Page 121 of We Were Something
Ivy sits straight up in her bed, and I laugh as I fall backward onto my butt.
“Shut up,” she says, her words loud and clear, distress covering her face. “You’re lying.”
I shake my head where I’m sitting on the floor.
“I’m not lying.”
“You’relying,” she says again.
“Ivy,” I say, looking her in the eyes and giving her a big smile. “I’m not lying.”
At that, she bursts into tears and launches herself at me, wrapping her arms around my neck and sobbing into my shoulder.
“What are you saying?” Mrs. Calloway asks, stepping in front of me and watching as her daughter cries in my arms. “Are you saying…”
I tap Ivy on the back, smiling widely up at her mother as Ivy pulls back to look at me, to read my lips as I give the good news.
“I’m saying that as of this morning, Ivy no longer has PNH.”
Vivian’s hands come up and cover her face, and she bursts into tears. Ivy lets out another sob as well and embraces me again.
I’ve been a part of many life-saving cases, surgeries and therapies that have saved the lives of children. It always feels good. There’s always the sense that a true, honest-to-goodness miracle has happened when you get to tell a dying child they’re going to live.
But today has brought me to a new high.
Now, I make sure to have the full conversation with Ivy and Mrs. Calloway. We’re not out of the woods just yet. There are plenty of risk factors on the horizon, things we’ll need to watch out for.
All bone marrow transplant recipients have a high risk of rejecting the bone marrow at some point in the future. There are also some complicated infections that could pop up out of nowhere. She’ll still need to take certain immunosuppressant medications for the next six to twelve months as her body continues to adopt the bone marrow and convert the donation stem cells to match her own, and she’ll need to have her blood drawn every two weeks once she’s discharged next week to monitor her progress.
However, in the grand scheme of things, Ivy is going to get to leave here and go home and get back to living. She’s very likely going to have manynormaldays in her future. Hopefully veryboringdays. And italsomeans she gets to be at home with her family for Christmas.
It feels good to share that news with them. Good in a way that being a doctor hasn’t made me feel in a long time.
Not that I don’t enjoy my work. On most days, I do. But today isparticularlygood.
Once I’ve wrapped up my conversation with them, I leave the room, finishing my rounds as expeditiously as possible before swinging by my office to wrap up some administrative work that was left over from the weeks I spent in Seattle.
I grin like an idiot as I sign off on late charts, thinking about my mom and how things have been coming along for her since the accident.
She’s getting discharged at the end of the week. I’m flying up with Paige to help with the final arrangements for moving her down here to Hermosa, and when we leave Seattle, we will be driving back with mom.
I made an offer on a house a few blocks away from here, finally ready to commit to something and get a little bit more space, which will be the perfect transition home for mom as she has regular PT and looks for her own place. And who knows, once she has found a new spot and is able to be independent again, maybe Paige and I will be at a place where I can ask her to move in. Right now is too soon, but I don’t doubt we’ll get there eventually.
Paige is nervous about meeting my mom for the first time.
“It’ll be completely different. She’ll beawake,” she joked when we made the plans.
But I know as nervous as she is, she’s also excited. The two of them have talked on the phone a few times over the past while, not about anything deep or important, just some light getting-to-know-you conversation.
Mom has been really encouraging of Paige’s decision to go back to school here in LA, a decision she made after letting her sister know she didn’t actually want to move to New York. Penny was disappointed, but she understood.
The one thing mom said is hard about leaving Seattle is moving away from Jen and her new baby, but I don’t doubt their relationship will continue, even from afar.
I think I’ve finally realized I’m okay with it. I might not get it, but if it brings them joy and soothes something each of them needs, if it helps to fulfill their lives in some capacity, who am I to get in the way? But who knows how it will all turn out. Only time will tell.
Thankfully, I’m able to avoid bumping into any other doctors or nurses who might slow me down, and it’s less than an hour later when I’m able to slip out early for the day, racing home at a speed that’s a little irregular for me.
Because today is not a regular day.
