Chapter 13 - THE KIDNEY I REFUSED TO REGRET
For weeks, people asked me variations of the same question.
Do you regret saving him?
My friends asked carefully.
Reporters asked cruelly after the case became public.
Strangers online answered for me.
Some called me foolish.
Others said Victor didn’t deserve my kidney.
They were asking the wrong question.
One afternoon, I returned to the transplant center for follow-up testing.
My remaining kidney was healthy.
My incision was healing.
My surgeon smiled.
“You’re doing very well.”
“Victor?”
He hesitated because medical privacy had limits.
“He is receiving appropriate follow-up.”
That was enough.
I sat in the same waiting room where months earlier I had believed saving my husband might save our marriage.
A young woman sat across from me.
Her brother needed a transplant.
She looked terrified.
“Were you a donor?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Was it worth it?”
I thought about Victor.
Rita.
The house.
The signatures.
The funeral papers.
Then I answered:
“The person I donated to betrayed me.”
Her eyes widened.
“But I don’t regret giving a kidney.”
“Why?”
“Because what he became afterward doesn’t get to rewrite who I was when I made the choice.”
The answer surprised me.
Then it freed me.
I had given because I loved.
Because I believed his life mattered.
Because I was capable of generosity.
Victor’s betrayal belonged to him.
The donation belonged to me.
I would not let him steal that too.
That evening, I returned to Brookline for the first time alone.
The house felt enormous.
Twenty-two years of furniture.
Photographs.
Holidays.
Arguments.
Birthday cakes.
Victor’s suits still hanging in one closet.
I walked room by room.
Then I found something inside his desk.
An envelope addressed to Rita.
Never mailed.
Inside was a letter dated two days before surgery.
After I’m stable, we need to slow down. Sarah is scared and I’m starting to think I’ve gone too far.
I read it twice.
For one second, confusion returned.
Had Victor been planning to stop?
Then I reached the second page.
I can’t risk her discovering the accounts before closing. Once the house money clears, we leave.
Not remorse.
Fear of getting caught.
I folded the letter.
Then another paper slipped out.
A property listing agreement.
Victor had already chosen an agent to sell the Seaport condo.
Rita’s condo.
The proceeds were to be wired to Lisbon.
He really had planned to abandon both of us.
But at the bottom, one additional beneficiary appeared on the overseas account.
A name I recognized.
May you like
Emily Bennett.
Our twenty-year-old daughter.
