She Discovered Too Late novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Not Mine to Give
My sister walks into my hospice room asking for my liver for the brother she chose over me, and when I refuse she leaves a threat that lands on eleven other patients.
Miriam Ellingham walked into my hospice room with a folder under her arm and did not sit down.
I had not seen my sister in seven years.
Her charcoal suit cost more than my last year of rent.
Her hair was pulled back so tight it lifted her eyebrows.
She looked at the peeling paint over my bed.
She looked at the folding chair and the carnations Arlene had stuck in a jar on the windowsill.
"So this is where you ended up," she said.
"This is where I'm staying," I said. "The nurses are good here."
She nodded at the bag on my IV pole. "What's wrong with you?"
"Glioblastoma. Stage four." I touched the side of my head. "They gave me two months. Five weeks are gone."
Her mouth went flat. "Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't try that on me. You always knew how to look pitiful when you wanted something."
"It's a brain tumor, Miriam. I don't want anything."
She dropped the folder on my blanket.
"Colby's graft failed in the spring," she said. "His skin is yellow again."
"He's on the list, but the list is long, and he doesn't have long."
I did not open the folder.
A green tab stuck out of it, and I had signed enough papers to know what green meant.
"I gave him the right half of my liver," I said. "The left half is all I have."
"I'm not asking for it today." She kept her voice reasonable. "You sign, and when you go, it goes to Colby."
"The doctors will keep you on a ventilator until the surgeons are ready."
"No."
"He is your brother."
"Seven years ago you stood at the foot of my recovery bed and told me I wasn't anyone's brother."
I kept my voice level. "I did what you asked. I stopped."
"Because of what you did to him!" Her hand came down on my shoulder, hard enough to hurt.
"The messages. The exam. All of it, to a boy who had no one."
"Say what I did, Miriam. Out loud."
"Stop it."
Her sleeve slid back as she gripped me.
A pale scar ran across the inside of her left wrist, thin and old.
She wore a cuff over it every day of her life.
I looked at the scar. Then I looked out the window.
"Colby saved my life when I was twenty-one," she said. "When no one else in this family lifted a finger."
"Do you understand what that means? Without him there would be no Ellinghams left."
I said nothing.
She waited. She wanted me to argue so she could be angry at something.
She let go of my shoulder. "Sign it, Cedric."
I picked up the folder and held it out to her.
"No," I said.
"My organs go to strangers. The papers are in the drawer, signed and witnessed by Arlene and my friend Teddy."
"A dozen strangers are waiting for them, and not one of them ever called me a liar."
Her face closed.
For one second she looked at the drawer. Then she looked away.
"Those papers won't last the week," she said. "I'm your next of kin."
"Every hospital file has a signature line for family."
"Do what you want."
"I will." She took the folder out of my hand. "I'll pay every doctor in this state to keep you breathing."
"You will ask to stop, and nobody will let you."
I did not answer.
There was nothing in it I had not already thought through at three in the morning.
She walked out. The door swung back against its stop and bounced shut.
I sat with my hands open on the blanket, too thin to hold anything.
After a while the door opened again.
Arlene Gantry stood there with her glasses pushed up into her grey hair and her phone in her fist.
She had been listening in the hall. She did not pretend otherwise.
"That's the woman who signs this building's checks," she said.
"I know."
"The director just got a call from her office." Arlene came in and shut the door behind her.
"Ellingham Holdings owns these walls. We have until Friday to be out, unless the patient in room six changes his mind."
I looked at the jar of carnations.
Eleven of us lived on that hall.
The woman in room two was ninety-one and thought it was always Easter.
"Where am I supposed to put them by Friday, Cedric?" Arlene said.
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