Page 81 of Spectacular Things

Match Day

“Count down from ten,” the anesthesiologist instructs Mia. She is asleep before she gets to her lucky number.

Out in the waiting room, Oliver checks in with the neighbor who is watching Betty and then texts Sloane with updates as they trickle in: Mia is under, they’ve begun, everything is going well.

Cricket, Sloane, and Betty wave and yell like they are welcoming home a war hero. The car is still running when Oliver sprints around the hood to help Mia with the door and here’s Betty, face-planting into her mother’s lap as Mia bends over to greedily inhale the back of her baby’s head.

Her girl.

Mia’s incision is no longer sore, and while it’s too early to deem the transplant a success, Dr. Landwosky and his team are optimistic.

He called Cricket’s kidney, now in Mia’s body, the most beautiful kidney he’d ever seen, and reported with elation that it had “pinked up immediately.” So far, Mia and Cricket have both fought off infection.

Equally promising, Mia’s new kidney began producing urine immediately and was fully functioning within twenty-four hours of the operation.

“I made you dinner,” Cricket announces proudly, helping her sister out of the car.

Mia grimaces.

“Taste it first!”

The four adults and one tottering human make their way back into the house. Betty shows her mother all the new toys and shiny, breakable gadgets she’s received from friends and neighbors while Mia was in the hospital, including a signed soccer ball from the U.S. Women’s National Team.

In the living room, Oliver hands Mia a tall glass of water and gestures to the pink floral couch, but Mia is sick of being sedentary.

Her legs are restless, begging to be used.

Her brain, too, is hungry for fresh stimulation after five days in the hospital.

Mia slowly raps her knuckles on the wood bookshelf.

It’s time to make a plan for what comes next.

“What do you want to do?” Cricket asks, already knowing the answer.

“The beach,” Mia says. “Let’s go to the beach.”