“It’s not necessarily a sign,” the doctor replies. “Most of the time it’s just the body working overtime to help the organ settle in, for lack of a better word.”
Jake frowns.
I squeeze his hand. “Hey. Believe her. She has no reason to lie.”
He nods, but I’m not sure he’s taking my words to heart. I really wish he would because then maybe I’d believe them more myself. Nova gets up, leaving her tea on the window sill, her phone now clutched in her hand. “I’m gonna make a call.”
“Don’t let them freak out!” I yell as she slips out of the room, knowing she is about to update my parents.
“Jake, I need to take one last look at your laparoscopy incisions and talk about that extra blood work you requested.”
“Extra blood work?” I repeat and frown.
“Yeah. For work. No big deal,” Jake says and gets up. “See you later?”
“I’ll have to check my schedule, but I should be able to pencil you in.”
“Good to see the snark wasn’t accidentally removed with your bum kidney,” he quips.
The doctor chuckles and leaves, but Jake doesn’t follow right away. He bends down and kisses the top of my head and then he gingerly squats right in from of me as I sit on the bed, he puts his head close to my torso and says. “Hey kidney. I’m not taking you back so might as well get used to it in there and make yourself at home.”
He stands and leaves, giving me a wink as I giggle at his antics.
A couple minutes later, as I settle in my bed, Nova walks back in. She smiles but it doesn’t reach her eyes, so I know how the conversation went. “Ma is freaking out?”
“Yep,” she admits. “But I called Logan too and he is on the way to her place to talk her off the ledge with all his doctor-speak. He assured me the surgeon is right and this means nothing. Yet.”
Nova leans against the window ledge and picks up the cup she abandoned earlier. “So, Aspen. What was that about?”
“She was checking in on him,” I explain. “She was listed as his next of kin because he didn’t want to put one of us and can’t put his mom.”
“Kelsey Grady is still … around?”
“Maybe,” I reply and Nova looks as shocked as I was. “Anyway … I trust him when he says it’s over with her.”
“I trust him too,” Nova replies without a moment’s hesitation. Then her expression darkens a little. “I happened to notice Aspen on my way back from my little cafeteria jaunt. She looked sad. Like she’d been crying.”
“Over Jake?” I ask and Nova shrugs because she has no idea.
“She was coming out of the obstetrics ward so maybe visiting a friend who had a baby?” Nova says with another shrug. “But definitely sad. Puffy eyes, blotchy cheeks, sad face. Maybe she thought her and Jake would get back together?”
I ponder that. I was so filled with jealousy and rage when Aspen asked Jake to prom and he said yes and then they started dating. I used to lie awake at night and fantasize that somehow, some way, he’d change his mind and leave her and be with me and it would make her cry. At the time, my eighteen year-old heart was filled with joy at the prospect. But now … the idea that it might be happening is not joyful. I don’t feel guilt or remorse. I want Jake and I feel I deserve this happiness. But I don’t take joy in the idea that it might be hurting her, even after what she did to me a million years ago.
18
Jake
I’ve beenout of the hospital without Terra for forty-eight hours. It’s been great being at Lucy and Charlie’s. Lucy is waiting on me hand and foot and Charlie is a hoot. He yells at the TV during the Eagles hockey games like he’s the coach on the bench barking orders. But we’re all worried about Terra.
At night I lie awake in Finn and Logan’s childhood bedroom trying to convince myself her body won’t reject my kidney, that the universe won’t be that cruel, but another part of my brain keeps listing all the ways the universe has been a total bitch in the past. Reminding me there’s no reason it won’t be again.
They had also asked us to limit our visits and told me specifically that I should stay home and rest, so I haven’t seen her since I left the hospital. So this morning, when we got the call Terra’s allowed to come home, I insisted on going to pick her up. Now I’m in the back seat of Declan’s car as he drives to the hospital. Lucy is chattering away excitedly in the seat next to him as I watch the Southern Maine scenery whirl by. I want to see her so badly my skin is tingling.
We get there and I’m almost ready to run to her room and offer to carry her out instead of them wheeling her out in a wheelchair, but of course I can’t do that because I’m still healing. And more importantly, that would cause everyone to ask questions we don’t want to answer right now. I smirk to myself as we enter the lobby and I think about how long I forced myself to ignore my feelings for her. A fucking decade. It wasn’t easy then but now that I’ve given into them, pretending they don’t exist again is absolute torture.
“I’ll go get her,” Lucy says. “Declan can you head to billing and see what we need to do there.”
Declan nods, his expression grim. He heads in one direction and Lucy heads in the other. I stay in the lobby and wait impatiently. A couple minutes later Declan appears from the hall he disappeared down, but he’s not alone. Tom is with him.
