Sudden Impact - Lesley Choyce [9]
“What about me?” I asked, not knowing what I was saying.
Bennington shook his head. “Each of us only has one liver. And you can’t live without it. Sorry. The donor has to be dead. The blood type has to be a match and we need permission to harvest the organ.”
I felt like everything was collapsing around me.
“But we do need blood,” the other doctor said. I think he had seen my despair. “What’s your blood type?”
I shrugged.
He pulled a notepad out of his pocket, scratched down something and handed it to me. “Two flights down. They only take a little blood. It doesn’t hurt.”
I took the paper and headed to the elevator. My head was dizzy. I prayed that I had the right blood type. I’d give as many pints as I could if it helped keep Kurt alive. I turned around, realizing Kurt would wonder why I had not come back.
“Don’t worry,” Bennington said. “I’ll tell your boyfriend you’ll be back later.”
I decided not to explain that I wasn’t Kurt’s girlfriend. I just cared for him, that’s all. And I wanted him to get better.
chapter nine
I lay there with my eyes closed and prayed that it would come out right, that I would have the right match—B negative, whatever that meant.
After I sat for twenty minutes in a waiting room looking at magazines a nurse returned with a form. “Take this back to Dr. Bennington,” she said. The envelope was sealed.
In the elevator, I ripped the envelope open. I couldn’t wait. I didn’t understand most of it but there it was— “Blood type: O positive.” I wouldn’t be able to donate my blood to help Kurt. When I found Bennington and handed him the ripped-open envelope, he could tell by the look on my face that I wasn’t going to be a blood donor.
“It was a long shot,” Bennington said. “B negative or O negative are okay, but nothing else will work. Besides, you’re not old enough to give legal consent. It would be up to your parents.”
“No it wouldn’t,” I said. It was my body, not theirs.
Maybe I couldn’t give Kurt what he needed. But I was determined to make sure he had enough blood until the stupid system could come up with something to really fix him up. At school the following day, I asked everyone I knew what type of blood they had.
“What are you, some kind of vampire?” Dorfman asked. “Besides, I don’t know stuff like that. Hanging around hospital beds is making you weird.”
I sloughed it off.
“What do you want to know for?” Leach asked. “It’s personal even if I did know.”
“I’m doing a project for biology,” I lied. “It’s a survey, okay?”
But he just walked away.
I got a few answers from girls I knew. They seemed less uptight about it than the guys. A couple of teachers laughed at me but told me what kind of blood they had.
Nobody had the right type.
I guess the doctors were right about one thing: It wasn’t going to be easy.
By the end of the day I was feeling beat. Scared too. I was just closing my locker when Jason showed up. He came up so close I could smell his breath, and I knew then that he had been drinking. He had his stupid motorcycle helmet under one arm and a big grin on his face.
Some girls thought he was cute, but I knew the guy was a jerk. Ever since his birthday, he’d been a jerk with a motorcycle, which was twice as bad.
“What do you want?” I asked him.
He ignored my question, as if I should be flattered that he had stopped by to talk. “I hate wearing this thing,” he said, handing the helmet to me. “The law has no right to say what’s safe for me. It cuts down my vision. Besides, on a bike, you’re supposed to feel free.”
“Right,” I said. “Now buzz off.” I’d overheard Jason talking non-stop about his motorcycle all week. Everybody was impressed but me.
“Aren’t you gonna ask?”
“Ask what?” I snapped.
“You know. My blood type. The guys think your little game is really weird. Dorfman says you’re a vampire.”
“Give me a break.”
“Does it have something to do with loverboy?”
“No.” There was no way he was going to trick me into saying anything about Kurt. “Just a biology