The problem with having a phone company message center rather than an answering machine is that the messages get erased after a certain number of weeks. Zafar Mehdi didn't know this until, for something like the 7,000th time, he went to listen to the message that saved his wife's life and found that it was gone.
It was the kind of message a person would want to save, the kind of message you usually only get in a really good dream, the kind that couldn't possibly be real. Except it was.
Although the actual recording has been lost, all of the parties involved--Zafar and his wife, Carrie, and the caller, Julie Michaels--remember it quite clearly. It went like this: "Hi, Carrie, this is Julie Michaels. You may not remember me, but we met briefly at that holiday party and sat next to each other at the Sierra Breeding Club meeting. Anyway, I heard you need a kidney, and if it turns out we match, I would be honored if you would accept one of mine."
Zafar was the first to hear the message. "Honey," he called into the bedroom, his voice rising a bit, "Carrie, you should listen to this message. I think this woman is sincere."
Carrie listened to the message and stared at her husband. She listened to the message and tried not to laugh or cry, tried to remain absolutely calm. She listened to the message and tried to remember, tried to conjure an image of this woman, this Julie Michaels.
Fatal Kidney Disease
In 1987, Carrie had been diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease, a genetic degenerative condition that leads invariably to the loss of kidney function. Her grandfather had died of it; her father had died of it. In 1997, her 41-year-old brother died of complications associated with the illness.
In 2000, Carrie went into renal failure and had to go on dialysis. Extreme fatigue soon forced her to quit her job as an interior decorator. In spring 2001, she got on the list at UCLA's transplant program; the average wait is six years for what would probably be a kidney harvested from a cadaver. Such an organ might last eight years, a kidney from a living donor twice that. At the time of Julie's call, Carrie was 48.
Twenty or 30 times, she punched the replay button and listened to the message before she could summon the courage to call the woman back. Carrie tried to explain to Julie that although she appreciated the offer very, very much, Julie needed to know that there was a lot involved in donating a kidney to a stranger. Tests, days of tests, weeks of tests, to determine if the women's blood and tissue types were compatible, to see if Julie was healthy enough to donate an organ and if she had any predisposition to diabetes or other conditions that might trouble her own kidneys in the future.
