Condemned by My Sister novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Giving

Marianne checked in at six in the morning, with a small bag and the walnut key ring in her pocket.

A nurse in blue scrubs took her to a room with a bed and a window, and handed her a gown.

"Is there someone we should call?" the nurse asked. "Family, to sit with you?"

Marianne looked at the plastic chair by the bed.

"No," she said. "It's fine. There's someone here."

The nurse smiled politely, as people do when they think a patient is brave.

I sat down in the chair.

It took me a moment to understand what I was doing.

For weeks I had been standing in doorways, being pulled along behind her.

Now I sat, and she did not look at me, and I was where she had put me.

"I'm here," I said.

She lay back against the pillows and shut her eyes.

I do not know if she heard it.

A man in a cap came in and checked a wristband, and then another one.

They said the same few things in a kind, steady voice.

I did not listen, and I did not need to.

There was no procedure for me to watch, and I'm glad.

She took the key ring out of her pocket and closed her fingers around it.

"Dr. Ellerker told me once that a donor feels nothing in the moment," she said, to the ceiling.

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