They Called Me Selfish. My Kidney Saved Her Life. novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Autopay

Cosima cancels the mortgage payments in front of her parents, and her mother says Reed has asked for Cora's hand.

Dr. Tarrant's car smelled like coffee and cold pavement.

He drove with both hands on the wheel and took every bump slowly.

"The seat belt will pull on the incision," he said. "Put your bag between it and you."

I did, and it helped.

"Does your apartment have stairs?"

"Three flights."

"Then you'll go up one at a time and rest at each landing. I'm walking behind you."

"You don't have to."

"I do, actually. You're the only donor I've ever sent home alone."

He said it flatly, without any pity, and I found I could stand that better than kindness.

At my door, he waited while I turned the key.

The apartment was half empty.

Reed's couch was gone. His monitor was gone. The framed print of the Cleveland skyline he'd bought us was gone from the wall, and a clean square showed where it had hung.

On the kitchen counter lay his spare key and a sticky note.

"I took what's mine. I'll want Grandma's ring back. Don't make this ugly. R."

I read it once and dropped it in the trash.

The ring was in an envelope in my coat pocket, where the discharge nurse had put it.

Dr. Tarrant stood in the doorway with his hands in his coat pockets.

"Your discharge sheet has a number on it," he said. "It's my cell."

"Why would I need it?"

"A fever, an opening in the incision, anything strange. You use it."

"Thank you."

"That's not a favor. It's the job."

I nodded, and he looked at me a moment longer than the job needed, and left.

I had just lowered myself onto a kitchen chair when someone started pounding on the door.

It was my father.

He didn't wait for me to open it all the way.

He came in with my mother behind him, holding a folder against her chest.

"Hugh, let her sit," my mother said, but she didn't mean it.

"She's sitting," my father said. "Where were you?"

"In the hospital."

"Don't." He pointed a thick finger at me. "Reed says you weren't at your desk all week."

"My boss knew."

"Your sister had her surgery, and you couldn't pick up a phone."

"I had a medical thing."

"A medical thing." He laughed, flat and short. "You're twenty-eight. Your sister could have died."

"But she didn't."

"That's no thanks to you."

My mother's face crumpled. "She's alive, Cosima. A stranger saved her. A woman we'll never get to thank."

She opened the folder.

Inside was a sheet of cream stationery, and my mother's handwriting at the top of it.

"Cora wants to write to the donor through the hospital," she said.

"We thought you could help her word it. You're good at saying things properly."

"You want me to help write the thank-you letter."

"It would be a start. For you." My mother held out a pen. "You could say you're sorry in it. Cora would like that."

I looked at the pen.

My father leaned on the counter and spoke more quietly.

"There's one more thing. The mortgage came out of your account on the first, like always."

"I saw."

"With all of this, we need it more now. Keep it going."

For two years, since my father's layoff, I had paid two thousand one hundred dollars a month into a house I did not live in.

Nobody had said thank you once. They had said "like always."

I took out my phone.

"What are you doing?" my mother said.

I opened my bank app, found the standing transfer, and held the screen up where they could see it.

"I'm cancelling it."

"Cosima." My father's voice dropped. "Don't be stupid."

I pressed the red button. Then I pressed it again to confirm.

"Done."

My mother stared at the phone. "You can't do that to us. We'll lose the house."

"Ask the stranger who saved Cora. She seems to have plenty to give."

My father came around the counter, and I held very still, because I was not allowed to lift anything and I was not going to move.

He stopped a foot away from me.

"You are no daughter of mine," he said.

"Okay."

"I mean it."

"Okay, Dad."

My mother put the stationery away and closed the folder slowly.

She stopped at the door. When she turned, she wasn't crying, and I realized I had never seen her stop.

"I may as well tell you," she said. "So you hear it from me."

"Hear what?"

"Reed came by the house last night. He asked your father for Cora's hand."

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