over the years when the roses had appeared ad nauseam.

 After receiving her first Grammy and Oscar, her dressing rooms had been filled to the rafters with roses of every hue and colour. Every bouquet, a rose bouquet. This was the primary reason she refused to let her gardener plant roses in her new mansion, and let the yellow dandelions run rampant in the backyard surrounding the pool. Their casual bright sunshiny colour amidst the green grass was a feast for sore eyes. 

Kiera groaned and gently touched the large bandage through the sky-blue hospital gown. Whatever pain medication they were giving her was wearing off and she gave a low moan of pain. How long had the surgery lasted, she wondered. And how long had she been out for?

She heard a slight noise at the door and turned her head towards it. A nurse bustled in. “Hello, Miss Rose, you’re awake, are you? Well, I guess it's about time. How are you feeling, I guess that's a silly question after just coming out of surgery isn’t it.”

“It hurts.”  whimpered Kiera.

“Yes, you poor thing. Let me just take care of that for you. My name is Keisha and I will be your day nurse.” She bustled around adjusting the drip of the intravenous, peeking under the hideous blue hospital gown to check the dressing and adjusting her patient's pillow and blankets. “We were all so surprised when we heard that you were going to be a patient on our ward. We are all such big fans. It’s not every day we get a huge celebrity like you come onto our floor. There are literally hundreds of your fans waiting outside the hospital's main door, and the paparazzi.  There are dozens of them. Heaven knows how they all got wind of your surgery, it was all supposed to be hush-hush. Well, you just wouldn’t believe how many are out there. We all had to use a side door just to get into work this morning.”

Kiera let the words flow over her, drifting in and out of consciousness before finally drifting back into La La land.

Across the hall, Callie lay in agony, the pain was intense, much worse than she had imagined.  She groaned and tried to find the buzzer to alert someone.  Her hands faltered as she groped around the sides of the bed. Her mouth was dry, like the Sahara desert. She tried to summon up some saliva to quench the raging thirst in her mouth, but was unable to. Her hand finally encountered the buzzer, she rang it, waited a few moments then rang it again. She tried to be patient but the pain was really getting to be excruciating. It turned out that to summon help around here; three times was the charm.

When the door finally opened, the nurse popped her head in. “Hi, you’re awake now I see.  My name is Keisha, how can I help you?”

‘I have a lot of pain and can I get some water please,” croaked Callie. 

“I’ll be right back, ”she picked up a styrofoam cup off the night table and went into the adjoining washroom. Callie could hear the water running and a moment later she returned, stripped the sleeve of a paper straw on the table, and offered the glass to Callie.

 “Just sip it,” advised the nurse. “You don't want to start vomiting and pull out all Dr. Russell's neat little stitches.

“Sorry it took so long to answer your page but we’ve been run off our feet today. You’ll never guess who came in for surgery today.”

Keisha stopped and paused for a moment. “Actually I don’t think I can tell you. Confidentiality and all that.  We actually had to sign a confidentiality agreement. But it's someone big, huge in fact.”

“Here, I can see you’re in pain, let me just adjust your meds.”

Keisha went over to the I.V. pole, adjusted it, flicked it with her finger then nodded in satisfaction at the rate the liquid dripped down the tube. Callie soon nodded off to sleep.

 When Callie next awoke she looked around the room. It looked like many hospital rooms she had seen on the hospital shows she watched on TV. Austere. The bare minimum in human comforts. Large empty window sill, curtain neatly pulled to the side, the upper portion net with a happy print covering the bottom portion.  Over the headboard of the bed, there was a bank of switches and tubes, dials, and nozzles. It was all a little bit overwhelming. The landscape on the opposing wall was of a peaceful pasture scene, with sheep and lambs grazing on the soft green grass. The picture frame had been screwed onto the wall to deter would-be thieves from absconding with it. “As if,” she murmured. Oh well,” she mused, “I’m used to the bare minimum”.

 Callie drew in a long deep breath then instantly regretted it. The smell was strong. That legendary smell that hospitals are famous for permeated Callie's room.  What was it; strong  antiseptic cleaner and death?

Callie was surprised that she was in a private room, she had expected a ward with four beds. She certainly didn't need a private room. It wasn’t like she would be getting any visitors, she had no family to speak of, and as for co-workers. Well, she had recently been let go due to a shortage of work, so there would be no co-workers popping by for a visit.

Callie sighed. It had been the right thing to do, coming here, doing this, she had comfort in knowing that. She knew that she had a very rare DNA system, and had long ago signed a donor’s card. It was only recently that she had been approached to act as more than just a regular blood donor. Not only did she have Rhesus null blood type, which is the rarest of all blood types (Rh-null) but Callie knew that this blood type is the rarest of all blood types and that because only a handful of people in the world had this type, that it was often called golden blood. She’d been told that less than fifty people in the world have Rhesus null blood type, and they had found someone with her blood type who needed a kidney transplant desperately and was willing to pay any hospital bills that may occur. Well, she had two kidneys didn’t she? Maybe by donating one to someone else, she might just save their life.

The clinic where she donated blood contacted her and asked her to get in touch with  Dr. Russel immediately. She spoke to the Doctor and was asked to help out and give the gift of life to a person who needed a life-saving kidney transplant, and only she could help out as this person was a perfect match and had the same rare blood type as Callie. Not only that but the recipient  also lived in the same city as Callie. Miracles do happen,  Dr. Russel had said.

*******

It was weeks later that the day finally came to be released. Callie figured that hospital days were somehow calculated like dog years, that is - not in real-time. The time in the hospital had seemed endless. Dr. Russel had been warm and friendly, with a perfectly professional bedside manner and the nurses had been fabulous, always upbeat and cheerful. Callie didn’t really mind that she played second fiddle to the patient directly across the hall from her, she assumed that the celebrity patient was across the hall from her. There were always nurses hustling in whenever the light over the door turned on.  The days did seem to go on endlessly though. She hadn’t had any visitors of course, but the woman across the hall had made up for her it seemed. There was always an endless stream of visitors going in and out and always lots of laughter filling the wing.  Not only were nurses and visitors always going in and out of the room, but a uniformed guard had set up camp on a folding chair outside the door. Since there was a uniformed guard on duty day and night; Callie assumed that either a murderer was in the room across the hall and the guard was there to stop their escape or it was the wife of some president from some other country, or a foreign dignitary or… whatever and whoever. In reality, she knew that the room across the hall had to be the room of the celebrity but it was more fun to speculate on the life of the woman across the hall. Conjectures about who the celebrity might be, filled Callie’s long boring days with food for thought. She had created at least a dozen scenarios about the occupant of the patient across the hall.

 So Callie waited in anticipation for her release from the hospital,  she was finally heading home. She had yet to see a glimpse of the occupant across the hall though she had heard her laughter often. The guard had disappeared a short while ago. Callie assumed either the patient had, well, inelegantly, croaked; or was being released. Callie had her small bag packed and was waiting in her room while the nurse promised to call a cab for her when she got a moment. The cleaning staff came in while she was sitting in her room in her wheelchair. They were there to change the bed and clean the room. Feeling in the way she wheeled herself towards the elevator. She had just reached it when the door opposite her room opened and out came none other than Kiera Rose. She was slowly rolling down the hall looking stunning and carrying a single red rose on her lap. Kiera was never seen without her signature rose.

Callie gave a small gasp. So this must be the celebrity everyone had been gushing over all this time. Well, now she knew why the staff always attended to her quickly and then raced across the hall without even being summoned. You didn’t get any more famous than Kiera Rose. Kiera’s hair and makeup were flawless, she wore an elegant floaty dress with elegance and style. Callie felt completely dowdy in her track pants and loose T-shirt but Kierra probably had her whole makeup and wardrobe team on deck to help her.

“Hi,” said Kiera brightly as she pulled up beside Callie at the elevator. “I see you are being released today too. What were you in for if I might be so bold to ask?” asked Ms. Rose.

“It was … a kidney thing,” Callie said simply.

“ Oh Wow, me too. It was such an ordeal, you wouldn’t believe it. But now I feel as good as new. Better than  I have felt in a long, long time. She glanced behind her at the sound of people coming down the hall. “Oh, here come my people.”

Callie looked down the hall and saw a stream of people coming down the hall carrying armfuls of roses and gift bags. Kiera's entourage obviously. “Oh, I don't think we are all going to fit. Do you mind waiting for the next elevator?” She threw one of her casual smiles Callie’s way.

The doors closed, and Callie looked down in her lap at the single red rose that Kiera Rose, a world-famous celebrity, had handed her before rolling into the elevator followed by her entourage.