Chương 10
I looked at her for a long moment.
“That last one sounds familiar.”
She nodded.
“I know.”
Rain rattled faintly against the open sides of the garage.
I unlocked my car.
Megan touched my arm.
“I’m not asking you to save him.”
I looked at her hand until she removed it.
“I’m asking you not to make the decision because you hate them.”
I stared at her.
She looked terrified after saying it.
Maybe she should have been.
“I don’t hate them enough for that.”
Her face softened slightly.
“That’s good.”
“I hate them differently.”
She gave a small, exhausted laugh.
“Fair.”
I opened the driver’s door.
“Go back to your husband.”
She nodded.
“Will you really come tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
She looked relieved and guilty about being relieved.
That felt honest.
I got into the car.
The drive home took twenty-six minutes.
I knew because the dashboard clock changed from 9:41 to 10:07 between the garage exit and my street.
At a red light on Carnegie, I opened my glove compartment to find a tissue and saw Lily’s old hospital parking pass tucked behind the registration.
I had forgotten it was there.
The expiration date was three years old.
I held it for one light cycle too long and the driver behind me honked.
I put the pass back.
At home, the porch light was still on.
I never turned it off before leaving after dark.
Lily had been afraid of coming home to a dark porch.
For years after she died, I told myself I kept the light on because of habit.
That was not true.
I went inside and dropped my bag on the kitchen chair.
The refrigerator hummed.
A stack of unopened mail leaned against the fruit bowl.
I filled a glass with tap water and stood at the sink.
My phone buzzed.
A message from my father.
Tomorrow 8 a.m. cafeteria.
I stared at it.
Another message arrived.
I have copies from the fundraiser account.
I typed three words.
Bring the originals.
He replied almost immediately.
Okay.
Then my mother texted.
I am sorry.
I deleted the notification without opening the message.
My hand brushed the side of my bag.
The purple hair clip was still inside.
I took it out and set it on the counter.
It was cheap plastic, one tooth missing.
Lily had hated brushing her hair.
On hospital mornings, she used to bargain for ponytails because clips pulled at her scalp.
I picked it up.
For three years, I had carried it because losing it felt like losing evidence.
Tonight it looked like what it was.
A broken hair clip.
I sat at the kitchen table.
My phone buzzed again.
This time it was an unknown hospital number.
I answered.
“Ms. Pierce?”
“Yes.”
“This is Dr. Shah.”
I stood without meaning to.
“What happened?”
“Your brother is stable.”
My knees loosened.
“Then why are you calling?”
“We have the confirmatory typing.”
I gripped the back of the chair.
He paused.
“You are a full HLA match.”
I closed my eyes.
The room stayed exactly the same.
The sink faucet dripped once.
A car passed outside.
Someone across the street laughed.
Dr. Shah said, “I know this is complicated.”
I opened my eyes.
“When do you need an answer?”
“Not tonight.”
“Tomorrow?”
“We can begin discussing next steps tomorrow.”
I looked at Lily’s hair clip on the counter.
“What if I say no?”
“Then we continue searching.”
“And if I say yes?”
“Then we proceed with donor evaluation.”
“Could I still be rejected?”
“Yes.”
“For medical reasons?”
“Yes.”
I nodded even though he could not see me.
“Thank you.”
“Ms. Pierce.”
“Yes?”
“Whatever you decide, it needs to be your decision.”
I looked around the quiet kitchen.
For the first time in years, nobody else was there to make one for me.
“I know.”
I ended the call.
Then I sat down again and pulled a yellow legal pad from the junk drawer.
At the top of the page, I wrote one question.
What do I owe Daniel?
I stared at it for several minutes.
Then beneath it, I wrote another.
What do I owe myself?
I did not have either answer.
But for the first time, I understood they were not the same question.
At 6:14 the next morning, I was still sitting at the kitchen table when the automatic coffee maker clicked on by itself.
The sound startled me.
I had forgotten I had programmed it years ago for school mornings, when Lily liked to wake up before the alarm and stand barefoot in the kitchen asking questions I was too tired to answer.
Why did cereal get soggy?
Did fish sleep?
Could presidents have pets?
Was Tuesday anyone’s favorite day?
I had never changed the timer.
Most mornings I was already awake before it started.
I poured coffee into a mug and drank half of it standing at the counter.
The legal pad remained open beside the broken purple clip.
Under the two questions from the night before, I had written a third sometime after two.
What would Lily want?
Then I had crossed it out so hard the pen tore the paper.
Lily was eight.
She had wanted strawberry toothpaste, a dog I could not afford, and for nobody to cry when nurses accessed her port.
She did not exist to settle adult moral debts.
By seven, I had showered, changed into jeans and a navy sweater, and put the hair clip back into my bag.
I left the legal pad on the table.
At St. Vincent, the cafeteria was almost empty except for two night-shift nurses eating French fries and a man in a construction jacket asleep over a bowl of oatmeal.
My father was already there.
He had taken a table in the corner and arranged three file folders in front of him.
My mother sat across from him with her hands wrapped around a paper cup.
May you like
She was not wearing the pearl bracelet.
I noticed that before I noticed anything else.
