“This is live art,” I told her. “Not imaginary.”
“I’m experiencing what you only see – every moment, every minute.”
I knew and stayed silent. There was nothing to say.
“Believe me, my love, it’s not easy.”
“My Lily, I know. Can I help you?” I hugged her, enveloped her. I wanted to swallow her, give her my life.
“I don’t want you to suffer. It’s enough that I suffer.” She held my head in both hands and looked straight into my eyes from below. We kissed fiercely, passionately.
A few days later, her markers worsened again, and it was decided to begin regular dialysis. That night, Serge, Max, and David surprised us by coming to the hospital. They visited Lily whenever they could.
At one point, when I was alone with David, I reminded himof what he had told me in officers’ training. In response, he hugged me and said he knew he couldn’t stop me, and he deeply respected what I had done. When I told him Lily needed dialysis, I broke down. I burst into hysterical tears, knowing another line had been crossed. I hardly knew what treatment options even existed for someone in her condition.
None of his attempts to comfort me worked. Not his threats to beat me, not his jokes. I was swept into a wave of tears, sure that I would never be able to stop.
Eventually, the tears subsided. Once I had calmed down, we went together to Lily’s room. Max and Serge had already left. David stayed. He talked with Lily until morning, while I dozed in the chair.
The next day, after the surgery to create the arteriovenous shunt in her arm, Lily was transferred to Pioneer Hospital, to the dialysis ward. The department head even came especially to say goodbye.
The welcome at the new hospital was very warm. It seemed someone had told them about her beforehand – someone who very much wished her well. The department head asked to meet her privately. I waited outside.
“He’s wonderful,” she told me when she came out. The shunt was not yet ready for use, so Lily had to undergo her first dialysis through a catheter in the femoral artery and vein. The anger I felt toward the deputy threatened to burst my chest. Although she had known this was the natural course of the illness, she hadn’t prepared Lily for standard dialysis with a shunt. The pain in her thigh gave Lily no rest, to the point that she said she would rather die than go through it again. Sadly, the deputy’s demand: “Be her husband” still echoed in me. The next dialysis was done through the shunt in her left arm. What a difference!!!
Chapter 57
White Days
Lily’s blood values stabilized, and we went to Pioneer Hospital once every three days. Routine life returned to us. Between one dialysis session and the next, Lily went to her studies, and I continued my military post at the office of the Surgeon General. Most of the time, I was with her throughout the treatment; sometimes, when I had to be on base, her mother took my place.
A few weeks after Lily began treatment in the dialysis unit and her condition stabilized, the department head called me into his office.
“Lily needs a kidney transplant,” he said, “and I recommend checking whether someone in the family is a genetic match and willing to donate a kidney.”
Of course I would have given Lily both my kidneys if I could, but unfortunately I wasn’t a family member. After several weeks of deliberations, Lily’s mother volunteered. To our joy, the biological match between them was perfect. The only problem was that one diagnosis, not thoroughly investigated until then, concerned one of her heart valves, which also required surgery.
“Without that operation, the success of the kidney transplant is doubtful,” the cardiologist said. Another bomb had been dropped. I felt like I hadn’t had time to breathe.
“Can the two operations – kidney transplant and valve replacement – be done at the same time?” I asked Dr. Morton.
“I’ll check,” he replied, refusing to commit.
In mid-September 1979, Lily began her third and final year at the College of Art and Design. I decided to change my IDF track, as it had been outlined in the interview back when I was still in Eilat, and broaden my knowledge during my service. I passedthe required exams and was accepted to the cyber unit, the army’s prestigious computer course. Our lives began to take on more order. Lily added dialysis hours to her schedule – at first in the hospital, and later at home.
Bringing the home dialysis machine into the Ramat-Aviv apartment reduced her trips to Pioneer Hospital to once a week for tests, instead of three times weekly for four-hour dialysis sessions. Her condition stabilized. We went back to living like any normal couple. Meanwhile, the date for the kidney transplant and heart-valve replacement was moved up and set for mid-October, right after the Sukkot holiday.
“Noah Frost asked us to come back after the holiday with a ‘political work,’” she told me on the eve of Sukkot. Lavie was one of the senior teachers at the College of Art and Design.
“So what will you paint?”
“I haven’t thought about it yet, but I want to impress him. I’m also very scared of him.”
“Is he really that scary?” I couldn’t believe one person could strike such fear in his students.
“They told me he can be blunt…”
“Blunt isn’t scary. Lily, you have nothing to fear. Believe me, Dylan Rhodes has spoken to him about you.”
