Chapter 10 - THE KIDNEY
People always asked the same question after they learned the story.
“Do you regret giving him the kidney?”
At first, I did not know how to answer.
Victor had betrayed me.
Used me.
Lied while I underwent medical testing.
Allowed me to risk my health while he was planning a life with someone else.
Some people expected me to wish I could take the kidney back.
I never did.
Not really.
Because that kidney was not evidence of Victor’s character.
It was evidence of mine.
I donated because I believed the man I had loved for thirty-four years might die.
I made that decision honestly.
He received it dishonestly.
Those are not the same thing.
I refused to let his betrayal transform my generosity into stupidity.
Victor recovered well.
That information reached me through attorneys at first and eventually through mutual friends.
I was glad.
That surprised people.
But I had not donated an organ hoping he would survive only if he remained worthy afterward.
The marriage ended.
The house stayed mine.
For almost a year, I could not bear to live there.
Every room contained Victor.
His mug beside the coffee maker.
His coats in the hall closet.
The indentation where his recliner had sat.
The bathroom cabinet full of transplant medications he took with him after we separated.
Eventually I returned with Michael.
We opened windows.
Changed locks.
Painted rooms.
I removed the large dining table Victor had chosen and replaced it with the smaller oak table my mother once kept in the breakfast nook.
Then I did something Victor never expected.
I sold the house.
Not because Rita wanted it.
Not because Victor had ruined it.
Because after almost six decades, I realized I did not need to spend the rest of my life guarding a building just because everyone else had fought over it.
The sale funded a smaller home near Lake Erie, retirement security, and a scholarship at the nursing school where I had trained forty years earlier.
I named the scholarship after my mother.
Not Victor.
On my first evening in the new house, I sat outside with tea and watched the water turn gold beneath the setting sun.
My scar still hurt sometimes.
Especially when I stretched too quickly.
My marriage no longer did.
At least not every day.
I kept my wedding ring in a small wooden box.
People asked why I did not sell it.
Because thirty-four years were not erased by the final two.
There had been good years.
Real laughter.
Real holidays.
Real tenderness.
Victor’s betrayal changed the meaning of our ending.
It did not grant him the power to rewrite every beginning.
One afternoon, nearly two years after the transplant, I received an envelope forwarded from my old address.
Inside was a short letter from Victor.
No request for reconciliation.
No argument about money.
Just one paragraph.
I know saying thank you for the kidney sounds inadequate. I also know I destroyed the person who gave it. I’m sorry.
I read it twice.
Then placed it in the recycling bin.
Because he was wrong about one thing.
May you like
He had not destroyed the person who gave him the kidney.
He had simply underestimated her.
