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Morning came much earlier than I would have liked. I was greeted by the director of the floor and her gaggle of ducklings. Many of the beaming faces seemed to still be growing into their white lab coats and blue-lobed stethoscopes. They watched her with wide eyes and attentive ears as she examined my belly. She adjusted the adhesive bandage. I heard it, felt it, and knew that there was nothing I could do to stop it. I bit my tongue as she ripped the bandage away. The ducklings leaned closer while their mother fiddled with the tube protruding from my belly. A layer of slimy goop had hardened around my incision, fluids that escaped from within me overnight. The human body is truly a vile thing. I heard the doctor mutter something about the incision looking good.

"What planet are you on, woman?" I thought. "It's covered in goo!"

The floor director and her ducklings left to inspect the next patient. I managed to hold back a heartfelt "quack" as they departed. It was now time for the 6:00 a.m. drugs and blood. I swallowed the colorful tablets, struggling to remember names, shapes and dosages. The nurse attached a vial to the thing in my neck and it slowly filled with thick red liquid. I supposed I could let her have a little. The record before surgery was 20 vials. Today, she only demanded four. She told me that my creatinine level was down to 1.7. That was good, lower than it had been in more than 12 years. My kidney function was almost normal. The nurses asked me what I wanted for breakfast. I was not accustomed to options. For the past few months I'd been on a restricted diet to keep my kidneys happy. Rice Krispies had been my breakfast every morning. Snap, Crackle, Pop and I had become good friends. Keeping to a diet of low protein and low potassium left little more than rice and vegetables for my meals. The type on the list of options was too small for me to read. Rather than explain that I was legally blind and couldn't read the list, I pointed at the middle of the page with a smile.

"I'll have this."

I heard her mumble something about oatmeal as she took the list and circled my choice. Oatmeal! Dear God! What did I do?! I added the rough location of oatmeal on the breakfast options to my list of things to remember, filing it under "A" for "Avoid at all costs." It could have been worse, though. There had been a mistake with Eric's chart. It claimed that he needed assistance eating. While the nurses hurried about their morning rounds, Eric's breakfast sat unguarded and ignored, growing colder with every passing minute. He later complained that someone ate his sausage.

Eric came to visit after breakfast. He, my oldest brother, Jeff, and I sat around the hospital room's small table playing cards as though we had gathered at the local pub after work. My IV stand was at my side, faithfully pumping its contents into my veins. Fluids poured in and fluids poured out. I hoped that I would remember how to pee when this was all over. A nurse entered the room, smiling like a bar waitress as she delivered a pink plastic pitcher of water. We asked for beer, but our request was met by a disapproving smile. I could almost hear Queen Victoria's voice in the nurse's laugh: "We are not amused."

Tired of cards, I went for another walk. My mother insisted on checking the tube in my belly before I left the room. A small eddy had formed in the clear plastic's trickling stream of ooze and fluid. A thick glob of tissue was stuck, lying limply across the opening of the tube. Terrified that pressure might build within my tender belly, my mother, the ever-worried nurse, began to "milk" the flexible plastic. She tugged. She squeezed. She shook and pulled.

"Mom! That's attached!"

Finally, the dam of dead tissue tumbled away, and the stream continued its slow trickling pace. I prayed that the doctor would remove my tubes before I went home. Gripping the cold metal of my IV stand, I stepped toward the hallway. Walking past the nurse's station, my urine bag in one hand and the IV stand at my side, I turned the corner and began the 10th floor loop. The hospital hallway, with its bright ceiling lights, hardly compared to the crisp autumn sun and muddy trail of North Moat Mountain. My parents and my aunt had bought me books on tape for the hospital stay: Prairie Home Companion, Into The Wild and other titles. The truth was that I'd rather be out walking with my feet than reading with my ears. Even the concrete forest and overcast skies of Boston would be better than the drab walls, sterile smells and beeping machines of the 10th floor.

I passed an open door and saw a doctor in his white coat standing by a patient's bed. There were other people gathered around the moaning woman's blanket-covered form as well. I kept walking, but my mind remained behind, listening to the doctor's voice.

"You just need to find the energy to get out of bed today."

The woman moaned in a weary voice.

My mind drifted back to last night; the neighbor being whisked away to intensive care, my roommate lying alone with no one to keep him company. And then my mind drifted back further to that September day—the day that Eric called. Why had we been a match? Why was I so lucky? Why was I walking the day after surgery while others were too weak or miserable to rise from bed? I had a brother willing to take this journey with me, but not everyone is that lucky. I thought about the tens of thousands with their names on organ lists, waiting, hoping.

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