Daniel Rose - Larry's Kidney, Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China

I’m on hold when Mary finds me. My first impulse is to hit her.

“And you!” I say. “Great help you’ve been. Why didn’t you stop him from leaving the hospital?”

“Dan, I cannot do! He big boy, do what he want.”

I’m ranting. “Mary, he’s not worth it! Why would you even want him for a husband?”

And then, it’s the last thing I expect, but Mary is angry, too-every bit as much as I am.

“What you!” she yells, rounding on me. “You do this for nice China adventure. You tell friends you big hero, you save cousin’s life, but you telephony.”

“Oh, I telephony now,” I snicker. I’m bullying her with my language, trying to intimidate her into shutting up. “What’re you trying to say-that I’m a phony? Yeah, that hurts, coming from the person who steals medical gauze from the hospital-”

“It poor where I come from, you no understand-”

“Who lies about working in some godforsaken school-”

“I do working in school-mechanical draw! Good job, no computer skill but T square, hold head up high-”

“Yeah, then why didn’t you tell us the truth?”

“Because you will laugh like always laughing at Larry, big joke, ha ha, even sick, even mix up. But you send spy on me, call supervisor and get me in trouble-”

“Oh, like you didn’t deserve it, poor you who makes secret telephone calls to another man. Yes, hello,” I say to the airline, off hold at last. “I’d like to make a reservation, Beijing to New York, if you have a seat for tomorrow-”

Mary lurches forward suddenly and smacks the cell phone out of my hands. It hits the floor hard and shatters against the tiles.

“That my son I telephone call!” she screams. “He lose job, very frighten, you not know because you safe American. But it hard to live for people! Not everyone fly around world, say give me this, give me that! That my son I telephone call!”

When did she learn to speak this well? Despite myself, I’m impressed with her vocabulary. She really has picked up a lot of language the past few weeks, studying her manuals.

But she’s not finished with me, coming up so close that I’m almost physically threatened for a second. “Why you no give kidney?”

“What?”

“Why you no give kidney to Larry?”

Suddenly I feel ridiculous, holding my hand out like I was still gripping the phone. I kneel to pick up the casing, stand unsteadily. “It’s doubtful our DNA-”

“See you phony? You not even take test to try.”

She’s right. I’ve never really considered offering my own.

“You take big trip, go everywhere outside, but never go inside, never go here.”

She pokes me in my lower abdomen. I’m shocked by the contact. It’s a sensitive spot.

“Ouch, my kidney-”

“That not even right place!” she scoffs. “You not even know! Kidney in back, that where they take it, put new one in front, right here.”

She prods me again, same spot. “You worse than Larry,” she says. “Larry is what he is, but at least he not pretend he big hero…”

I’m withering under the truth of her attack but try to fight back. “What about you?” I say, trying to match her volume. “Why don’t you give him yours?”

Mary steps back, shows her teeth in a smile or a grimace, I can’t tell. “Larry no want me to, say too risky,” she says. “But you his cousin, Dan, in family of doctors, no excuse…”

I’m speechless. I can mount no defense as she softens her tone.

“Why you think we all have two?” she asks me. “One is extra, for giving.”

It strikes me as startlingly true, the obviousness of it. I don’t know what to say.

“How can you leave your Larry, Dan? He say you good man, you kind man.”

“He does not.”

“He say you kindest man in world.”

“Bullshit.”

She clutches me by both shoulders, resolutely. “He says you his big brother, that you only family left…”

I charge into Larry’s room, where the nurses are cleaning his surface wounds. “What do you mean I’m kind?” I demand.

“To me you are.”

“Fuck that. If I’m so kind, why’d you never ask for a kidney from me?”

“I would never presume.”

“And Mary?”

“I would have declined if she offered. She has no health insurance where she comes from, deficient medical care, she can’t put herself at risk. Matter of fact, I should forbid it in writing, in case she gets any crazy ideas.”

He looks around for a pen, but the Kleenex box with all his worldly goods is nowhere to be found. That’s okay, he’s made his wishes known. Cherry is here to witness his decision, should it ever come up again.

“But you’ll notice that I’m a fair negotiator,” he says. “I’m not making this veto without giving you something in return. So tell you what, I’ll yield on the question of surrender.”

“What do you mean, surrender?”

“White flag, peace pipe, laying down of arms. No more fighting you-I swear on my mutha’s grave.”

The decision made, he gives himself up to exhaustion, a kind of self-liberation. The act of capitulation is so enormous to him that it amounts to a kind of deliverance; he can’t keep himself from making sounds of relief as I discuss the situation with Cherry. The whole time she and I are talking, Larry drops his own comments in: “I’ll let you people decide.” “Whatever you say.” “I defer to you.” “I won’t stop you.” “I’ll let you talk in peace.”

With a wink to me, Cherry leaves the suite. Mary is off nursing her pride somewhere. At last Larry and I are alone. His surrender proclamation’s so monumental to him that he still feels he needs to explain himself.

“All my life I just wanted to assert my independence.”

“I know you did, cuz.”

He looks a thousand years old, like a thousand-year-old panda, so weary of the world and its nonsense. No, he looks worse than that: What he looks like is just another patient, biding his time in a dirty Yankee uniform.

“That’s why I kept leaving the hospital,” he says. “It was me demonstrating that I could make my own way.”

“I understand, Larry. You don’t have to explain.”

“When I’m having a fear reaction, that may be the only thing I can do. I don’t know what else there is to do. But I agree it would be ironic if we were to come all this way for a kidney, only to be struck dead by a Chinese bus.”

“It would be more than ironic, Larry, it would be dumb as hell.”

“Look at the abrasions on my arms,” he says, clucking at himself as if at the foolishness of a minor who’s seen the error of his ways. “We’ll have to get me healed up.”

“We will, Larry, we’ll get you good as new. It’s just…we have it within our grasp now, and you don’t want to pay.”

“I’ll try to pay.”

“You mean that?”

“I hope so, Dan. I hope it doesn’t come in too high, but I’ll do my best to pay.”

“You won’t go back on this, Larry? Because I can’t babysit you 24/7. I’ve got my own babies at home that I’ve put on hold for you.”

“It’s done, Dan.” He breathes peacefully.

I believe him. Because, like everything else about Larry, it’s contagious: I find myself in surrender mode, too. In the semi-dark of the hospital room, with the sheets draped up and surrounded by pistachio shells, I sit by his bedside in silence. On the TV variety show flickering in the background, a Chinese Jackie Gleason is trying to talk on a red-hot telephone. There’s lots of canned laughter at low volume, but we’ve learned to tune it out.

“Thank you, Dan. I don’t know if I’ve told you this before, but thank you a hundred times.”

“Friends and family, you don’t need to say, Larry. It’s understood.”