Chapter 1

August 2043. There had been some huge changes in my life. I moved house twice. Our second home was too far away from our family. Our third home was too small. Charlie and I have been working non-stop to make ends meet. Bryan, Anna, Mira, and Isa tend to stay with Jennifer or my parents a lot more. Bryan also starts kindergarten this year. The girls are starting preschool.

Deanna and Rodney are constantly bickering. Their son Harvey is always wanting to come over to the house. My cousin Genesis and her boyfriend Eric have been living together up at the BWU campus. My brother's Justice and Jesse are Seniors in high school this year. I couldn't wait to attend their graduation ceremony in May. It all felt a little crazy in the beginning but things have never been better despite the changes. Until I noticed something was wrong with Charlie.

It started on Bryan's first day of school. It was my first day as well. I was a little upset he wasn't placed in my class. He was placed in Mrs. Watson's class down the hall. Bryan didn't care. He wanted to go to school. He was tired of playing with just his sisters all the time. He couldn't wait to see Harvey and make new friends. That morning he woke Charlie and I both.

"Mommy, Daddy!" He screamed.

"Get up, or I'll be late for school."

Charlie sighed and looked at the alarm clock.

"Bry...it's 6:15...you're not gonna be late...the school isn't going anywhere...Go back to bed."

"Awww...but I wanna go to school now. See I'm all ready!"

We looked at him. He already had his clothes on. We smiled at each other. His determination, and his desire to go to school would change in about two days. By the third it'll be us trying to get him out of bed. He left quietly. Charlie rolled over to face me.

"I guess I'll get up and get breakfast ready." I whispered.

"Okay..." He sighed.

I kissed his cheek and got out of bed. For breakfast I normally make eggs for the girls, oatmeal for Bryan, and almond flour pancakes for Charlie.

I then prepare the lunches. For Bryan because he is also diabetic the oatmeal is low in carbs and will give him a boost throughout the morning. So for lunch I normally pack a cheese bread sandwich or egg mayo wheatbread sandwich, savoury popcorn for added salt into his diet. An apple, and a small no-added sugar fruit juice pouch. He carries glucose candies in his pockets just like Charlie. I told the nurse everything about him so she keeps his emergency insulin and pump in her office. If he ever loses his pen like Charlie did he can simply go to the nurse for help.

For my beautiful baby girls, they are healthy. Jennifer feeds them lunch so I don't have to worry about it.

For Charlie, sometimes I pack his lunch; other times he goes out with his friend Josh to get lunch.

The next part of the morning routine is getting the kids ready for the day. Charlie spends most of the morning trying to brush the girls' hair and put their clothes on. It's pretty chaotic once everyone gets up but after that we all know what to do and when to do it. Organization is key. I organized all of the clothes and the shoes so everyone knows where they are. I pick out the girls' clothes at night so Charlie knows which is which. I quickly got myself dressed and helped Bryan tie his shoes. The girls were starting preschool with Jennifer today. She'd see to it that were well taken care of. Once we got everyone in the car, we were off. Charlie dropped the girls off first and then he would drop me and Bryan off before heading to work.

This is when I noticed something off about him. As he drove his hands seemed to be swollen.

"Charlie?"

"Yeah babe."

"You alright? Your hands look awfully swollen."

He glanced at his hands on the steering wheel.

"I didn't really notice...I'm alright though."

I stared at his hands as he drove. They seemed puffy. That was Monday morning. Tuesday morning around three in the morning I just happened to wake up. I rolled over to be closer to Charlie only he wasn't there.

I assumed he must have got up to go to the bathroom or to check on the kids. Around six fifteen he was gone again. I sat up and wiped the sleep from my face; and went to the bathroom.

"Oh sorry Char...I didn't know you were in here."

"That's okay..." His voice was low and raspy. As if he hadn't been to bed.

"Everything okay?"

"Huh, yeah...yeah everything is fine."

He flushed the toilet. I never saw him actually use it. I noticed not only were his hands swollen but his feet and ankles were as well.

Something was wrong. That same night after dinner he was back in the bathroom. I entered with Mira on my hip. Charlie was standing over the toilet with one hand on the wall, and the other holding himself.

"Char...baby what is it, something's wrong."

"Nothing's wrong Har...I'm fine...I just had to pee."

"So pee."

Charlie sighed. I thought I was making him nervous so I left. About five minutes later, I returned. He groaned and was straining especially hard to go.

"Baby...can you not go?"

"I can...if I can get it started..." He grunted.

I read somewhere that if you have trouble going, turning on the faucet helps. I did that for Charlie. He was able to finally relax and release. Unfortunately I found Charlie was having to do that everytime he went to the bathroom.

Wednesday morning, he seemed to be super drowsy and he was short of breath. Every task he did got him winded.

"Char..."

"Fine...just give me a minute."

I was so worried. He wasn't himself. He just kept going as if nothing was going on. Thursday evening we were watching TV with the kids and he was in pain. I could tell by the way he was squirming in the lazy chair. At one point he reached behind him to rub and hold his back.

"Charlie..."

"I'm fine Har...Just sitting down all day really got to me."

"Want one of your pills?"

"I took one after dinner."

"You want a massage?"

"No...no I...I'm alright babe."

I think he was lying to me, to not worry me. I was still plenty worried. That night as he lay next to me, he began to have muscle spasms.

They'd startle us both and wake us up. Charlie groaned and rolled over on his stomach.

"Is it your sugar?"

"My sugar's fine... my A1C is perfectly normal."

"Something's going on with you though honey...you need to see a doctor."

"Harmione...I'm okay..."

"Charlie...talk to me sweetheart please..."

Charlie sighed.

"I...I know I should see a doctor but I don't think it's that serious."

"Its been almost a week and you're still not doing well...in fact you're getting worse...you might not think it's serious Char...but it might get that way."

"Alright...alright I'll go first thing Monday morning."

I kissed him.

"Thank you."

I called Charlie on my break Monday afternoon to hear how his doctor's appointment went. He said they were still running tests so he didn't have any news yet.

"Did you tell the doctor everything?"

"I told them everything you wanted me to tell them. "

"Did they take your blood?"

"They took blood, ran a CT scan, checked my prostate, checked my sugar, and did an EKG on my heart."

"Did they say anything?"

"Well no...just that they don't think I have an infection...nothing seemed to be inflamed."

"Did you tell them you had trouble going to the bathroom and about your muscle spams and your pain."

"Yeah...that's when they checked me to see if my prostate was enlarged."

"Is it?"

"No, they said it was fine, and my blood sugar was stable...they said my blood pressure was a little high."

"What can we do about that?"

"More medicine...less stress...I told them that the pain comes and goes...and that I don't think my bladder is causing it. I think it's my pancreas.

"Are you sore today?"

"My lower back was hurting me, but not so much now...oh yeah I did a...uh... urine sample too. My back hurt a little bit after that. Oh babe. Here comes the doctor, I'll talk to you later. Love you."

"I love you too."

"Bye Har."

"Bye baby."

After lunch it was time for math. I wanted to hit my head against the wall. I was anxious. I desperately wanted to know what the doctor said. I pushed through our math lesson.

"Okay, let's put a couple of problems up here on the board."

I took my red dry erase maker and began drawing apples on the white board.

"Let's start with something easy, if we had two red apples and added one apple how many apples do we have?"

Hands shot up in the air.

"Stacie."

"Three!" She replied with a smile.

"Great! Okay Michael, little harder if we had three apples and added four apples how many apples do we have now?

"Uh...six?" He answered shyly.

"Not quite Michael but that's okay...let's count our apples together."

"1...2...3...4...5...6...7!" We exclaimed.

"Seven Mrs. LeMay!" Michael shouted.

"Very good Michael!"

I took a stack of papers from my desk.

"Now, I'm gonna pass this worksheet out for you all to do on your own, you can count on your fingers, count aloud to yourself, or draw pictures...whatever you need to do in order to help you add. Kenzie, can you help me pass these out?"

Once each student had a worksheet they worked quietly to finish them up. If they got too noisy I simply quieted them down again. Our last lesson of the day was science. To me it was a lot like reading. I allowed us all to read from our workbooks about interesting scientific facts. Each chapter was different. This week was about sound. Loud and soft sounds. The different sounds the world is made up off. On Friday's I have them do a project over the lesson. I might have them bring something from home to show the differences of sound. I might even take it a step farther, and talk to them about deafness, and the hearing impaired.

I put my thoughts about my lesson plans aside for the time being. I took my car and drove myself to work this morning, along with Bryan and the girls. Bryan and I left together after to school to pick up his sisters.

"Today we learned about the 5 senses Momma!" Bryan said excitedly.

"That's great Bry, you'll have to teach Anna, Mira, and Isa, all about it!"

"Yeah I know...phew it's hard being an older brother you have to teach the little kids everything."

I laughed. He thinks he's so much older than his sisters. That he just knows it all, and is constantly sharing his vast amount of knowledge with his sisters. It drains my poor Bryan to exhaustion. Once we got home, Charlie was in the bathroom. He was actually in the tub.

"Hey baby..."

"Hey..." he replied somberly. He had his face hid under his hand.

"I thought the warm water would help my back."

I got on my knees and stroked his shoulder.

"What did they tell you babe?"

Charlie sighed and finally looked at me. He looked as if he had been crying. He cleared his throat.

"My hands and feet are swollen because I'm retaining a lot of water..."

"Okay."

"I'm having trouble peeing because of all the water I am retaining, it's not being filtered correctly, which is common in people with diabetes."

"So it is your bladder?"

He shook his head.

"Its my kidney's Har...both of them...They're failing."

"Oh sweetheart..."

I hugged him around the neck. He just nodded and tears came to his eyes.

"They said this would probably happen...they told me that when I was seven...I was told that my pancreas isn't producing insulin, and that I wasn't getting the proteins I needed. Because of that there was a likelhood my kidneys could suffer due to diabetic nephropathy. Which is just a fancy way of saying that my kidneys weren't getting what they needed. With the severe loss of protein over time it would lead to this.

"Charlie..."

"They said I'm stage 4 kidney failure, they can't reverse it...they gave me some medicine for it to counter act it but...I'm going to have to take them out and get a donor."

I just stared at him.

"Me..."

"Har...I couldn't ask you too-"

"Me...don't be stupid...you know I would..."

"Harmione I...I'm sorry you even have too."

Charlie began to cry, only he was angry as well. He hit the side of the wall with his fist and then cried into his hand.

"Oh...baby..."

Despite the fact I was clothed. I got in the tub with him and wrapped my arms around him. He wrapped his arms around me.

"Whatever happens I love you Har." He sobbed.

"Don't be like that...I love you too honey, but it's alright...its gonna be fine."

I put my hand on the back of his head. I scratched the back of his head with my nails. He hid his face in my shoulder.

"Ssh..."

"I've never been this weak and scared before Harmione!"

"Ssh...I know baby...I know."