The Beauty of the Donor
A week after the indictment, I had my final post-operative checkup. I sat in the exam room, the same room where the doctor had first told us we were a match. The posters of kidneys were still there, but they no longer looked like symbols of a tragedy. They looked like maps of a journey.
The doctor looked at my charts and beamed. “Meredith, your labs are perfect. In fact, they’re better than perfect. Your remaining kidney has compensated beautifully. You’re as healthy as you’ve ever been.”
“Good,” I said, a genuine smile touching my lips. “I have a lot of living to do.”
“How is… the recipient?” the doctor asked tentatively. He had heard the news, of course. It was the scandal of the season.
“He’s alive,” I said. “And that was my goal. I didn’t give him a kidney so he would be a good man; I gave him a kidney so he would be a living one. What he does with that life is his own burden to carry.”
The doctor looked at me with a profound sort of respect. “Any regrets? Given everything that’s happened?”
I thought about the scar. I thought about the 2 a.m. typing sessions and the long nights of crying on Hannah’s couch. Then I thought about the way I felt when I looked at my children—how I could look them in the eye and know that I had done everything humanly possible to keep their world together.
“I don’t regret the gift,” I said firmly. “I regret the person I gave it to, but the act itself? That belongs to me. He can take my house, he can take my sister, and he can take my trust, but he can’t take the fact that I am the kind of person who gives. That is his loss, not mine.”
