This is a story about love, sacrificial love. It is a story that I felt I needed to share. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in careers it takes something dramatic to shake us up. I hope you enjoy this story.
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My skin felt like ice. I was so cold, I could not seem to warm up. A nurse came into the room with a warm blanket to wrap around me.
"Thank you," I whispered.
My days here, alive on this earth, were drawing short. I was ill, very ill. My liver was failing me. I had undergone so many treatments, procedures and medications that I had lost track of them all.
This hospital bed has been my home for the past months. Unfortunately, I had been living alone and my condition became so bad that I needed full-time care. My wife and I had divorced a few years ago.
My wife and I were so much in love with each other that we ran off and eloped as teenagers. We were so young and proud and foolish. We were so poor that sometimes it seemed that the only thing we really owned was the deep love we felt for each other. We made a promise to never give up. We got student loans, went to college together and both excelled in our studies.
Unfortunately, our work lives led us in different directions. She got a political appointment and flourished in that capacity. I was a journalist and wrote for a major newspaper and freelanced.
We drifted apart slowly, gradually, our careers were all consuming. One day she came home with some news.
"I've been appointed to a new position, I start Monday. It's on the other side of the country so I need to spend the weekend packing what I'm going to need."
"What about us, Sharon?"
"We'll get together once in a while. Or you could get a job writing for a paper there and move with me."
"I spent years working my way up to this position at the paper."
"We'll be okay."
"How long is the appointment?"
"At least two years, the last director put in fifteen years."
"I can't talk you out of it?"
"No, I need to take this appointment. I've worked hard for this."
Before either of us knew it we were so far apart from each other that breaking up just seemed the right and best thing to do.
The loneliness has been hard, especially now as I lie here waiting for the end to come. I would have given everything just to have her here to hold my hand, to comfort me.
My doctor entered the room and looked at the charts.
"How are you feeling today?"
"Weak as a kitten," comes my whispered reply.
"Don't give up hope. We are still trying to find a compatible liver donor for a transplant. Even a portion of a donated liver can grow and take the place of the diseased one."
Yeah, I had been put on a list. Sadly the list was as long as your arm. The criteria they used to determine who gets priority means that I am nowhere near the top of the list. Children, doctors, lawyers, politicians, captains of industry, fathers, mothers etc. An ageing divorced man is way down the list.
Many of my friends and former coworkers had been tested for compatibility. So far none of them had matched. I had no blood relatives left alive so that limited the pool of likely matches.
"There's always a chance that someone will be found."
"Okay, please keep trying."
Each day felt just like the last except I got progressively weaker.
One day I awoke to a strange sensation, someone was holding my hand. She looked different. It had been years since seeing my ex-wife but there she was.
"Hi Phil," she said, in her soft mid-Atlantic accent.
"Sharon, is it really you or am I hallucinating again?"
"In the flesh. I just heard that you've been ill. Why didn't you call me?"
"Didn't have your number or address. Didn't know where you were."
"Can't you talk, what's up with your voice?"
"Treatments made me weak damaged vocal cords."
"They've been telling me about your prognosis, you NEED a donation from a compatible donor."
"Nothing coming, no one left to test. I don't have much time left."
I buzzed for a nurse and asked for my pain meds to be stopped. I wanted to be as alert as possible to talk with my ex-wife.
"Pain meds make me tired and vague. I need to be sharp to talk to you. It's been years."
"Don't suffer because I'm here. If you need the pain suppressant go for it."
"So tell me Sharon, what happened to Andrew?"
My contacts told me that Sharon was being pursued by Andrew Hoffman, an industrialist and influencer. It wasn't long after I received the news about Andrew that the divorce petition came through.
"How did you...of course, you have sources all over don't you?"
"I wasn't spying on you, it was one of my regulars who thought I should know."
"To answer your question, Andrew was not interested in me as a woman, but as an influencer and ally. I misunderstood his intentions. He let on that he was interested in a romantic relationship. I refused to get involved since I was still married to you. I filed for divorce. When his true intentions were made clear he got kicked to the curb."
"And you divorced me for that?"
"No, not that alone but it was important. The distance between us was political and philosophical as well as physical, Phil. We drifted apart, we were too career focused for our own good."
"Just for the record I never got over the separation. The divorce hurt, your relationship with Andrew was like a hair shirt for me."
"I never recovered either. I was tricked into doing the most expedient thing and it cost me my marriage."
"So Andrew ended up bankrupt again and you continued your political career alone."
"Gee, Phil, if I didn't know better I would think you really cared about me. Why didn't you ever get in touch?"
"Why didn't you?"
"Touché, afraid of rejection maybe. I did divorce you after all. I thought you'd hate me."
I had a sharp pain and I grimaced and caught my breath.
"Get back on the pain meds. I have to leave but I'll be back, maybe in a week or so if all goes well."
"I'll look forward to it."
The nurse turned on the drip, the sweet pain relieving elixir flowed into my IV and I left for la-la land.
The next time I was conscious I was on a gurney and being wheeled down a hallway. I was brought into a bright room with a dozen people all working on equipment. A masked surgeon came to my side and told me that a compatible donor had been found and I was going to have the donor tissue transplanted.
I was out like a light. A dreamless sleep-like state till I came to beside a nurse.
"You are coming out of the anesthetic now, you are in recovery. You'll be here for a while. We'll take good care of you."
It took a long while to come to my senses but when I did I realized that this was a new lease on life.
"Has Sharon been around to see me?" I asked the nurse.
"She said she'll be back to see you soon."
Soon, I wasn't going to hold my breath. Naturally I wanted to know where the liver donation came from. The staff told me endless times that organ donation was confidential and anonymous. I could never be told where they found a match.
I was taking a cocktail of anti rejection drugs and so far there had been no signs of rejection. My enzymes count showed that the new portion of the liver was working as it should. I was actually beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel and it wasn't heaven or an oncoming train. It was hope.
Two weeks afterwards Sharon visited. I was off the pain meds and felt much better than I had in ages.
