I sat on the cold metal bench outside Boston General Hospital, my hands shaking as I pulled my coat tighter against the November wind. The tears on my cheeks had dried, leaving salt tracks that stung in the bitter air. My name is Anna Fletcher.
I’m forty-three years old, and twenty minutes ago I’d just said goodbye to my husband Mark, who was dying of kidney failure in the ICU upstairs. The doctors had been brutally honest—without a transplant, he had weeks, maybe days left. Six months ago, Mark had been the picture of health.
We’d been planning a trip to Italy for our twentieth wedding anniversary. He’d been working late at his architecture firm, coming home exhausted but excited about a new project. I’d teased him about working too hard, told him he needed to slow down.
I never imagined those late nights weren’t about work at all. Now he lay in room 314, connected to machines that beeped and whirred, keeping him alive while his body slowly shut down. The kidney disease had progressed with terrifying speed.
One day he was complaining about feeling tired, the next he was in the hospital with complete renal failure. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Fletcher,” Dr.
Harrison had said that morning, his kind eyes unable to soften the blow. “We’ve tested every family member, every friend who volunteered. No one’s a compatible match.
And the waiting list for organs… there just isn’t time.”
I’d nodded and smiled and told Mark everything would be fine, but we both knew I was lying. Hope was a luxury we could no longer afford. I stood up from the bench, ready to walk to my car and drive home to our empty house, when I heard voices coming from around the corner of the building.
Two hospital workers were on their smoke break, speaking in low voices that carried clearly in the still air. “She wouldn’t be suitable as a donor anyway,” one of them was saying. “The wife’s test results were bad.”
I froze.
They were talking about Mark. About me. “Yeah, it’s a real shame,” the second voice replied.
“Poor guy doesn’t really have any other options.”
My heart started beating faster. I pressed myself against the wall, listening. “Didn’t you hear?” the second voice continued, dropping to barely above a whisper.
“His mistress came in yesterday. She got tested for compatibility.”
The world tilted sideways. “Seriously?” the first worker asked.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
Tap READ MORE to discover the rest 🔎👇
