Keep Me in Your Heart by Lurlene McDaniel Page B

caught his arm. “Jeremy, I think you should meet with your father.”
    “I don’t.”
    “Listen to me. I’m your attorney and I’m advising you to sit down and talk to him again. Perhaps we can settle this case without going to court.”
    Jeremy boosted himself up onto the countertop and stared glumly at the floor. “He’ll only drop his case if I give up my suit. And I’ll only give up if he lets me do what I want. I’m telling you, Jake, he’s not going to quit. You don’t know my father. For him, winning is everything.”
    “One of the first rules of practicing law is to avoid litigation whenever possible,” Jake said earnestly. “As your attorney, I’m advising you to see your father. I can arrange for the meeting in neutral territory—one of the conference rooms at Georgetown, for instance. I’ll hang around in the hall during the meeting. And if the two of you come to blows, I’ll run inside and throw myself betweenyou.” He grinned, and Jeremy returned a halfhearted smile.
    “All right. But not until after Jessica’s surgery. And not until she’s out of the hospital and back into her everyday routine. I want to be there for her. She comes first.”
    Her surgery went well, and in a couple of days Jessica returned home. This time the external shunt was on her leg, capped off but accessible to the nurses in the dialysis unit. Dr. Witherspoon told her, “You’re doing fine,” but he prescribed a mild mood-elevating medication to combat her depression.
    At home, Jessica lined up on her dresser the bottles of medications she took daily. The bottles stood like little brown soldiers awaiting their missions, from phosphate and potassium binders to calcium and iron supplements, plus numerous others to keep her body up and running. She remembered the days when her dresser had held bottles of perfume and makeup. Now those had been relegated to a drawer.
    The phone rang and she answered it. Jeremy said, “How about a movie tonight?”
    “Yes,” she told him. She wanted to escape from her dreary everyday life, if only for a few hours. “I need to go out and do something normal.”
    The theater was packed, and the smell of buttered popcorn made her mouth water. Her snack consisted of a measured amount of jelly beans and a diet soda. Jeremy stuck to snacking on hard candy and soda—in deference to her, she figured.
    Afterward they went to a nearby coffee shop and ordered specialty coffees. “I’d kill for some french fries,” she said with a sigh. “I thought I was going to have to ask the guy sitting next to me with his bucket of popcorn to move. The smell was making me crazy.”
    “Once you get your transplant, you can pig out on french fries and popcorn too.”
    “Sounds heavenly to me.” They rarely discussed the actual transplant anymore because it was too depressing.
    “I’ve agreed to see my father this Friday,” Jeremy said quietly.
    “You have? But that’s good. You shouldn’t be estranged from him.”
    “I’m doing it for two reasons: Jake wants me to, and I know you do too.”
    She stirred her coffee, watching Jeremy’s face. “What do you think he wants?”
    “Probably wants to offer me a deal, his kidney for mine,” he said sardonically.
    She giggled. “Maybe he just wants to kiss and make up.”
    “He knows how he can make up with me.”
    She leaned back and propped her feet up on another chair. Sitting for so long in the movie had caused her legs and feet to swell. Her shoes felt tight, but she was afraid to take them off; she might not be able to get them back on. “Did I tell you that I persuaded my mom to go back to her Head Start job? She was planning on not returning this school year, but I told her I wanted her to work. She gets too preoccupied with my kidney problem and drives me nuts with her hovering. I have to take over someday.” She paused. “I’m thinking of getting my own apartment, Jeremy.”
    He sat up straight. “When?”
    “As soon as I can. I