Reborn: This Time, I'm Divorcing Him First novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Form
Nathaniel slides the donor form across the counter and Natalie tears it in half, then tells him Camille was never dying at all.
The last thing I heard in my first life was a heart monitor going flat in an empty room.
The first thing I heard in this one was my husband saying, "Sign it, baby."
I was standing at our kitchen counter in my bathrobe.
A donor consent form lay on the marble in front of me.
Living Kidney Donation. Directed Donor. Recipient: Camille Hollister.
Nathaniel set a pen on top of it and nudged it toward my hand.
"She doesn't have much time," he said. "You know that."
I knew that form.
I knew the coffee stain in its corner.
I had signed it five years ago, on this exact morning, in this exact robe.
And I had died because of it.
I looked at the clock on the oven. 7:42.
I looked at my hands. No IV bruises. No dialysis tape.
I was thirty-one again.
Nathaniel smiled at me.
"Baby? The clinic opens at nine."
I picked up the pen.
His shoulders dropped with relief.
Then I set the pen down, took the form in both hands, and tore it straight down the middle.
The rip was loud in the quiet kitchen.
Nathaniel stared at the two halves.
"Natalie." His voice went low and flat. "That's not funny."
"It isn't a joke."
I lined the pen up with the edge of the counter.
My hands were perfectly still.
"I'm not getting tested," I said. "I'm not giving a kidney to Camille Hollister."
In my first life, I said yes.
I said yes because he cupped my face and told me I was her only hope.
He said he'd spend the rest of his life making it up to me.
He meant his life. Not mine.
I gave Camille my left kidney on a Tuesday in October.
I woke up in recovery to a nurse and a fruit basket.
Nathaniel was two floors up, holding Camille's hand.
Five years later, my other kidney quit.
I called him from the dialysis ward.
He didn't answer.
He was in Paris with Camille, because she had always wanted to see it in the spring.
I flatlined at 4:17 in the morning.
Nobody was holding my hand.
Now the same man was glaring at me across the same counter.
"She's my oldest friend," Nathaniel said. "She practically grew up in my house. She's in stage five kidney failure, Natalie. She has a year. Maybe less."
"Then put her on the list."
"The list takes years."
"Then you get tested."
He opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
I watched him try to find a sentence that didn't make him look like a coward.
He would buy Camille a hospital wing.
He would not let a surgeon cut him open for her.
That was what I was for.
"You know I can't," he said finally. "The board would panic. A CEO going under for major surgery would crater the stock."
"And a surgeon's hands don't matter?"
He actually laughed.
"You haven't operated in three years."
He said it.
I'd been top of my class. A cardiothoracic resident with a waiting list of attendings who wanted me in their OR.
I quit two years into this marriage.
Nathaniel needed a wife who could host investor dinners.
His mother said an operating room was no place for an Ashworth.
And I had loved him so much I thought giving things up was the same as loving him.
"You're right," I said. "I haven't."
"Good. Then let's stop this."
"That changes today too."
His gray eyes narrowed.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
I studied him.
The cheekbones I used to kiss. The watch I bought him for our third anniversary. The gray eyes I trusted with my whole life.
I felt nothing.
Three days before I died, Camille had come to visit me.
She sat on the edge of my hospital bed in a cream sweater.
She was glowing.
She leaned in close so the nurse couldn't hear, and she told me everything.
"It means I know something about Camille," I said. "Something you don't."
"What are you talking about?"
I picked up the two halves of the form.
I dropped them into the trash.
Then I looked my husband in the eye.
"Camille Hollister was never dying at all."
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