PTSD and The Good Samaritan

Heath had been looking and reading for nearly an hour when he realized that for the first time in nearly a year, he'd been free of the oppressive thoughts that consumed him every waking minute of the day, and often as he slept.

The darkness returned later that night but not with the same vengeance. And just before it did, Heath sat there realizing that the possibility at least still existed that he could feel the way he used to.

He woke up around 3am in a pool of sweat and hoped he hadn't screamed in his sleep again. The fact that his mom hadn't run into his room asking if he was okay told him he hadn't.

He stripped the sheets off the bed and threw them in the washing machine before taking a shower then opening his laptop again while he drank a cup of coffee in the kitchen of the still-dark house.

He went back to a website he'd looked at the previous evening and continued reading where he'd left off.

"How to become a liver donor," he said out loud to himself as he took another sip.

It was almost 6am when he heard his father walking toward him.

"Rough night?" his dad asked as he poured himself a cup of coffee.

"I've had worse," Heath told him truthfully.

His dad looked over his shoulder and saw what he was looking at but didn't say a word. His son was home, alive and well, and while the thought of doing something that crazy ate him up, Jim Thomas knew he had no say in anything his son did.

Besides, he'd often felt like Heath was gone already, and were he to actually lose him, he couldn't help but wonder if his boy might not be 'in a better place'. It was a gruesome thought, but it was one he'd had many times since his son came home.

Without saying another word, Heath's father took his coffee to the living room where he turned on the local news and waited for the weather report like he did every morning as his son continued reading.

When Jim got ready to leave for work, Heath was still at it.

Not sure what else to say, he put a hand on his son's shoulder and said, "You know we're both real proud of you, right?"

"Thanks, Dad," was the only reply he got, but those two words were about as much as he'd gotten any time he'd tried telling Heath he cared since his son had been discharged.

"Okay. I guess I'll see you tonight then."

"Yeah. Have a good day, Dad," his son told him without looking up.

"You, too," his father replied, wondering if this new 'kick' of Heath's might somehow be doing him some good.

His mother wasn't a coffee drinker, but she'd been up since 6:30 herself. She'd stayed clear of her son until she had to go into the kitchen to eat. Then she, too, saw what he was reading and asked him what he'd found out.

"A lot," he replied very quietly.

It was just two words, but the way he said them encouraged her. She bent over, put her face next to his and said, "I really will support you no matter what, Heath."

He reached up, touched her arm, and kind of tried to kiss her cheek. It wasn't much, but it was almost more affection than the grand total he'd given her since returning home, and she found herself tearing up again and trying not to get too hopeful.

Sometime around 10 o'clock, Heath told his mom, "I'm gonna be out for awhile, okay?"

Jan wanted to ask where he was going and when he'd be back as she constantly worried about him doing something to himself whenever he went anywhere alone.

But when she saw what looked like a smile her spirits soared.

"Okay. Call me if you need anything."

"I will, Mom," he told her in that same, almost-cheerful voice.

Advent Health was a transplant institute in Orlando located just a few miles from where the Thomases lived. Heath didn't call ahead or make an appointment, but he wanted to talk to someone to get some preliminary information.

As he got out of his car and headed toward the building, Heath realized he'd been 'out of his head' again for most of the morning.

He'd started referring to his mental state as 'being trapped inside his head' not long after the symptoms appeared, and it was an awful feeling; one in which he felt like he was held captive inside his own mind.

His mind had gone from being a friendly, familiar place where he could think and enjoy life to one that felt more like a prison cell; a cell that had been individually tailored to his own brand of tortured, solitary confinement from which there was no escape.

He walked in and found the information desk, where a middle-aged woman smiled and asked if she could help him.

"Um, yes. I'm thinking about becoming a donor," he said.

"Oh, okay. Do you have a family member in need of a transplant?" she asked next.

"Oh. No. I uh, I'm just interested in getting some information."

"Well, we have plenty of brochures I can give you," the woman said with a smile.

"Okay, but what if I actually wanted to donate? What would I have to do?"

The woman gave him a different look then said, "You'd need to get screened to find out if you even can, then we'd need to do some tests and find out if you're a match to anyone on an approved list. You'd also receive counseling about the risks, but in the end, if you are a match, you would be able to serve as a donor."

When Heath didn't immediately reply, she said, "We rarely ever have a 'walk-in' actually end up donating, but I can tell you as someone who needed a kidney myself, you would quite literally be saving someone's life."

Heath's brain needed a few seconds to process what she just told him, and when it did, he told her, "I want to be screened."

"Well—all right. Let me walk you over to the other side of the facility where we can get you started," she told him as she stood up.

As they walked, Heath asked her if she'd mind sharing her story, and the woman told him there was nothing she enjoyed talking about more. She was still talking when they arrived at the office that started the screening process, and Heath asked her to continue. It took her another couple of minutes to finish up the short version of how she nearly died, and the way someone just like him had decided 'out of the goodness of their heart' to become a donor.

"Did you ever meet him? Or her?" Heath asked once she finished.

"No. He wanted to remain anonymous. But I'd like nothing more than to meet him and tell him how truly grateful I am," the woman informed him. "After all, I quite literally owe him my life."

Heath thanked her just as she opened the door and introduced him to the next person who'd take it from there, an attractive, younger woman who smiled at Heath the moment she saw him.

"God bless you," the woman older said with a smile as she assured him he was in good hands from there.

"You, too," he told her as he stepped inside.

An hour later, he'd filled out a huge stack of papers requiring a team of lawyers to comprehend and signed them all saying he fully understood everything he'd just (not) read.

"Okay, once we can get you scheduled, you'll be screened to see if you're eligible to donate. If there are no disqualifying factors, we'll then see if you're a match to anyone on a viable list," the young woman there told him confirming exactly what the first woman had said.

"So do I need to call or come back?" Heath asked.

"Well, yes. But not until we call you. It won't take long. I promise," she said with a very bright smile. "You should hear from us in a day or two."

The girl smiled again then said, "But I wouldn't mind hearing from you sooner if you'd like my number."

Heath had always taken being flirted with for granted. But since his return home, he had no idea how many times a woman had smiled at him or even said something similar. It wasn't that it stopped happening, it was that he had no interest whatsoever in dating, women, or sex. None.

But he managed a smile of his own and told her he wasn't really dating.

"I don't mind sharing," she said rather quietly after an older woman sitting at a desk behind her glared at the back of her head.

"It's not that, either," Heath said, not wanting to say anything else.

"Ohhh. Okay," the girl said. "You um, play for the other team, huh? That's cool. My brother's gay, so I get it."

Heath didn't reply to her comment. He only thanked her for her time then headed back to his car and then his parents' house.

He no sooner got home than his brief reprieve of mental freedom ended. The images came back again along with all of their attendant feelings, and Heath could barely remember how good he'd felt just an hour earlier.

The gloom stayed with him until the office that took his paperwork called and asked him if he could come in the following day to continue the screening process.

"Absolutely," he replied, feeling better almost immediately. "Just tell me when and where."

They agreed on when and she gave him the room number and told him what to expect. Heath, in turn, promised he'd be there on time.

******

"Mom? I'll be fine, okay?" she said, trying to console her mother who was crying so hard she was shaking. "Look, just because you weren't a match doesn't mean we won't find one, right?"

Her mother had always been the strong one, but after learning her daughter would die without a new liver, and having just learned she wasn't a match, the stress and strain of the last month overwhelmed her. Now it was her daughter who was standing strong in the face of more bad news.

Her father and brother had both been tested and neither was a match. Her grandparents volunteered to be tested, but neither of them was deemed strong enough to survive the major surgery involved in organ donation. One out of 300 donors died, and roughly 30% developed some kind of complication. So any potential donor had to not only be a match but healthy enough to fight off infections or other serious problems arising from the procedure.

Rachel Owens had recently turned 38, and it was her father, Brian Owens, who first noticed what he thought was a kind of yellow color in the whites of his daughter's eyes. His older brother, her Uncle Dave, had died of pancreatic cancer, and his first symptom had been this same kind of jaundicing.

He didn't want to frighten his daughter, but the day after her birthday, he set her down and told her what he'd seen. They went to the bathroom together and Rachel saw the same thing her father had noticed in her eyes for the first time.

"I've been tired a lot lately and my body aches," she admitted.

"Let's get you in to see Doctor Wells ASAP," her father said as she turned around and looked at him.

"Dad? Do you think this is what killed Uncle Dave?"

"I don't know, honey. But I know enough to be sure you need to get looked at."

Rachel had moved back in with them after learning that her husband of ten years had been unfaithful. As hurtful as that had been, finding out that he was out late at night cruising the streets of Orlando and paying prostitutes for sex had crushed her.

She'd been tested for STDs as soon as she found out the truth, and the tests had come back negative. But as they learned the following week after seeing their family practice doctor who had the tests redone, Rachel was told she'd contracted Hepatitis B. The disease was damaging her liver and was at the point where she would need a new one in order to survive.

Her liver was still doing its job adequately enough to keep her alive, but it was struggling to do so. The jaundice and fatigue were early signs of a very serious condition that was rapidly getting worse.

The only possible explanations for the STD check not revealing the condition was the clinic she'd gone to didn't routinely screen for for 'Hep B' or there was a 'false negative', something that happened in a very small percentage of cases. Whatever the reason, the reality was that without a new liver, Rachel would almost certainly not live until summer. It was now mid-January, and the entire family had rallied around her in support.

"So what are our options?" Rachel had asked the doctor who informed her of just how serious her condition was.

"I'm afraid you're going to need a new liver. We can and will treat you with antibiotics to slow the progression, but they won't stop it."

He further informed her that she would require a living donor, and then gave her the worst news yet.

"Only about 5% of all donated organs come from living donors, and the vast majority come from members of the immediate family."

Finding out that her mother, Peggy Owens, the last immediate relative to get her results back wasn't a match, had been a crushing blow. And yet Rachel had remained surreally calm when the bad news was delivered. Her mother, on the other hand, was utterly devastated, fearing she would soon lose her daughter.

Rachel's younger brother, Andy, was good with computers and promised to bombard social media and every possible site with their urgent request for a viable donor. Everyone knew the odds were long, but they also knew there was no other remaining option.

The only good news they had was that she was still fully covered under her now ex-husband's insurance plan, the one thing she'd insisted on during the divorce. With the cost of a liver donation running well over $500,000, that alone was a daunting concern facing anyone in her condition.

"Mom?" Rachel said again, as she put her hands on her mother's shoulders. "I'll be fine."

Her mother could only shake her head and hold her daughter as she cried. Rachel saw her father tenderly looking on, a feeling of helplessness showing on his face, too. She smiled at him until he smiled back then held her mom even more tightly.

"Come on. Let's sit down with Andy and figure out what to do from here," Rachel suggested as she gently pushed her mother away. "How does that sound?"

Her mom struggled hard to stop crying then nodded her head.

"Okay. Let's do that," she said as bravely as she could while trying to smile. The smile was distorted and looked more like a grimace that a smile, but at least she was trying.

Andy went through all of the photos they had of his sister, and selected one from about six months ago. She was at the beach in a one-piece bathing suit and even at 37, she'd 'rocked the house'. Or rather...the beach.

Rachel had always been a very pretty girl, and while not stunningly gorgeous, she was most definitely a very attractive woman. Her light-brown hair was now chin-length and perfect for the type of face she had, and also went quite well with her bright, hazel eyes. Rachel's skin was taught and firm, and in spite of the occasional trip to the beach, there were no visible wrinkles anywhere.

A pretty, white smile added to her natural beauty, and from the neck down, she had a very athletic-looking body. Rachel was a bit on the thin side but not noticeably so. She'd worn a size 6 all of her adult life, and looked incredible in the all-white bathing suit.

"Isn't that a little risqué?" she asked her brother.

"Not at all. It's meant to convey a happy, healthy, vibrate young woman who is now..."

There was no need to finish the sentence as everyone knew how it ended.

"Deathly ill," was the obvious choice although kinder, more gentle words could be found to use in their place.

When Andy said, "You look hot, sis," she playfully shoved him, and her parents both laughed, mostly as a way to relieve some of their pent-up stress and frustration.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Says the playboy," Rachel teased.

Her brother was also a very good looking young man, and unlike her, he'd never married. But he was just 33 and for him, at least, there was still plenty of time.

Rachel had married in her mid-20s and dreamed of having a family one day. But one year and then another ticked on by, and with each passing year her now ex-husband continued postponing having a baby for one reason or another.

Not long before she learned about his secret life, Rachel was preparing to lay down a kind of ultimatum in which she planned to tell him she wanted a child within the next year or she would consider calling it quits.

Coincidentally, it was that very week when the first round of bad news hit. She'd found her husband's test results hidden in the back of a credenza that sat in their home office. She'd been looking for proof of their Florida Homestead exception for tax purposes and couldn't find it. So she pulled out every single file folder in the drawer and began going through them.

"What in the world is this?" she asked herself when she found the letter in the very back of the last folder all by itself. It was from a local clinic and said that her husband needed to come in and receive the results of his 'recent blood work' in person.

Rachel laid it out on the kitchen countertop, and when her husband came home that evening she calmly asked him, "What's this?" as she pointed to it.

She saw the expression on his face change when he looked at it even as he said, "Hmmm. I don't know."

"It's personally addressed to you," she told him. "And it was filed away in the credenza almost as though it had been hidden."

"Oh, right. Yeah. That was the uh, lab work I had done during my annual physical," he told her, his confidence returning as he 'upped the ante'.

"No. That would have been through QWEST Diagnostics. You know, the only company our insurance pays for. So what's really going on here?"

He hemmed and hawed and tried another round of BS before she said, "It was a test for STDs, wasn't it?"

When he denied it so strongly it scared her, Rachel let it go. For then. The next day, however, she started going through their online banking statements, something she rarely ever did, and noticed a number of withdrawals for $300. And then she checked her calendar and realized the withdrawals coincided with the evenings when he'd claimed he'd been working late. Very late.

Her last call was to his business partner. Rachel casually asked him about those nights and what they'd been doing so late.

There was a long pause before he finally told her, "He uh, he wasn't here then, Rachel. On any of those nights."

Rachel told him she was probably mistaken and thanked him for his time.

When her husband got home that evening she lit into him. She'd never so much as raised her voice before, but she was livid.

In a last-ditch effort to hide the truth he told her he was gambling.

"I've been playing poker. At night. I...I've lost a lot of money, and I'm sorry, but I promise..."

Rachel grabbed the original paper and said, "Just STOP it! Tell me the truth—now!"

After a long period of silence he quietly said, "I've been going to massage parlors. And...other places."

Rachel wasn't naive, but she had to ask.

"Why would you be going to massage parlors? At night?"

Her husband looked right at her then said, "For...sex."

"For sex? Are you KIDDING me?" she yelled. "We have sex all the freaking time! So tell me why you need to go...elsewhere...for more!"

The truth was he liked the impersonal nature of it. He found it thrilling that a young, 20-year old girl would let him do anything he wanted for the right price, and the right price for doing anything happened to be $300.

"And by everything, I mean...everything. And that includes barebacking," he admitted.

Rachel was even more lost and asked what the hell that was.

"It means sex...without a condom."

"Oh, my freaking GOD!" she hollered as she threw the paper at him.

As it slowly drifted to the floor she hissed, "GET...OUT. Get the FUCK out! NOW!!"

And with that, her marriage was over. And then the false positive, or whatever went wrong, and had allowed to think at least her life wasn't over. Having a baby was out of the question for the foreseeable future, but at least she was still healthy, and in time, would be able to find someone who would be satisfied with an attractive, fit woman who was almost always ready, willing, and able. But that dream died, too, when her doctor informed her she'd suffered severe liver damage.