I joined a kidney transplant chain.

Maybe you've heard of them. They make it into the news from time to time.

Every year, more than 4,000 Americans die because they need a kidney and can't find a donor. No matter how willing your loved ones are to help, there's nothing they can do if they're not a match for you. All the love in the world won't stop your body from rejecting their kidney.

But that's where kidney transplant chains come in. Here's how it works: if you want to donate a kidney to, say, your sibling, but you're not a match, you join a chain. You donate your kidney to someone you are a match for. This is probably a complete stranger. One of their loved ones does the same, and on and on until eventually someone who is a match for your sibling comes into play. That way, in the span of just a few months, dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people get kidneys they might otherwise have died waiting for. It's a really great example of humans helping one another. Altruism. You have to trust that someone who's a match for your loved one will play along. You just give a kidney to a total stranger on, well, faith, I guess, that enough other people will be willing to do the same.

And how many people would, really? A ton, it turns out. There are whole Facebook groups dedicated to the concept in different areas. You can meet people who are willing to donate, you can meet people who are waiting for a kidney, and, perhaps most importantly, you can just offer each other a community of people who understand what you're all going through. It's somewhere you can complain about dialysis with hundreds of people who know exactly what you're going through. We mourn members who didn't find a kidney in time, and cheer for those who did. We send care packages to people who donated. One woman makes necklaces with delicate silver kidney pendants and sends them to everyone involved in a transplant. It's like a whole town full of selfless, wonderful people.

One of those groups is how I met my donor, Lindsay. Her dad was waiting for a kidney, but, as so often happens, no one in their family was a match. So she and her mom both decided to join a chain. A constant theme in these groups is that people have no idea why you wouldn't join. It's really amazing. They're all so selfless. To not even hesitate before deciding to give a major organ to someone you don't even know? I don't know if I could do that. I mean, it's moot, of course, because I'm not healthy enough to donate. But it makes me feel pretty ashamed to admit to myself, privately, that I don't think I would give a kidney to a stranger even if I could. I know we all have two of them, but still. It's a major surgery, and what if your one remaining kidney fails on you down the line? People like Lindsay are just incredible.

Anyway, as part of her introduction in the group, she posted her blood type and subgroups, which were the same as mine. I couldn't believe it. I stared at the post for several minutes. I won't get into what it is because you basically need three college biology courses to understand it, but I have a weird mutation that makes my blood much rarer. It's far more common in people of east Asian descent, like me, so when I joined the group, which is based in the Midwest, I wasn't at all optimistic that anyone would be a match. The group is almost entirely white people with just a few black people. That's just how the demographics shake out, you know? But it turns out some white people carry these genes too, and Lindsay was one of them. Once I got over my shock, I PMed her right away. I thought she must have made a mistake when she typed out her compatibility. But she confirmed it.

I met Lindsay for coffee in the hospital cafeteria just two days later. We were both there often, of course. They say coffee is bad for your kidneys, but only after three or four cups a day. Until then, it's actually good for them, or at least that's what they're saying right now. Those types of recommendations change all the time. Like eggs were supposed to be bad for your heart for years, and then one day they announced we should all eat tons of eggs. Sometimes it feels like they make that stuff up to keep us all on our toes. Anyway, the coffee helped me feel a little more lively and sociable. We looked at each other's paperwork for a while, marveling over how much of a match we seemed to be. She was willing to give me a kidney, she said. I almost cried.

Even though we were both adults who lived on our own by now, I could tell her dad's illness was really hard on her. She often had to take off work and go spend time at the kidney specialist with him, and she confided that she was worried she might lose her job over it, but she didn't want to tell him. I nodded sympathetically and told her that my own father had told me a few months earlier that he just couldn't take any more time off for me, either. My mom still did, but she just worked part-time at a supermarket. My dad was a supervisor at a car factory, so if he didn't keep his job, I risked losing my health insurance, and with it, any slim chance I had of making it past the next year or so.

We ended up becoming pretty good friends after that. Like I said, people who understand your position, even if they're not in exactly the same one themselves? That's really powerful. After a couple of weeks, I even offered to house sit for her while she accompanied her parents to a specialist appointment several hours away. She had recently broken up with her boyfriend, and he had gone a little nuts over it, so she didn't feel comfortable leaving the house unattended. She didn't have any pets. If she had, I wouldn't have been able to do it, since I had just started on some immunosuppressants in the hope that we might make the transplant soon. Dogs and cats aren't much of a risk to a healthy person, but they actually carry salmonella and several other nasty things that can be a death sentence to someone on the wrong drugs. But all she had was some houseplants. That was all right. I asked my doctor. And I desperately wanted to help Lindsay. After all, she was giving so much to me.

It was a couple of weeks after that that I went back to Lindsay's place. I drove by a few times until I saw all the lights were out, and then I waited another hour and a half for good measure. Then I let myself in with a copy of the key she'd given me for house sitting. I was lucky it was a small house, and one story. Stairs were hard on me these days, even though I tried to stay as active as possible anyway.

I slunk into Lindsay's room and hit her in the face with the small metal baseball bat I'd brought. The sound of the bat crushing her nose was... well, it was pretty awful. Not as awful as the sounds she started making after I hit her several more times, though. She was... gurgling. I don't think she ever woke up, though. I tried to make sure of that. I really didn't want her to know what happened, and especially not that it was me doing it. After a while, her forehead caved in, both of us were wheezing, and my vision had gone all gray, and it seemed like that was good enough.

I used her cell phone to call 911 from the hall, as much so I wouldn't have to hear the awful sound of her choking on her own blood as so the dispatcher couldn't. I pretended to be Lindsay. I whispered into the phone that I thought my crazy ex-boyfriend had just broken into my house. I didn't have to pretend to sound terrified, though. I was. Then I put the phone in her hand and hurried to my car, as fast as I could without blacking out. I went home and waited for the hospital to call.

I did a lot of things wrong, I know. But they just don't make transplant chains for people like me. I'm sure they'll catch me soon. I think part of me wanted to be caught. That's probably why I didn't delete my number from her phone, or delete myself and my messages from her Facebook, even though I could have done both of those things before I called 911. And even though I whispered into the phone, they will probably figure out that I wasn't her. But it doesn't really matter. The transplant is already done, and undoing it is unconstitutional. Even if I go to prison, they can't take Lindsay's heart back.

Author: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/97d1n0/i_joined_a_kidney_transplant_chain/
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