Chapter 12: The Stranger

The tackle box smelled of rust and old paper.

My father's fishing license was still in the lid, his name in blue ink.

Under it were my diploma and my birth certificate.

Beneath those was a bundle of cards my mother had tied with a rubber band.

At the bottom lay a long white envelope with a hospital seal in the corner.

I had not opened it in eight years.

I knew what was inside, and I took it out anyway.

My father died on a transplant waiting list when I was twenty.

He waited two years for a kidney, and it came to someone else's turn the week he stopped breathing.

The following spring I walked into University Hospital and asked what I had to do to give mine away.

They told me it would go to a stranger. They told me I would never be told his name.

I said that was all right.

I said that was the point.

My mother had cried in the parking lot and then driven me to every appointment.

I unfolded the letter.

It was on the hospital's heavy cream paper, signed by the donor coordinator, whose name I couldn't read anymore.

Dear Ms. Stoltz, it began.

On March 14th your kidney was transplanted into a twenty-seven-year-old man at University Hospital.

The surgery went well, and he is recovering.

Because you chose an anonymous gift, his identity is sealed, and yours is sealed from him.

Thank you for what you did for a stranger.