Chapter 22: Six of Six

On Monday morning I went to a hospital in New Haven that none of the Ashcrofts had ever given a penny to.

Ethan drove.

He parked in the visitors' lot and carried my bag in.

Then he stood in the corridor with his hands in his pockets, reading the signs.

"You can go home," I said.

"I can't."

"You'll be bored."

"I'll be dreadful about the coffee," he said. "I promised."

A woman in a navy cardigan met us at the desk.

She introduced herself as my donor advocate, and she said her only job was to look after me.

She did not work for Sylvie.

She did not work for the surgeon.

She asked me three times in the first ten minutes whether I wanted to be there.

"Yes," I said, the third time. "And if I stop wanting to, I can say so?"

"At any minute until they put you under. And after that, if you want to hear what you said to the nurse."

I laughed, and she smiled.

I liked her at once.

The tests took the whole day.

I gave blood into tubes with my own name on them, in my own handwriting.

I was scanned and weighed and asked questions about my mother.

Nobody pushed me.

At four o'clock a surgeon with grey hair and big hands sat down across from me in a small bright room.

He turned a page on his clipboard to face me.

"HLA typing," he said. "Six of six."

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