Why? Who had he gone to? Had his mother moved there? Was she alive? But if she was, why hadn’t she taken him years before? Grace had more questions than answers.
She continued reading. He had spent some time in the US during his speciality years, returning to work in Perth. And now he was here. His career history was brief and, of course, there was no personal information included. Nothing to tell her if he was married, engaged, straight, gay—although she was pretty sure he was straight—or if he had a wife and kids back home in Perth.
She closed her email down. She didn’t have time to do a wider search on him. She had all the final pieces of the transplant puzzle to put in place. She had dozens of phone calls to make, she needed to check in with the other hospitals to make sure that all their patients were still well enough to undergo surgery and that no one had changed their minds. One hiccup could ruin the whole exercise.
She was glad she’d made arrangements for her patients to be admitted early. As Elliot had outlined, her reasons were valid. There were enough other logistical arrangements to be made once the kidneys had been harvested, without adding to the complications with things going haywire prior to the surgeries. It would only take one problem to snowball and potentially disrupt all the surgeries, and she wanted everything to run smoothly.
By the time she ended her final call to one of the Melbourne hospitals it was dusk outside. She should have clocked off but there was still more to do. Her schedule didn’t stick to regular nursing shifts any more, not since she’d become the renal co-ordinator. Her shifts supposedly ran from nine to five but it was not often that she stuck to those hours. Transplant patients could receive news day or night and she was often called back into the hospital to speak to the families of donors and to the transplant recipients. Plus, she had no reason to race out the door at the end of the day. She had nothing to race home for. No significant other, no children, no pets. If it wasn’t for work, her life would be a bit empty.
She switched off her office lights but, still in no hurry to leave, she thought she’d check one last time on the four patients waiting for surgery.
She got two patients with her first visit.
‘Gentlemen, how are you feeling?’
She greeted Rob and Paul, two brothers, one a donor, the other a recipient. Rob’s donated kidney was going to Brisbane in exchange for a kidney for his brother, as unfortunately their tissue types didn’t match. They were sitting together, chatting, when Grace entered Paul’s room. They seemed quite relaxed but Paul had been through this before so it was nothing new for him. His first kidney transplant, from a deceased donor, had lasted twenty-five years but was failing now. It was wonderful to think that the paired exchange programme could hopefully give him another shot at a successful transplant.
As Grace chatted to the two men she quickly revised her opinion of how they were feeling. Paul seemed far more relaxed than Rob.
‘Are you ready for tomorrow, Rob?’ she asked gently when Paul went to the bathroom, leaving the two of them alone for a moment.
‘I was told that the research shows that kidney disease most commonly affects both kidneys, is that right?’
‘That does seem to be the case. You’re worried about your remaining kidney?’ Rob’s nerves were not unusual in Grace’s experience. The donor was often more on edge than the recipient. Grace didn’t know if it was fear of the unknown or a lack of experience with hospitals or the fact that the donor wasn’t actually sick but was giving up a perfectly healthy organ. Rob was going from being a healthy, intact individual to one who would be minus an organ. Granted, he could do without it but that was assuming his remaining kidney continued to function normally. Hence his question. She knew he’d heard these answers before but her role as co-ordinator was often as much about counselling as co-ordinating.
‘We don’t anticipate problems, Rob,’ she reassured him when he nodded. ‘We wouldn’t let you do this if we thought it could create problems for you down the track.’
‘There’s no way I’m backing out,’ he emphasised firmly, ‘and my kidney only has to last long enough to see me out.’
‘Okay. Get some rest and I’ll see you in the morning.’
Grace made her way to Rosa’s room across the hall next. Rosa’s kidney would be going to Paul, not that either of them were privy to that piece of information, in exchange for a kidney for Rosa’s son in Melbourne. Despite being across the corridor from each other, Paul and Rosa wouldn’t meet.
Rosa was sitting beside her bed, knitting, the television on low volume. She was a widow with just the one son living interstate and Grace knew she was used to spending quiet nights alone. She’d told Grace she was fine as long as her hands were busy and she liked to knit. She seemed calm and only had a couple of questions for Grace, both of which had to do with her son’s prognosis. Rosa wasn’t worried about herself at all.
‘We have excellent results with kidney transplants,’ Grace told her again, happy to answer her questions. ‘Especially with living organ donors. Most kidneys will last ten years and some as long as twenty-five.’ She wished she could tell Rosa that her kidney was going to Paul and that he was one of the people whose first transplanted kidney had lasted twenty-five years but she couldn’t divulge that information, even though she knew it would make Rosa feel better. She said goodnight before popping into Connie’s room, her last stop for the evening.
‘Hey, Connie.’
Connie was the recipient of the spare kidney and even though in testing it had proved to be a good match there was a little bit of the unknown associated with this one, given the unexpectedness of the windfall, and Grace knew Connie was nervous.
Connie had moved to Sydney from the country eighteen months ago to have regular dialysis. She suffered from autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease and Grace knew she was finding things difficult. She was only able to work part time and her support group of friends and family were not close by.
Because of her illness and medical appointments her social life was limited and Grace knew that this transplant would make a huge difference to her quality of life. Grace’s sister-in-law had suffered from the same disease and had undergone a transplant five years ago, so Grace knew from personal experience how different Connie’s life could potentially be. Connie was only twenty-seven, the same age as Grace, and because of that and her circumstances Grace felt a deeper affinity for her than for some of her other patients.
‘Where is everyone?’ Grace asked as she looked around. Although they weren’t compatible donors, Connie’s family were providing support to her in other ways, and when Grace stepped into the room she was surprised to find that Connie didn’t have company. She knew her parents had come to the city to be with Connie for the surgery and the recovery.
‘Mum and Dad will be back later, they’ve just gone to get some dinner.’
‘How are you doing?’ she asked as she flicked through Connie’s chart, pleased to see everything looked stable and normal.
‘I’m not worried about the operation. Just worried about what will happen if it doesn’t work. I really want to be able to have kids. I need this to go well.’
Grace knew pregnancy was not out of the question for Connie if the transplant was successful but, as that was an unknown at this point, she couldn’t make any promises. Who knew what would happen? The only thing you could do in life was to hope for the best. All they could do in this situation was hope the kidney was a viable, healthy and suitable match for Connie. And no one could control
