“Just Another Friend” by Steve Weed

Tim hopped out of his parked diesel Jetta, his naturally orange hair prominent against the brisk, late January day. He said, “Stay here for a second, Stever. I’ve got something for us.”

Pops had driven me three hours from Aurora, New York, and now he and I were standing in the Roscoe Diner parking lot. It’s a one-story, vintage American diner located in the hamlet of Roscoe, NY, just off Route 17. It’s a popular eatery, stopping point, and meeting spot for anyone traveling south from Northern or Western New York toward New York City. Tim had come from Hartford, Connecticut. Roscoe, New York was approximately the midway point. To get there, Pops had guided us along Route 17, an old highway that wandered through farmlands and valleys, ran beside rivers, and twisted through the Catskill Mountains. I had affected vision brought on by type 1 diabetes, which I obtained at nine months old, so I couldn’t pass a driver’s test. My vision was good enough to manage most everyday tasks, though, and I saw well enough to know it was a long wilderness for me to be delivered out of. The Roscoe Diner and a filling station were the only buildings in sight amidst this strip of road and looming trees. The air was cold.

Tim came back from his car and handed me a blue turtleneck. Etched onto the neck was the Denver Broncos insignia.

Tim said, “I’ve got one, too. They were on sale. Two for one at Penney’s.”

January of 1999 and it was my third year into dialysis. Kidney disease was also brought on by type 1 diabetes, which had led to kidney failure in my later twenties. The Denver Broncos made the Super Bowl, and Tim and I were going to Denver, the city I’d grown up in, to see my high school friend, Aaron, and to watch the football game in the proper Broncos-loving atmosphere. Tim was between jobs. He was experiencing cabin fever. Wanting to get out, but also wanting to help me, he asked if he could come along. The plan was to spend a couple of days in Hartford, Connecticut and then fly out together to Denver for three days.

Driving the back roads, we spent the early part catching up on where we were in our lives, and neither of us had girlfriends. I was desperately ill and dangerously lonely in Aurora, a remote village of 500 residents where my parents moved in May of 1989, when I was twenty.

Tim, though, contained some hope. He told me, “It looks good for this new job opportunity, Stever. A buddy, Mike, from high school, his family runs this small insurance company. They seem excited to have me, and Mike thinks there should be a chance for me to grow with the company.”

Progressing southeast from New York state into Connecticut, the Jetta rolled through the gloaming. Tim and I listened to music and sat in comfortable silence. He had an impressive, instinctive comprehension that his driving five hours round trip to pick me up in Roscoe, while exceedingly generous, was not as difficult as having to live isolated in the middle of nowhere with diabetes and kidney failure. He knew about how bad a shape my body was in; having been on dialysis for close to three years, toxins were ravaging my body. There was no guarantee I’d live long enough on dialysis to make it to a kidney transplant. 

As we got into Hartford, Tim said, “I’m telling you, Stever, I’ve got some good stuff planned for us. We can hang with the fellas at my place a bit. I’ve got a couple of surprises lined up for you. Also, we’re going bowling with a dialysis group on Thursday.”

I said, “We’re going bowling with a dialysis group on Thursday?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you even know a dialysis group to go bowling with?”

Tim thought for a moment. “I have a friend who’s on dialysis.”

“What are you talking about? You never mentioned that before.”

He spoke carefully. “I met this woman in the last month or so, Karen. She’s around our age, like twenty-nine or thirty, and she’s on dialysis.”

Always consumed by diabetes first, I asked, “What was it, diabetes?”

“No, I don’t think so. Guess you can ask her at bowling. Sounds like she’s had it pretty rough, though. If I remember right, she’s had a couple of kidney transplants reject. I think she said she’s been on dialysis for some years now, waiting for another one. I think that’s right.” He added, “She seems pretty cool, though. She has a fair amount of spunk from what I can tell. Who knows, Stever? Maybe you two’ll hit it off.”

Thinking about the strangeness of these circumstances coming to the fore at this particular time, I asked Tim, “Wait a minute. How did you say you know her?”

He paused and thought for a second. He said, “I was in a bookstore, looking for a book for my mom, and Karen and I kind of bumped into each other.” He paused. “And through our conversation she told me she was on dialysis. Anyway, Karen also said she’s part of this support group, and they’re all going bowling Thursday. I told her about you and asked her if we could come along. She said she didn’t think it’d be a problem.”

“You’re telling me you bumped into a woman in the store, she told you she was on dialysis, and that she was a part of a dialysis support group that’s going bowling on Thursday?”

In the dusk, I sensed Tim thinking. “Well, I met her in this store, and then we chatted a couple of times over the phone.”

I figured I wasn’t going to get the full story until he wanted to tell it to me, so I just left well enough alone.

Tim and I were staying at his parents’ place in Marlborough, a wooded suburb of Hartford, rather than his apartment, because they had more room for my sundry dialysis gizmos. Once I got the Cycler, my home dialysis machine, and solution bags situated near the bed for our inevitable, ritualistic, sterile nightly partnership, I left them alone and went to see Tim, who was in the basement trying to fix his dad’s computer. 

Looking at the computer and not me, Tim asked, “You all set, Weeds?”

“Yeah.”

The basement had a low ceiling, an old desk, an old couch, and family pictures hanging on the walls. I watched Tim. After about two minutes, without saying anything to me, Tim picked up the phone next to him and dialed. He said, “It’s Tim. Yeah, right. Yeah, how’s it going? Good. Listen, I’ve got somebody here who wants to talk to you.” He handed the receiver to me.

“Who is it?”

He simply motioned for me to talk.

I said, “Hello?”

A female voice, sounding as unsure as mine, answered, “Hi.”

“You must be Karen?”

“Is this Steve?”

“Yeah.”

Neither of us said anything. Not having any other ideas enter my cranium, I chose to go with the known commonality. “So, Tim tells me you’re on dialysis.”

“Yeah.”

Karen’s voice had the tone of many dialysis patients, striving for chipper but resonating with an undercurrent of sadness. Karen filled in the details about her kidney disease. She’d been on dialysis for seven years straight. Despite experiencing kidney failure, she worked full-time as a stockbroker’s assistant. The fact she was doing in-center hemodialysis at a hospital, rather than peritoneal, a more flexible, home version of dialysis, meant that three evenings a week after work for three hours she had to be at the hospital, attached to a machine by way of needles and tubes stuck into a fistula buried amidst veins in her right arm.

Through our exchange, Karen and I discovered that bowling was out. The bowling was to start at 8 p.m. The flight to Denver departed Hartford at 6 a.m., meaning Tim and I had to leave Tim’s parents’ house at 4 a.m. The Cycler is designed to do its business while the user sleeps. For it to do an effective job of being my artificial kidneys, I had to be connected to the Cycler for a minimum of nine hours straight, so I had to fasten myself at 6:30 p.m., which axed the bowling.

Tim waved for me to hand him the phone. He asked Karen, “So you don’t have to go to the hospital Thursday, right?” Tim stared ahead. “OK, cool. When do you get out of work?”  He leaned back in the chair. “Uh-huh, OK.” Tim glanced over and nodded at me. He asked her, “Now, where’s your office again?” His face was earnest. “Yeah. OK, right.” He thought for a second; his pale expression was pensive. “Um, what’s that near?” Tim nodded again. “Yeah, sure, OK.” His eyes locked onto me. “Hey, Weeds, 5 p.m. work OK for you?”

“Yes, Tim, I haven’t made any plans with anybody else in Hartford for then yet.”

Speaking back into the phone, Tim said, “Yeah, that works for us.” He clicked the phone off. He then stared at me and said, “No need to worry, Stever. We got it under control.”

Upstairs at bedtime, resting my butt on the edge of the mattress, only a small lamp on a table next to me, the only thing left to do for the night was to unfurl the surgically implanted ten-inch-long peritoneal catheter that protruded from my stomach and hook myself to the Cycler. The machine was on and making its usual noise akin to strained breathing. The three bags of solution were lined on a table next to the Cycler. I’d had to use three extension tubes for them to reach from the machine to the toilet. As I slept, or tried, the Cycler warmed all three bags to body temperature, traveled through the machine into me, traveled from my peritoneum back into the machine, pulled toxins out, and from there got sent through the three extension tubes into the toilet.

I never had a strong liking for numbers, but over the last several years, I’d been forced to understand them better. I had to know, among other things: how to program and operate the Cycler machine, my creatinine, my blood pressure, my cholesterol, my A1C, my calcium, my hematocrit, my phosphorus, my potassium. The difference between knowing and not knowing was literally the difference between life and death. On top of these numbers were numbers of a dissimilar sort, but equally as hard for me to cope with. The nearest city to Aurora was a twenty-five-minute drive away—and I couldn’t drive. I had not grown up there (my parents moved from Denver to Aurora when I was in college for a job opportunity), so I knew few, if any, people there. To have meaningful social outlets, like this one with Tim, I relied on long-distance friendships, friendships from the past, from college. I’d had to learn miles and hours and bus routes and travel time, and costs of bus tickets and plane tickets. I disliked numbers even more.

The next day, we got into the “Batmobile,” as Tim euphemistically called any car he’d ever owned. Because of feeling fatigued after another restless night on dialysis, it had taken until noon for me to feel prepared to start moving. Tim occupied himself in the morning, letting me get the rest I needed. 

That day, we ran some errands, visited Henry and Janet, the parents of a friend from college, and hung out with a couple of Tim’s friends. While getting to Hartford took time and exhausted me, in the small village of Aurora, bucolic as it was, there wasn’t a moment I didn’t feel lonely and isolated. In Hartford, I hung out with people my age, ate out, and thanks to Tim, could get out and about, and my energy picked up a bit. 

The next evening, when we were to meet Karen, events had changed. Tim informed me he’d fallen behind on organizing for Denver and still had a lot of packing to do. He explained, “I’m not going to be able to drop you off, but don’t worry about it, Stever. I’ve worked it all out. My buddy, TJ, will give you a ride to meet her, and then Karen will bring you back to my folks’ place.”

Amidst the chilly evening, TJ drove me to a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. He pulled his car beside a Honda Acura. We all made our introductions, and then TJ departed, leaving Karen and me by ourselves, literally standing in the dark. It felt as if I was part of some bizarre undercover dialysis sting operation. 

Inside the Dunkin’ Donuts, I could get a better picture of Karen. She stood at about five feet, five inches. Her skin was an olive complexion, with a tint of sallowness resulting from years of dialysis, and she had an attractive face with green eyes and a warm smile. My growth had been stunted from having obtained both diabetes and kidney disease at a young age. I was five feet, two inches. After years of receiving looks, and sometimes comments, regarding my height, I’d become mentally guarded when meeting new people, especially women. What revealed the most about Karen to me was that in the light of the restaurant, she still didn’t seem to notice my stature. From the start, we were both relaxed with one another.   

Being on dialysis, neither of us could drink or eat much, so we snacked and sipped more than we ate and drank; we delved deeper into background material about ourselves. Karen’s kidney failure had been caused by strep throat when she was fourteen years old. Her parents assumed her discomfort was just a sore throat, so they didn’t take her to a doctor at first. When the troubles worsened, they got her to a physician, but by then the strep had built up bacteria and spread, eventually causing her kidneys to shut down. Her initial transplant happened when she was sixteen. It only lasted two years before it rejected. She had another transplant not long afterward; that one failed, too, after two years, placing her once again onto dialysis.

Karen and I had been speaking for close to an hour when she glanced at her watch. She said, “You said you needed to be on the Cycler by 6:30, right? We better get you back to Tim’s parents’.”

Karen had grown up in a neighboring town of Marlborough, so she had a sense of how to get there. Once we got into the narrow, winding back lanes I read the directions Tim had written down for me in large print to lead Karen. Tim had informed me, “I haven’t known her too long, Weeds, so she hasn’t been to my folks’ place yet.”

Karen pulled into the driveway, and the two of us walked inside. Upon entering, Tim’s dad, a ruffled, gregarious man, met us in the front hall. He’d seen us coming through the living room window.

Unsure, I said to Tim’s dad, “Do you know Karen?”

His expression was blank. He said, “I’m not sure.” And he and Karen shook hands.

Already behind on my dialysis schedule, I excused myself and went upstairs. After fifteen minutes, I heard a knock on the door. On the other side, Karen asked me, “Are you hooked up? Is it safe for me to come in?”

Karen sat in a curved wooden chair positioned across from the bed I was on. She appeared worn, but she looked a lot better than I felt. I knew from my own experience, however, that looks could be deceiving. Karen glanced at the Cycler and then stared at me with her pleasant smile.

“How many surgeries have you had?” Karen asked.

We exchanged our surgical histories like we were swapping recipes.

“I’ve had about twelve to fifteen on my eyes, but those were due to type 1 diabetes. I’ve had heart surgery. I’ve had the peritoneal catheter put in. I’m probably forgetting one or two somewhere. How about you?”

She said without emotion, “I’ve had the two kidney transplants. I had one peritoneal catheter put in. It got clogged, though, so they removed it, then put another one in on the other side of my stomach. Then that got clogged too. Then they had to put a fistula in my arm for the hemo. It had some problems, so they had to take it out. They put another fistula in my upper arm and that’s been working pretty well.”

“Being on in-treatment hemo must be rough, especially having to go after work.”

Karen showed a half-turned-up grin. “Yeah. In-treatment hemo’s no fun, Steve. Dialysis isn’t any fun in general, but I much preferred being on peritoneal. You know, it gives you more flexibility. Like this trip you’re on. I mean, I know it’s rough, I’m not saying it isn’t, having to travel around with all that stuff, but you get to go places. On in-treatment hemo, it’d be tough to do this trip. I mean, unless you could find a hospital in Denver and Hartford that had space for you to get your dialysis done.”

She paused. 

Karen filled it by heading for the heart of the matter for most people, issues of love. She looked into my eyes and asked, “Has your health stuff made it hard for you to find women to date?”

“A bit, some. I dated a woman pretty much the entire time through college. We broke up our senior year. I dated a woman for about a year when I lived in New York City when I was going to graduate school, but that was before my kidneys failed. That was five years ago. Since then, there was a woman, she and I fooled around a bit, but I haven’t dated anyone.” I asked, “How about you?”

“Yeah. It’s been tough. Guys just don’t seem to understand, or want to understand. Although, I did date this guy, Andy, a few years back. He was great. He’d help out with doctor’s appointments. He didn’t mind my Cycler machine if I slept at his place. This was back when I was on peritoneal. He was older than me by like fifteen years.” She looked down. “For some reason it didn’t work out, though. We broke up about three years ago.”

Karen and I talked for a while longer. At about 9 p.m., she looked at her watch and said, “I better go. I have to work tomorrow. It was good talking with you. We should keep in touch. Do you have email?”

“Yeah.”

Karen dug into her purse. She wrote her email and handed it to me. “When you send something to me, then I’ll have yours.” Karen smiled.  “Anyway, like I say, it was nice talking with you. Hope you sleep okay being hooked up to the Cycler and all, and that you and Tim have a good time in Denver. And I hope you get a transplant real soon.”

“Thanks. You too.”

With that, she left.

An hour later, Tim bounced into the room. He asked, “How’d it go?”

“Good.”

“Did you think there might be … a friendship?”

“Yeah. She’s nice. She’s determined. I like that.”

In the low light, I could see Tim’s face and orange hair nod. “Cool.” He paused. “How would you describe her looks?”

“She’s your friend.”

“Yeah, I know. I just didn’t know what you thought of her looks.”

“She’s attractive. She’s nice.”

He waited a moment. “OK, well, we gotta be up early. You all set in here, Stever?”

“Yeah.”

“All right. I’m gonna turn in. I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow. Be ready to boogaloo at about 4 a.m., ‘cause we don’t want to miss the flight.” 

Tim and I both overslept.

Fortunately, Tim’s dad didn’t.

Tim shook me awake. He said, “Steve, my dad just woke me up. We’ve got twenty minutes before we have to leave for the airport. Get unhooked and do what you’ve got to do. We’ve got to go.”

Once detached from the Cycler, I began to ram my clothes into my travel bag. Tim popped his head in. He said, “Hey, Weeds, be sure and wear the turtleneck.”

Seeing he was already sporting his, I answered, “I don’t know, man.”

Appearing a touch hurt, he said, “That’s why I got ’em. For the trip.”

Tim and I, hauling our suitcases and the Cycler, and both donning blue Denver Broncos turtlenecks, rushed out the door.

We headed down a carpeted corridor to our gate. I was carrying Tim’s suitcase and my lightweight sports bag. Since we’d be in Denver for three days, I’d had my dialysis supplier, Baxter, ship a sufficient amount of dialysis solution bags to my friend Aaron’s address. Tim carried the Cycler in its container. The weight of the machine pulled one shoulder lower than the other one.

Aaron picked Tim and me up at Denver International Airport. During my high school years, when my vision declined, Aaron had been a good friend. We’d watch movies together, go to parties together on occasion, talk about women, lift weights, play tennis, and shoot basketball. He was generous about picking me up and taking us wherever we were going. In a strange twist of fate, Aaron, who’d been healthy his whole adolescence, got type 1 diabetes when he was twenty-one. One of the main bonds that held us together, though, was our mutual passion for the Broncos.

The afternoon of the Super Bowl, friends and family of Aaron began to trickle into his place for the pre-game at about 2 p.m. By kick-off, about fifteen people were assembled in sundry locales in front of “Big Daddy” and “Little Mamma”—the large and small television sets Aaron had procured to watch the main event. Beer and soda and nachos and chips and dip and various grilled meats were spread out on a table. Because of the diabetes and dialysis, I didn’t have the urge to touch any of the offerings.

This year’s Super Bowl pitted the Denver Broncos against the Atlanta Falcons. During the contest, the Broncos offense put up points early, and the Falcons had no answer for the Broncos’ oncoming, swarming defense. The Broncos won 34–17. John Elway, Denver’s quarterback, capping a legendary sixteen years in the league, was named the game’s most valuable player. His six-foot-three, 220-pound body was hoisted onto the shoulders of two of his beefy offensive linemen and carried around the field. Thousands of people at the stadium, and I’m sure millions at home, reveled in exaltation.

Although I was cheering for Elway, I knew that I, along with countless people like me, fighting to stay alive every minute with every breath, competing with ourselves just to get out of bed in the morning, would most likely never get one person to adulate us for our efforts the way Elway was being touted at that moment.

Tim called me a week after the trip to Denver. “I’m sure you remember that girl, Karen, the one on dialysis.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you have any feelings for her?”

“Romantically?”

“Right. Romantically.”

“We had a good talk. But no, I didn’t feel any romance.”

“So you wouldn’t mind if I asked her out then?”

“She’s your friend. If you want to go on a date with her, that’s fine with me.”

“About that. I’ve got something to confess. Before the trip, before we went out to Denver, I read this article in The Hartford Courant about her. It was an article about what it’s like to live on dialysis. Anyway, I saw the article, and figured, you know, I don’t know, it was worth a shot.”

I told him I hadn’t really fallen for the “met her in a store, and she invited us to dialysis group bowling” explanation. I asked, “So how’d you get to know her?”

“Actually, Stever, the article came out in June. I thought I’d keep it for when it looked like you might be in town, when you might need a pick-me-up. I checked in the phone book and there were four women with her name. I wrote a postcard to all four of them, explaining I’d read the article and that I had a buddy who was her age and on dialysis and he could use some support. I wrote my phone number on all the postcards, saying to get back to me if they felt comfortable meeting up with us. Maybe five days after I’d sent them out, I got a call from Karen. She talked it over with her folks, and I guess they said it was up to her, but to make sure she met in a public space before going any further. That’s why you met at Dunkin’ Donuts. Other than a couple of talks on the phone, I’d never met her in my life.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me this from the beginning?”

“I figured you’d be more likely to meet up with her if you thought I already knew her. I mean I didn’t know if you’d want to meet up with a total stranger.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “So have you even met her yet?”

“Yeah. I took her out to dinner a couple of nights after we got back from Denver to thank her for going along with everything. That’s why I’m asking you if you mind if I officially ask her out.”

When Tim arranged for Karen and me to meet alone at Dunkin’ Donuts, I had a hunch he might be trying to set up a blind date. I had some anticipation that a potential romance could blossom. Karen and I had a nice time, but a romantic connection needs more than simply two people on dialysis. After our evening together, I understood our interests were different; she was business-focused and I was interested in the arts and humanities. Not to mention the five-hour driving distance between where we lived. 

“Tim, I appreciate it, but you don’t need my permission to go out with her. I hung out with her once.”

Karen and Tim went out that weekend, and again a few nights later, and then again, and somewhere a few weeks down the line the two were officially dating.

On April 24, 1999, three months after the trip to Denver, I got the call. They’d found a match for my double transplant, a kidney and a pancreas. With a successful pancreas transplant, I would no longer have type 1 diabetes. The pancreas wasn’t successful. Somewhere between removing the pancreas from the deceased donor and putting the gland into me, an infection set in. The infection spread throughout my entire body, and my life was in danger. For three weeks, surgeons tried to save the pancreas and my life. They came to conclude that the only way I’d stay alive was to remove the infected pancreas. The kidney took, but due to the trauma from the pancreas, I languished, struggling for a month in the hospital.

I was fortunate and grateful to have many visitors come to my hospital bed in support from a variety of long distances away, but Tim volunteered as a sentinel, just like he did when I was trapped in Aurora with my physical and emotional isolation. He showed up the day of the actual transplant and waited with my parents and my brother for eleven hours until the operation had been completed. His face was the first one I recognized post-surgery. When my health dipped because of the infection, he visited a second time, along with Karen, driving two and a half hours one way. 

I straggled out of Albany Medical Center with a functioning transplanted kidney.

In August of 2001, two and a half years after my transplant, Karen received hers. She and Tim had continued to date. Hemodialysis doesn’t stop for birthdays and holidays. Over the years before the transplant, Tim would stop in with presents, or to talk, or just to sit and be with her. This transplant, her long-awaited third, with new and improved anti-rejection drugs, was successful.

Tim saw me as a whole person, and not an illness. With all that he did to help me, he tried to be just as helpful to all the people he cared about. He treated me like just another friend. He intuited that no matter what our bodies or minds are doing, all of us have frailties that need help, so why limit friendships or who to connect with? In that approach to life, Tim found love.

A year after her transplant, in the fall of 2002, Tim proposed to Karen.

Tim called me beforehand. “Stever, I’ve decided now’s a good time to go ahead with it. I’ve got this scheme in mind, Weeds. What I’m going to do is have it be kind of a scavenger hunt. I’m going to drive her around to different places, you know, different houses of her friends and mine. At each place, I’m going to have the person give her a note or a clue. At some point, all of this stuff will lead her to where the ring is. Are you going to be home Wednesday evening? I was going to have her call you.” 

I had a person I was tutoring in writing, so I wasn’t going to be there.

Tim said, “Oh, OK. Well, I guess we’ll have to bypass you then. Anyway, by the next time we talk, I should be engaged.”

Wednesday evening, at about a quarter to eight, I came back to my apartment in Ithaca, a city of thirty thousand located forty minutes south of my parents’ place in Aurora. With the kidney transplant, over a long, slow process, I’d been able to wind my way toward some meaningful involvements, some volunteering, running a community-based writing workshop, and tutoring. When I got back that night, the light on my answering machine was blinking.

Karen had left a message. “Steve, this is Karen. Tim’s got me on some sort of wild goose chase. We’re driving all over the place. Your name wasn’t on the list. I figured you might know, though. I guess give me a call on my cell phone when you get back.”

I called Karen, hesitant about my role when she answered. She asked, “Do you have a clue for me?”

I waited. “No.”

“Do you know what’s going on?”

I didn’t respond. 

Karen said, “Just a sec. Tim wants to talk to you.”

Tim got on. He whispered, “Stever, she’s about to find the ring.” Tim whispered, “She found the ring. She’s excited.”

Just then, Karen said, “Yes,” and voices of joy traveled across the line.

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