What's a Girl to Do? (Season 6)

Chapter Ten: Alive or Dead

Since I'd gotten shot while pregnant with the boys, I hadn't had to have any dialysis treatment, but I was on a kidney transplant list. I had been waiting anxiously, and now that I was over two months sober, the doctors were beginning to think that I was becoming a candidate for a second kidney in the near future. When the call came on the first of March that there was finally a match for me, I immediately called in sick to work and made my way over to the hospital as soon as I had dropped the boys off at daycare and Iana at preschool.

"Name, please," the receptionist asked when I approached the desk.

"Murphy Gallagher-Blomqvist," I replied, getting my ID out of my wallet and handing it over, and somehow managed to smile at her.

"Oh, yeah, they found you a kidney match," the woman replied, typing in the information onto her computer. "Have you been fasting for over twelve hours?"

I nodded; I hadn't eaten breakfast that morning, and had not eaten since around eight-thirty the night before, and it was after nine a.m. "I haven't eaten for about twelve and a half hours now, if that's appropriate."

The woman nodded, handing me my ID back. "Very good," she replied, and promptly handed me a clipboard. "You'll have to fill this out for any new information in your medical history, Mrs. Blomqvist, and then someone will be with you in the next ten to fifteen minutes to prepare you for surgery and to put you under."

I nodded, gazing at the clipboard for a moment before raising my eyes to hers. "Sounds good," I said brightly with a smile. "Thank you very much." I crossed the room towards where the chairs were kept, picking one at random and checking my phone before I began to fill out the paperwork in front of me. I'd told Nicholas, Ian, Lip, and Debbie about my impending surgery, and all four said that they work accommodate me and come around later, after it was all over, to check up on me.

I tapped my pen against the stack of papers on the clipboard for a moment, bringing my bottom lip into my mouth and biting it, hard, as I attempted to focus on the medical jargon in front of me. Other than my own personal pathology—plus the reading I'd assigned myself on bipolar disorder since finding out that Ian was my twin—I didn't know a lot about medical treatments on the whole. One could easily say that it was not my designated forte, and while I knew a vague amount of terms from my years under Dr. Normal's regime, all I knew was, I should've done a little more homework on the whole kidney aspect of things...

"Murphy?"

I looked up then, a few moments later, when a nurse arrived to collect me. Getting to my feet, I forced a smile to my lips. "Yeah. Good morning."

"Morning," she replied breezily. "I'm Rebecca, and I'll take that, if you don't mind," she said, her tone gentle, as she reached out for my clipboard.

"Uh, yeah, thanks," I said, handing it over and catching her name as Ophelia on her name badge, which swung from her neck.

"Nervous about any of this?" she asked as we walked through the doors and down the long, well-lit hallway.

I let out a laugh. "Well, no guarantee I'll wake up, so..."

Rebecca looked slightly shocked at my apparent nonchalant attitude as we reached the exam room, where I presumed I would be put under, before being deposited onto a cart and brought into surgery itself. "While there are risks to any surgery, Murphy, as I'm sure you know, I know that you're in good hands."

"I don't doubt it," I replied.

"Good," Rebecca said, managing to smile at me as she motioned for me to sit down. "I'm just going to check you over and make sure that you're equipped for surgery this morning. Does that sound okay to you?"