The Spare They Came Begging For novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Gray Scrubs

At Commonwealth's donor office Clare sees the photo of her sister posing as her, withdraws in writing, and meets a loud Harbor surgeon in the elevator, just as the foundation's edited clip of her goes viral.

Moira Dunphy picked me up at 7:30 the next morning in her red pickup.

She had a coffee for me and a Bruins hoodie over her pajama top.

"You look like hell," she said.

"I didn't sleep."

"Good. Neither did I. I was up till two thinking of ways to kill your mother that wouldn't show on a tox screen."

I'd called her from the bus the night before.

She was the only person I called.

She drove fast and swearing at everybody.

"Bed 9," she said at a red light. "Thursday the eighteenth. Two o'clock. I was bagging him while you pushed on his chest. You were sweating on my shoes."

"I remember."

"So does the chart. Time-stamped. Your name all over it."

Commonwealth Memorial took up a whole block of the Back Bay.

It had a piano in the lobby and a man in a tie whose only job was to smile at you.

At Harbor we had a vending machine that ate dollars.

The transplant center was on the fourth floor.

The living donor advocate's office was a small room with a box of tissues on every surface.

The advocate was a young man with a new haircut and a lanyard that still had its plastic shine.

He stood up when we came in.

"Clare! Hi. I didn't think I'd see you again before Monday."

I stared at him.

"You've seen me before?"

"Of course. We met last Thursday." He smiled, uncertain now. "We talked for an hour. You were so sure."

Moira made a sound.

"Look at me," I said. "Really look."

He looked.

His smile went slowly out.

"Can I see my file?" I asked. "I'm the patient. I'm allowed."

He turned his monitor toward us with a hand that wasn't steady.

There was an intake photo in the corner of the screen.

A woman in gray scrubs, with her hair pulled back tight in a low ponytail, the way I wear mine.

She was holding up a driver's license.

It was my license.

My old one, from when I was twenty-two, with the bad bangs.

The woman in the photo had my license, my scrubs and my hairstyle.

She had Verity's face.

The cheekbones, the wide blue eyes, the little dimple she practiced in mirrors.

"That's my sister," I said.

The advocate went white.

"She said she was tired from her shift. She said the license was old because she'd moved."

"Did she say why she wanted to donate?"

He swallowed.

"She said she'd known her whole life it was what she was for."

Moira put her coffee down very carefully.

I took my real license out of my wallet.

Then my Harbor badge.

I laid them on his desk next to the keyboard.

"At two o'clock that day I was doing CPR in Harbor's ICU. You can call them. I want to withdraw from this evaluation, in writing, right now."

He found me a form.

I didn't use it.

I took a sheet of plain paper and wrote it out myself.

I do not consent to donate any organ to anyone at this hospital. I never did. I have never met this advocate.

I signed it. Slanted C. Hook on the t.

"I want a copy of everything," I said. "The consent. The interview notes. That photo."

"I'm supposed to ask my supervisor."

"Then ask her. I'll wait."

He came back with a stack of copies and a supervisor who wouldn't meet my eyes.

She said the words "patient relations" and "very serious" three times.

I filed a complaint with her standing right there.

When we got in the elevator, I was holding the stack against my chest.

A big man got on at the third floor.

He had red-brown hair going gray at the temples and a nose that had been broken at least once.

He was wearing a gray suit that fit him.

His tie was already pulled loose.

He looked at the papers in my arms, then at my face.

"You're the one who was yelling through the wall."

"I wasn't yelling."

"You were yelling a little," Moira said.

"I was in the conference room next door," he said. "Ninety minutes about 'synergies.' You were the best part of my morning."

The elevator dropped.

I looked at him properly.

I knew that face from Harbor's fifth-floor hallway, always talking too loud on his phone.

"You're the transplant surgeon. The one who sings."

He winced.

"Somebody's been talking."

"The whole ICU's been talking," Moira said. "You do Springsteen. Badly."

"I do Springsteen with passion." He held out a hand to me. "Conor Mahoney."

I shook it. His hand was warm and enormous.

"Clare Albright."

He went still for half a second at the name.

"Albright, like the chief of surgery upstairs?"

"Like his daughter."

"Huh." He didn't say anything clever, which I liked. "Our advocate at Harbor would never have missed that. She'd have asked you what you ate for breakfast in 2009."

"Your advocate isn't the problem. My family is."

"Yeah," he said. "I got that through the wall too."

The doors opened on the lobby and the piano.

He held them with one big arm.

"If you ever want to talk to somebody about donating who won't try to sell you anything, I'm on five."

"I'm not donating anything to anybody."

"Good," he said. "That's the right answer for a person having the week you're having."

He walked out toward the street, already pulling his tie off completely.

Moira watched him go.

"Well, he's not ugly," she said.

Then her phone buzzed in her hoodie pocket.

She looked at it, and her whole face changed.

"Clare. Don't freak out."

She turned the screen toward me.

It was the foundation's account.

It was a video of me in a pale blue dress, standing up from the table and walking away while Verity cried.

They'd cut everything before it.

No invoice. No forged signature.

Just my back, and my sister's tears, and music.

The caption said, "She was born to save her sister. Last night, she walked away. Pray for Verity."

Under it was a view count.

Two million, one hundred thousand.

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