The Biker

25 | Evangeline & Aiden

Today was the day. I was going to find out if I was anyone's match. My palms were sweaty as I made my way to the hospital, rolling my shoulders to try and get the tension out of them.

It was all a bit of a blur, me being seen by the doctor, him going through a couple of charts, and him finally saying:

"You have a match! It's actually a girl in our hospital, which is quite convenient."

I let out a breath. That was good news.

"Would you like to meet her?"

"Now?"

"Yeah, why not? That's okay with you, right? The patient has wanted to meet her donor if they ever found one."

"Okay, yeah."

"We've never had a donor and patient in the same hospital at the same time before. This is quite the coincidence." He got up and clapped his hands, prompting for us to get moving. I wasn't expecting this to move so fast.

The hallway that we were going was very familiar, and my heart racing as we approached a very familiar door.

Shoot. What if Aiden was here?

The doctor knocked gently on the door, and two heads swiveled to the entryway. I must have had luck on my side today, because Aiden was nowhere to be found.

"Ms Evangeline! What are you doing here so early?" Carrie exclaimed, a smile forming on her face.

"Oh, do you two know each other?" The doctor looked between us, confused.

lMs. Evangeline's one of my nurses."

"I must have not seen you in our system. Well, isn't that great news!"

"What good news?" Carrie was visibly confused, her head tilting slightly to the side.

"Ms. Evangeline here is your bone marrow match! Isn't that exciting? I'm going to go tell Dr. Bowman, but you guys can keep talking." He left without another word, leaving us with another one of Carrie's nurses. The nurse gave me a quick wave before excusing himself, and we were left in silence.

"You're my donor, Ms. Evangeline?"

I gave her a tentative smile. I wasn't sure how she was going to feel about this. "Surprise!"

Tears started pooling in her eyes, and I ran over to her.

"Oh, Carrie. Don't cry! This is a good thing. You'll be better now. You can get out of here."

"But Ms. Evangeline, what if something goes wrong in the surgery? What if something happens to you, and then it'll be my fault. Aiden would never forgive me."

"Hey. I'm going to be fine. And so are you. I trust our surgeons here, and even if something does happen, which I doubt it will, it will not be your fault. I signed up for this. And don't worry about Aiden. I don't think he should know about this."

"What? But don't you think he'll be happy?"

"I know he'll be happy for you, Carrie. But he'll probably be upset with me. I told him I had put myself on the bone marrow registry, and he freaked out. So if he knows it's me giving you bone marrow, he'll be really mad. So you have to keep it a secret, okay? We'll tell him when we're both better." I pursed my lips, hoping she would understand.

Her face was still a little tear stained, but she nodded.

. . . . .

It was weird getting Carrie ready for her bone marrow transplant while I was also getting ready for my part of the process. She had to go through a couple rounds of chemotherapy to kill off any diseased cells in her bloodstream, and the blood-forming cells in her bone marrow to make room for new cells.