Page 9 of Welcome Home

I thanked God for my company being supportive and for having amazing medical coverage. After my diagnosis, I had to abruptly take two months out of work to get myself stable. The first year, there were a lot of hospital stays, painful days, sleepless nights, and even a surgery around the ninth month.

Nine months after my diagnosis, I underwent surgery to create an AV fistula in my arm. That was when I knew that dialysis was a real possibility. The surgeon connected an artery directly to a vein. That process allowed the vein to enlarge and strengthen enough to withstand repeated dialysis needles when the time came.

My creatinine level was on a rollercoaster. A month after my surgery, my kidney function declined to Stage 5 chronic kidney disease. My creatinine level was approximately 5.8 to 6.3 mg/dL and my eGFR was approximately 88 to 10 mL/min.

The eGFR was the estimated glomerular filtration rate. It calculated how well the kidneys filtered water from the blood. The calculation was a whole formula. The lower the calculation, the more severe the kidney damage.

Two months after my decline to Stage 5, I was admitted to the hospital for emergency dialysis. I was in a state of fluid overload, elevated potassium, uremic symptoms, and dangerously high blood pressure. My AV fistula wasn’t ready for immediate use when I was admitted. A temporary dialysis catheter was placed in a large vein in my upper neck for me to receive my first hemodialysis treatment in the hospital.

My first treatment wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but that didn’t negate the fear that radiated throughout me. The doctors didn’t want to remove too much fluid and waste too fast. If they did, my blood pressure could have fallen. It might have also caused severe headaches, nausea, and cramps.

I smiled at the sight of my best friend. She entered the room with all her fabulousness. I loved her so much. She hadn’t left my side for one moment during this journey. The day that I was diagnosed with end-stage kidney disease caused by lupus nephritis, I was completely devastated.

My life had already been altered in ways that I couldn’t imagine. The end-stage was just a fucked-up cherry on a fucked-up cake. My new reality after I was discharged from the hospital was outpatient hemodialysis three days a week. That would be my life until I received a new kidney. It took another month before my AV fistula was ready and they were able to take out my temporary chest catheter.

“The queen is here!” Lula Ann’s arms lifted over her head as she struck a pose. The people here loved her dramatics. She walked around the room and spoke to everyone. There was no such thing as a stranger to her.

After she finally got to me and plopped down in the recliner next to me, I greeted her. “Good morning, Lula. How has your morning been?”

“My morning was amazing. Booked a wedding party of twenty for Greece. Daddy Warbucks paid the two hundred eighty thousand dollars outright. It was the fastest and easiest thirty-three thousand, four-hundred-dollar commission I’ve made this quarter.” Her tongue stuck out of her mouth, then she used her finger to swoop some of her hair behind her ear.

I sat up a little, and we both did a jig in our seats. “Yes! I know that’s right. We need to celebrate this weekend.”

“Oh, what are we celebrating?” My spine tingled at the sound of my newest favorite voice. “I want to celebrate too.”

Lula Ann’s head snapped so hard in Falcon’s direction that I thought it would snap off. Her eyes started at his feet and worked their way up to his head. He was casually dressed in Nike sweatpants, a white T-shirt, and sneakers that matched. This man was fine as fuck with his dark skin. The richness of his skin didn’t take away from the tattoos that decorated his skin.

Lula Ann’s head tilted to the side. Her eyebrow did the arch and twitch thing. “Hi, and who are you?”

I cleared my throat. “Um, Lula Ann, this is Falcon. He’s Mrs. Lauren’s son. Falcon, this is my best friend, Lula Ann.”

Lula’s head slowly turned to me, then back to Falcon. When her smirk presented itself, I knew that this conversation would take a turn. “You mean Falcon as in the son that Mrs. Lauren said would be perfect for you?”

My eyes closed because I forgot that she was here when Mrs. Lauren voiced that opinion. I wasn’t sure if she said anything to him about it, though. When my eyes opened, I had two sets of eyes looking back at me. Did they really want me to answer that question? It felt like the air was frozen. “Yes, this is him.”

Lula’s back straightened up. “Oh, well, hello.” She extended her hand to him. “As she said, my name is Lula Ann. We are celebrating the closing of a deal that I made at work. We plan to celebrate this weekend. You should come.”

My eyes bucked, but I recovered quickly. I was scared to make eye contact with Falcon, but my pussy said fuck that fear. She sent the message to my eyes, then boom! The smile on his face told me that he liked that idea.

Falcon crossed his tatted arms over himself. He peered between me and Lula Ann. “Yeah, I think I can do that. Me and my homeboy, Rome, might fall through.”

He pulled his phone out of his pocket, tapped the screen, then reached out to me. “Mazikeen, call yourself from my phone. Once y’all know what y’all want to do, let me know.”

A Little While Later

It's a Celebration . . .

Falcon:

You didn’t have to hang up on me though, Kee.

Falcon’s text had me in stitches. We texted and talked on the phone since the day I called myself from his phone. I shook my head at his antics.

Me:

Fal, your ass fell asleep. What was I supposed to do?

It was finally the weekend that Lula Ann, him, and his friend, Rome, and I planned to go out and celebrate Lula. It was supposed to be the weekend after I met him. I wasn’t at my best, so we rescheduled. That really didn’t matter, because since then, Falcon and I talked, texted, and he even came and sat with me the next Wednesday. Mrs. Lauren ate that up.