Between the Seams (15 page)

“Over the past couple of years I’ve had to take professional development courses on how to handle revenge porn cases. What happened to you sounds eerily like that, but not quite.”

Chase leaned forward and grabbed his fork. “Revenge porn?”

Jo nodded. “Basically, with so many people having cell phones and social media accounts these days, teenagers—and adults, to be fair—have found it easier to share private photos with one another. You know how it goes, girl and guy are dating, guy asks girl if he can have some nude photos of her, girl sends guy said nude photos, guy shows said photos to his friends, girl gets upset, Daddy gets pissed, and guy and girl break up. There have been some cases where the guy has gone on to post those photos to amateur porn sites, social media accounts, stuff like that, without the girl’s consent. The guy’s mad at her, or just an immature douche, or both. The problem is that a lot of times the guys will share personal information about the girl—her name, phone number, social media accounts, email and physical addresses. All kinds of stuff. I’ve had a couple of students who have been victims, and it’s been hard, seeing them deal with it. They’re young, y’know, and teens don’t always think through to the consequences of their actions, and they sure don’t expect to have their trust broken like that. I’ve seen families spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to get the photos and information removed, but as I’m sure you know, it’s almost impossible to completely erase anything off the internet.”

“The internet is forever,” Chase murmured.

“Exactly. I can’t imagine having my trust betrayed like that. Then again, I also can’t imagine what would drive someone to do something like that in the first place. These women—they’ll seriously go that far?”

“Unfortunately, yes. There are some that will stalk guys on social media, at the ballpark or the stadium—wherever and whatever sport—find out their home addresses, hit on them in bars with their husbands present. It’s unsettling.”

Jo had picked up her fork, and set it back down. “Wives will literally hit on athletes in front of their husbands? What kind of marriage is that?”

“Not much of one.” He sipped his beer. “I’m not going to get into those stories—I’m not privy to a lot of them, honestly—but if you ever get a chance to meet Matt’s agent, Darrin, he has a ton of stories he could tell you.”

“I’m not sure I want to hear them.”

Chase laughed. “Honestly? They’re so disturbing all you can really do is laugh, and thank God your life is normal.”

~~*~~

Chapter Seventeen

Normal.

Six letters.

A fairly simple word.

Something his life had kind of been just a week ago.

Something his life would never be again.

“We’ve known this was coming, Chase. Your BUN and creatinine have been slowly climbing over the past year. Your GFR’s dropped dramatically—from forty to twenty-eight over the past six months. Your blood pressure’s slowly crept up and you’re anemic.”

Chase nodded. This was nothing he and Dr. Gupta hadn’t talked about in the past, and shouldn’t have come as such a shock. He’d had a feeling it was coming, had known he’d been pushing himself a little harder than he should have been and had been a little more tired than usual.

“So what’s next?”

Not that he didn’t know, but it helped to discuss the game plan with his nephrologist.

Dr. Gupta sat down on his stool, clasped his hands on his knees and sighed. “Well, you’re officially in stage four Chronic Kidney Disease. The double-edged sword here is that it’s not as bad as it could be, but it does mean we need to begin discussing dialysis and transplant options, so that we’re fully prepared by the time you’re in end stage renal failure. You won’t be eligible for a transplant until your GFR drops to twenty, so we’ll need to monitor that closely over the coming months. The good news—if you want to look at it that way—is that you don’t have to be completely in end stage renal failure in order to be eligible for a transplant, which means you may never have to go on dialysis.”

Chase swallowed past the lump on his throat. He’d known this was coming—they’d known this was a possibility since he was a teen and he’d had two ureteral reimplantations to fix the connection between his ureter and his kidneys. They’d discovered the scarring on his kidneys when he was fourteen, and the doctors had warned him and his parents then that Chronic Kidney Disease and eventually End Stage Renal Failure were very real possibilities.

Unfortunately, CKD was a possibility that had become a reality. Shortly after he’d graduated from college, he’d had an annual check-up and had found out then that he was in stage two Chronic Kidney Disease. He’d been able to manage it and slow the process over the past ten years with diet and exercise, but over the past year his body had apparently decided to take a turn for the worse.

“So what are my immediate next steps?”

Dr. Gupta nodded. “I know you have all of the literature, and that we’ve talked about this before, but as for immediate next steps, I would say that I would like to get you in with a dietician. I know you eat healthy and that you’re very active, you’re still urinating so I’m not going to restrict your fluids just yet. But I would like you to meet with the dietician just to go over the renal diet so that you have some basic guidelines. That being said, your potassium and phosphorus levels are still in the okay range, so I’m not going to put you on any binders or tell you start restricting those things just yet.”

Binders were pills that basically helped your body balance out your phosphorus levels. He knew that because, yeah, he’d done his research.

“I’m guessing I do need to start watching other stuff, though, like Gatorade, beer, etc.?”

“Yes, stay off the Gatorade. One beer every now and then probably won’t hurt you at this point, just listen to your body. How much do you drink on a regular basis now?”

“Maybe three or four a week.” He almost always limited himself to one beer at a time. Just the one, and then he switched to water.

Dr. Gupta nodded. “Good. Good. How about we drop that down to one or two a week?”

“I’m fine with that.”

“No calcium supplements, or anything that has added calcium in it—your parathyroid seems to be working okay right now, but if your phosphorus levels start to increase added calcium could cause a lot of problems. The dietician may advise you to adopt a slightly lower protein diet, so that a lot of protein waste isn’t building up in your body, since your kidneys aren’t filtering protein anywhere near as well as they were even six months ago. Again, follow her advice but listen to your body—you’re a lot more active than the typical CKD patient, and that will end up working in your favor, I think.”

Chase fought to grab one of the many thoughts spinning through his head at the moment. “So I know we’ve briefly talked about this before, and as you just said, I may not even have to go on dialysis if I can get a kidney transplant fairly quickly, but do you think I should go ahead and prepare for not being able to find a live donor? The stats I’ve been seeing say that the wait time in Texas is currently over five years if you’re on the transplant waiting list.”

“The time varies depending on blood type, but yes, the average is just over five years, which is just one of the reasons why we always encourage a live donation if possible.”

“Right, but what if I can’t find a live donor?” Furthermore, how did he even
ask
someone to just give him a kidney?

“Then we would need to look at dialysis options. If you choose hemodialysis I would suggest going ahead and getting a fistula before you need dialysis—catheters can be dangerous and are not optimal.”

“I guess there’s no point in asking if you’re sure I’m heading towards a transplant?”

The doctor smiled thinly and shook his head, removed his reading glasses and set them aside. “Unfortunately, no. You’d been doing very well, but the rapid decline of your kidneys over the past six months points towards a slide to end stage renal failure.”

“Any idea what’s caused them to decline so suddenly?”

Dr. Gupta shrugged. “It’s very hard to tell. You do all of the right things, so this is nothing that’s your fault. Your kidneys have been fighting since you were a child. You’re now thirty-three. They can only take so much.”

Chase nodded.

“I would also like to start seeing you every three months. A week before you come in the next time I’ll need you to have bloodwork done, along with a twenty-four hour urine collection.”

Great. He hated peeing into those damned urinals.

“Any other questions?”

“Not really, Dr. Gupta. I’ve been researching this for years.”

How do I break the news to Mom and Dad? Shit, how do I break this to Jo?

~~*~~

“You okay? You seem like you’re a million miles away,” Jo asked over dinner.

Chase’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Yeah, sorry. Just have a lot on my mind.”

She reached across the table and took his hand. “Anything you want to talk about?”

He looked down at the table and blew out a deep breath. A sense of foreboding snaked up her spine.

“Chase, what’s wrong? You’re kinda making me nervous here.”

“What happens when you go back to Austin?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what happens when you go back to Austin? How do we know the long distance thing will work? Hell, we haven’t really even talked about what happens come August. I think I’ve just assumed we would stay together and work something out.”

“Why wouldn’t we stay together and work something out?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. But I don’t know that we could, either. I mean, what’s our game plan?”

“To be honest, I haven’t really thought that far ahead.”

“Is that necessarily what we want to do? Just let things go where they may with no planning or thought?”

“It’s a relationship, Chase, not a baseball game. This is you and me, not the bottom of the ninth with one out and a runner on third while down by one.”

Chase leaned towards her, palms pressed flat on the tabletop, his eyes frantically searching her face as he quietly said, “You don’t think I don’t know that, Jo? I’ve already lost you once, I don’t think I can do it again.”

She reached out and cupped his cheek. “Chase, honey, you’re not going to lose me again.”

“How do you know that?” The desperation in his voice made her want to cry.

I don’t.

~~*~~

Three days later, Chase found himself more grateful than ever for Owen’s unexpected arrival in his office.

“What’s up?” he asked.

Owen collapsed into the chair on the other side of Chase’s desk, groaned and tipped his head back before running a hand over his face.

“It’s been the shittiest of shitty weeks.”

Tell me about it.

Chase tossed his pen on to his desk and leaned back in his chair. “What happened?”

“More like what didn’t happen. I swear, it’s been the summer of shitty shit. Seems like every week it’s something new. Broken hands from fighting. Blown tires. Lost loads. Contractors not delivering supplies on time. This week my foreman was out for a few days after his wife had baby number four. Whatever. We knew it was coming and had prepared. What I hadn’t prepared for was two of my guys quitting with no notice and finding out another had completely forged his ID, right down to the fake social security card that looked real. Imagine my surprise this morning when I found out he was sitting in jail after trying to flee from border patrol with a truck full of people who did not have fake IDs yet.”

“Jesus. Sounds like you’ve had almost as bad a week as I have.”

“Oh? What’s up with you?”

Chase shook his head, not sure where to start or if he really even wanted to. “Well, I found out on Monday I’m in stage four CKD and will need a transplant sooner rather than later. Oh, and Jo and I haven’t talked in three days.”

“Okay, first, I’m sorry, man, about the transplant. Even though you knew it was coming, that can’t be easy to hear. Second, why aren’t you and Jo talking? Last I saw the two of you were stuck to each other like frickin’ glue.”

“I don’t know, really. The transplant thing has me freaked out. The long-distance thing has me worried. Either of those two alone isn’t exactly great, but you throw them together and it’s just one big clusterfuck. So I’ve been doing the manly thing and avoiding her because, hey, I don’t know what else to do.”

Owen shrugged. “You’ll figure it out. But it sounds like you need some R&R just as much as I do. You up for going up to the ranch and slinging some lead? The crew’s at a standstill until next week anyway.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to say “no,” but then Chase thought about it and said, “Why not? Let me text Daniel and see if he needs us to grab anything for him before we head out.”

Owen nodded before standing. “I’m gonna swing by the house, take a shower and throw a bag together real quick. Meet at your place in an hour?”

“Sounds good,” Chase said, his hand reaching for his phone to shoot Daniel a quick text. Done with that, he stared at his phone for long moments before pulling up Jo’s name and messaging her, too.

~~*~~

Chase: Going up to the ranch with Owen for a day or two. Get in some range time. Love you.

Jo looked at the message from Chase and sighed. Well, at least he was texting her now.

Her heart in her throat, she responded to Chase’s text.

Jo: Have fun. Love you, too.

That was simple and breezy and no pressure, right?

Right?

She thunked her head against Gran’s refrigerator. Jesus, she was acting like a seventeen-year-old.

She shook her head in an attempt to clear it, and then decided to text Jenn.

Jo: Apparently Chase and Owen are going up to the ranch for a couple of days. Girls’ night?

Jenn: Sure. Miguel’s then drinks somewhere not public?

Jo shook her head. She wasn’t entirely sure what was going on with Jenn, but maybe tonight she’d finally get some answers.

Jo: No problem. You wanna come over to Gran’s? We can figure out something from there.

Jenn: Or we could just party with Gran. ;-) Be there in a few.

Jo snorted. Party with Gran? Because that was her idea of fun.

Like having your boyfriend distance himself and virtually ignore you for three days is your idea of fun, too.

~~*~~

About an hour later, Jo and Jenn were seated at a corner table at Miguel’s.

“Alright, so why don’t you want to have drinks somewhere public?” Jo asked without preamble.

Jenn sighed and blew a curl out of her eyes. “Because people are driving me freaking crazy.”

“Like who?”

Jenn dropped her head into her hands. “Everybody.”

Jo lifted an eyebrow. “Everybody?”

Her best friend groaned. “Okay, not everybody. Mostly my parents and Matt.”

Jo wasn’t sure where to begin, but since worrying about Jenn’s life seemed like a much better idea right now than worrying about her own, she asked, “What’s up with your parents?”

Before Jenn could respond, their waiter arrived to take their drink order. They both asked for sweet tea. Jenn waited for the teenager to leave.

“I think I taught him a few years ago. That makes me feel old.”

Jo laughed. “Nuh uh. You’re not getting away with changing the subject.”

Jenn rolled her eyes. “Fine. My parents are just…” Jenn’s hands fluttered in the air. “They’re crazy. Mom called me this morning to tell me they’d been contacted by that Doomsday Preppers show and they’re thinking about filming an episode. What would my principal think if he found out my family’s a bunch of nut job preppers?”

“Wait.” Jo held up a hand. “They’re that far into it?” Last she’d heard, the McDonnel’s had moved out towards Sanderson after selling their family home and purchasing five hundred acres in the middle of nowhere. She knew they were worried about the economy and were worried about an economic collapse, but she hadn’t realized they’d gone that far down the rabbit hole.

Jenn nodded, her expression one of misery. “Unfortunately, yes. It’s gotten steadily worse over the past year. They’re at the point where they have weekly drills and play renegade soldier.”

Their waiter returned, set their teas down and took their order. Neither of them bothered to look at the menu—this was clearly a conversation that called for enchiladas. As soon as the teenager was gone, Jo asked, “Weekly drills?”

Jenn groaned. “Yes. They get out their guns, dress up in desert camo and act as if their compound is under siege.”

“Compound as in Branch Dividian or compound as in Kennedy?”