Page 59 of Run with Me

The clickof a nightlight woke me up in the middle of the night. I saw Xavier sit down on the bed besideme.

“Is it timeyet?”

“No,” he shook his head. “Two more days, Anna, and Ben will be out oftown.”

Xavier had had someone sneak into and watch Pace for over a month now, and he’d been receiving encrypted messages from Tucson ever since. I didn’t understand any of it, but apparently the Cortez family was going out of town for some sort of a reunion in Mexico. We were set to leave in two days, once they weregone.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Mary needs you. Cameron’s been rushed to the hospital.”

I sat up straight in my bed, the news shaking through me. For a brief moment, I had that awful feeling I’d sometimes experienced, as if someone were ripping my baby out of my arms. Xavier gently touched me on the shoulder, and the torment passed.

“Get dressed. I’ve got Hope’s diaper bag ready.”

I’d never gotten ready that quickly in my life. Pushing the stroller through the hospital hallway took forever. I parked it with my sleeping baby in a darker area against the wall where Cameron was staying and tiptoed to Mary. She couldn’t even get up from her seat, and so I pulled up a chair tohers.

“What happened?”

“Cameron’s sick. He’s very sick, Anna. I don’t know what we’re going to do.” She cried quietly into my neck. Dressed in a hospital gown, Cameron was sleeping in a bed at her side. “They did blood work and scans already. They gave him some medicine to reduce the fever, but the doctorsaid…”

“Mary, it will be all right, I promise,” Jack told his wife. From the corner of my eye, I saw Xavier shudder.

“Jack, what’s happening with Cameron?” Xavier asked.

“He has chronic kidney failure. It’s apparently something he’s had since birth, but it was never caught.”

“Fuck!”

I’d never heard Xavier swear like that, and while the word would have normally offended me, this time all I felt was respect for a man who cared about his friends more than he did about himself.

“What does that mean?” Xavier asked.

“We’re waiting for the doctor. He should be here any minutenow.”

But instead of waiting, Xavier grabbed a chart that hung over Cameron’s bed and began flipping through the pages.

“Shit,” he mumbled, then scrolled through some more. Jack joined him at his side and lowered a new set of glasses. I hadn’t seen him wear glasses before.

“What is it?” Jack asked.

“How about we wait for the doctor?” Xavier asked. “I… I may be wrong. I want to be wrong. I don’t want to make a mistake.”

“All right.”

The next ten minutes stretched as we sat in that dimly lit room in silence, waiting for the doctor. And when he came in, repeating the words I’m sorry and kidney transplant, I felt my knees weaken. Mary held my hand and I heldhers.

“He’s strong,” Xavier affirmed. “We can get him through this. I’ll get tested for transplant compatibility.”

“I don’t want to be rude, Xavier, but you may be too old.” Mary blew her nose into the tissue. “He’s only ababy.”

“Kidneys are small, Mary. And actually, a donation from an adult has a better chance of working out than one from a child.”

“Really? In that case, add me to that list,” I said. My godson needed as many chances at a good kidney as possible. I didn’t think anything of my offer until a week later as the four of us sat in the doctor’s office. Cameron had already been placed on an organ donor waiting list, though I knew Mary and Jack had hoped that one of them would be a match. As I sat beside Xavier at the side of the wall, I saw Jack take Mary’s hand in reassurance.

“Thank you for coming in,” the doctor said. “We have a match. Two matches, infact.”

Mary and Jack looked at each other, smiling. I let go of the anxiousness I’d been feeling in my chest since this morning. Next week we were leaving for Pace, and the closer the time came, the more nervous I became, especially now that Cameron wasill.

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