Chapter Thirty-Nine
"Greenlee, did Joe say why he wants to see us?" Kendall asked apprehensively. "Does he have bad news?'
"I don't know, I'm not in his inner magical medicine man circle any more than you are, Kendall! I just told you everything the nurse told me, so hurry up and let's go! Ryan's already at the elevator." Greenlee motioned impatiently.
Kendall persisted, "But you were just with Miranda, weren't you? Did something happen?"
"Nothing changed while I was in there." Greenlee turned and began trotting down the corridor, her petite frame moving so rapidly that Kendall's much more willowy one had trouble keeping up with it.
Zach followed behind Kendall, his brain cycling back and forth between the only two scenarios he could imagine causing Joe to summon the Laverys, Kendall and himself to his office this late. Either a bone marrow donor had been found among one the four of them for Miranda—or a donor hadn't been found.
Kendall turned back to him, her face and voice both pinched with fresh worry. "Why do you think Joe wants us, Zach? Do you think it's about the transplant?"
Trying not to add to her fears by revealing his own, all Zach could do was nod neutrally, keeping his own features in a composed mask, as virtually impossible as that was.
"What are you doing now, Kendall, stopping to take a survey? Come on!" With Ryan in the lead, Greenlee busily herded them along like an overzealous border collie.
In marked contrast, Kendall loped along like a greyhound in slow motion; giving the impression of dragging her feet even while moving swiftly. Sensing the panic affecting her strides and that it exceeded even his, Zach easily caught up with her, silently taking her arm. He received a grateful look in the brief upraising of Kendall's gaze to his.
At this late hour Joe's reception area was deserted. As soon as they reached it, Joe stepped out from his spacious inner office, the door to which was open. The hospital chief of staff wore a rather perturbed expression. Zach heard both Kendall and Greenlee suck in their breaths when they saw it.
"You wanted to see all of us, Joe?" Ryan was the first to speak.
Joe hesitated. "Er…yes, eventually, I would like to speak with all of you, but I didn't ask to see you all at once, Ryan."
"That's what the nurse told me," Greenlee explained officiously.
"Then there was a slight miscommunication, for which I apologize, Greenlee. However, we'll remedy it this way. I'll begin by speaking with one of you first. Mr. Slater, will you please come into my office? The rest of you may wait out here for the moment."
"Can't I come in too, Joe?" Kendall instantly pleaded. "You can't just expect me to wait quietly out here wondering what you're in there saying to Zach, especially if it's about Miranda!"
"I can't invite you into a private consultation with Mr. Slater, Kendall, any more than I could invite Mr. Slater into a private consultation with you," Joe demurred. "That would require Mr. Slater's consent, not mine."
"Oh," Kendall replied in a deflated tone, but Zach gave her arm a reassuring squeeze.
"Doctor Martin, Kendall's my fiancé. Anything you say to me can be said to her."
"That is very sweet, but what about us, Zach?" Greenlee demanded. "What happened to being treated like equals? Is it Ryan's and my fault that the nurse screwed up the message?"
"I want to know the answer to that too. What entitles Slater and Kendall to be singled out for special treatment?" Ryan asked angrily.
Joe's voice was firm. "Surely you two heard what I just now said to Kendall. Now please let's not delay this any longer. Mr. Slater, Kendall—? This way, please."
"But Joe—," Ryan began, then desisted as Joe unequivocally frowned in refusal.
Greenlee looked at Joe, at Ryan, finally at Kendall, sniffled loudly, and rubbed her large sad eyes as a tear escaped and rolled down her cheek. Zach could feel waves of sympathy rolling from Kendall toward Greenlee—Kendall was softening, as she always seemed to, toward the other, less sensitive, girl. It wasn't even necessary for her to say out loud she wished Greenlee could join them in Doctor Martin's office. Zach knew that she did. And wherever Greenlee went, Ryan followed.
Fuck. But there was no help for it. Zach said, "They may as well join us too."
"Are you certain you understand what you're agreeing to, Mr. Slater? Joe asked in some surprise. "You're agreeing to allow me to release what may be your privileged medical information to everyone present."
"I understand," Zach assured him.
"Then let me just add that this would apply to any of you in Mr. Slater's place," the doctor added. "By consenting to any outside parties being present, any of you would be agreeing to the same thing."
The cautious caveat didn't camouflage what Zach had already deduced from the unspoken message so far. If he was correct in his deduction, it was something they would all know very soon anyway. Moreover, if he was correct, how could he forego seeing the looks on their faces when they heard it together with him?
"Very well, Mr. Slater, with your expressed consent I'll allow everyone in. All of you, then, come this way."
Joe's office was made for consultation, boasting a sofa facing his large desk, with two armchairs facing each other at right angles to the desk. Greenlee immediately pulled Ryan down beside her on the sofa, so Zach took one armchair and Kendall the other. Like a fidgeting little girl, Kendall was perched on the edge of her seat with her head turned toward the doctor.
Although Zach's awareness remained more focused on Kendall than on Joe Martin, she was apparently too distracted to perceive his close absorption in her, a state of affairs with which Zach was perfectly fine: His awareness of her seemed well beyond even his control. Even during the talks with the Cambias board, his main concern had been how Kendall would be affected by whatever decision he made regarding their offer. Her response to Joe's announcement, however, should be easier to predict.
"Now, then," Joe began gravely. "We've all been anxiously waiting for the lab to send up the results of the blood tests you each had the other night. As you know, we're looking for a bone marrow match for Miranda. Now the mostly likely match for her would have been a sibling. Since that wasn't an option, we tested you, as her closest relatives, in the hopes that one of you—"
The tension in the room was already so thick only a machete could have cut though it. Greenlee made it even thicker when she interrupted with, "Please, Joe, we know all that already! Can't you just get to the point? You don't need to recite the Preamble to the Constitution, just tell us who the match is!"
Kendall's head suddenly swiveled from Joe to Zach and her eyes widened.
She's figured it out. Only Kendall's distraction, Zach was sure, had prevented her from guessing much earlier.
"Zach," she mouthed. "You—?"
He shook his head and nodded toward Joe, who was saying sternly, as if speaking to a five-year-old, "Greenlee, if you do not settle down, I will ask you to leave."
"I'm sorry," she said in a small voice. "Go ahead."
Joe coughed and cleared his throat. "Excuse me. As I was saying, we hoped one of you would be a match. And, as I had planned to discuss first with Mr. Slater—"
"It's Zach!" Kendall burst out. "Oh my god, Zach's a match, isn't he? He's the match!"
"Hell, no, it better not Slater!" Ryan swore. "Kendall, it's just like you to get the wrong idea—just be quiet and let Joe finish."
"Zach? No. It can't be Zach. It's supposed to be me, Greenlee moaned. "I'm a match too, aren't I, Joe? Aren't I?"
Throwing up his hands in frustration, Joe warned, "Greenlee, Ryan, it's not too late to throw you out of my office and that would be my call, not Mr. Slater's."
Ryan argued, "But Joe, the implications—"
Joe raised his voice. "If I may get a word in edgewise? Thank you. I'm very pleased to confirm that you, Mr. Slater, are a match for Miranda. You're the only match among the four of you, and you also match all seven of her genetic factors, which makes you that rarity known as a perfect match. So if you agree to be her donor, it's the best case scenario Miranda could possibly have. It greatly decreases her chances of complications, such as rejection or graft versus host disease."
Finally, silence reigned.
It was what Zach had expected to hear after Doctor Martin indicated he wished to speak with him, what he'd fervently hoped to hear, yet at the same time could hardly grasp, that providence would grant such an unworthy soul as himself the opportunity to justify his existence, without marching in and announcing there was some last-minute mistake.
I'm the match.
He, Zach Slater, was fit to save a life as precious as Miranda's? It was laughable, no, ludicrous, but there it was written in black and white, in the lab report spread open on Joe Martin's desk. Now that Zach had heard the actual words, he realized nothing could have prepared him for the impact of them…nothing.
"Zach?" Kendall had come to stand before him, and then she sank into a crouch so low she was looking up into his face. "Just think, Zach—you're the one who's going to save Miranda's life."
The only match.
"That—that's wonderful." Greenlee's voice sounded strained. "It's really wonderful that—that at least one of us has bone marrow that matches Miranda's. Isn't it, Ryan? Good—good for you, Zach."
"It's—for Miranda's sake, it's—uh, fortunate." Ryan sounded even more strained. "Con–congratulations, Slater."
"Zach, are you okay? You haven't said a word." Kendall asked for only him to hear.
The perfect match.
Joe Martin was saying, very matter-of-factly, "Mr. Slater, this is just the beginning for you. Withdrawing bone marrow is actually much harder on the donor than receiving it is on the recipient. We need to let you know what you're in for and we also need to make sure you're as healthy as you look. I'd like you to come to our pre-op testing center here in the hospital for a physical exam. I'm scheduling it for nine o'clock tomorrow morning."
"Ryan and I will be going now," Greenlee announced suddenly. "We're going to go say good-night to Miranda and then we're going home but we'll be back in the morning to see her. Even though it's Zach who gets to be the one, I think I really will sleep better tonight."
"I think we all will, Greenlee," Joe agreed in the same matter-of-fact tone.
It was easier for Zach to breathe with the Laverys gone from the room. They seemed to use up more than their fair share of air. But it was still difficult for him to speak. When you had no words, how could you speak? He had to find some, though; Zach knew that when he looked down to see the worried look again pinching Kendall's face. But his jaw still felt frozen in place.
"Joe, I want to talk to Zach in private," Kendall said, somewhat peremptorily and without regard to the fact they were in Joe's office. Somewhat predictably, Joe shook his head.
"It's better for me talk to Mr. Slater about the procedure now, Kendall; we have a lot of information to go over in a very short amount of time. It's essential for him—for you both, actually—to understand all the ramifications of what he'll be consenting to, and what you'll be consenting to," Joe said kindly.
Kendall looked taken aback. "Ramifications? What do they have to do with anything, Joe? This is for Miranda! Of course Zach consents and if he consents, I consent!"
How far we've come. Not so long ago she believed I killed her family and meant the same harm to Miranda. I believed her to be a transparently shrewish, self-centered drama queen.
Now every day seemed to expose yet another unsuspected layer of the deeply lovable, deeply caring person Zach was continually discovering Kendall to be. He'd believed the misleadingly exasperating and full-of-bravado surface she braved life through represented the most fundamental level of her character. It was one more thing he'd gotten wrong.
" Kendall, this is a two-pronged discussion. First of all, you and Mr. Slater won't be consenting to the same thing. One of you, as Miranda's equally close next of kin, must also consent on her behalf to the next stage of her treatment—the chemotherapy she'll need prior to the transplant, then to the actual transplant."
"Of course we will, Joe!" she said quickly. "Why are we even wasting time discussing this?
"Let me finish, Kendall," Joe said patiently. "Because of what has been your closer emotional relationship to Miranda and her mother, I feel that asking youto provide consent for Miranda's procedures is more appropriate than asking Mr. Slater to provide it. But you cannot provide consent for Mr. Slater in the matter of his own procedure. He must do that—you can't speak for him."
Telling Kendall he wanted her input on the Cambias deal wasn't the half of it, Zach was thinking. He needed her input—not only on Cambias, but on everything. Because he needed her and that, Zach reflected without too much regret for once, was fate's biggest—and perhaps kindest—joke on him yet. Their ostensibly practical, impersonal arrangement with its bonus of uncomplicated physical pleasure had evolved seamlessly into a very personal and anything-but-simple arrangement instead. One where it felt perfectly right and natural to say to Joe Martin, " Kendall can speak for me."
"Zach," she breathed.
"I'm afraid she can't, Mr. Slater." Joe replied tolerantly. "Let me explain what you're facing. Harvesting bone marrow from a donor requires repeated punctures of the pelvic bone. The procedure isn't lengthy—it usually takes about an hour—but it is performed under general anesthesia and it requires an overnight stay in the hospital. It also requires up to several weeks' recuperation from stiffness and soreness afterwards. Only you can consent to these risks. Now, do you have any questions?"
"No," Zach said bluntly. "I consent. Give me whatever I need to sign."
"Oh, if you're anxious to sign paperwork, we'll have plenty of it for you, Mr. Slater," Joe smiled. "However, all in good time. Now, Kendall, do you have any questions? If not let's wind up this meeting and I'll see you tomorrow."
"Yes, I do have a question—Joe, I want to know what risks there are to Zach," she said unexpectedly.
"The biggest risk involves the general anesthesia, Kendall. The harvesting process is not particularly risky in itself, but as I mentioned the aftermath is usually quite uncomfortable to say the least."
"Well, this is 2005, not the Dark Ages. Isn't there some way you can do it so it isn't uncomfortable?" Kendall asked stubbornly. "I don't want Zach to have to be in pain."
Zach intercepted a long-suffering look from Joe Martin, wordlessly asking for assistance with the exasperating Kendall. Zach didn't need to be asked twice. For what he was truly being given, he felt both profoundly indebted and almost frighteningly exhilarated, in need of an anchor to ground him back to earth. Reaching for Kendall's hand, Zach clasped it in his. It was her left hand; he could feel his ring on her finger, and its miniature white flames blazed through the bones and sinews of his hand with a dedicated fire letting him know there was a reason he was alive.
"Kendall," he said. "You know what? I'm ready."