Chapter 4: The Girl With His Heart
She was standing near the door to the garden, slightly apart from everyone else, wearing a dark blue dress that looked like it belonged to someone older.
She was thin.
Her color was better than I would have expected for someone who had been through major surgery weeks earlier, but there was still something careful about the way she held herself, like she was aware of her own fragility.
She saw me coming before I reached her.
"You're his mother," she said.
"Yes." I stopped a few feet away.
"And you're Lily."
She nodded.
Her eyes were dark and very direct.
She didn't look away.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"I know that's not enough.
I know there's nothing I can say that's enough.
But I needed to come."
"Your mother said you already know more than you should."
Something flickered across her face.
"My mother says a lot of things."
I glanced back.
Patricia was standing near the entrance to the room, watching us.
Not trying to hide it.
"What do you know, Lily?"
She was quiet for a moment.
Then she reached into the small bag on her shoulder and pulled out a folded piece of paper — not a letter, something printed, like a screenshot.
"He contacted the transplant coordinator," she said.
"Eight months ago.
He told them he had been diagnosed, that he wanted to register as a donor, and that he wanted — if it was medically possible and ethically permitted — for his heart to go to a specific recipient."
She held the paper out to me.
I took it.
It was a printed email chain.
My son's name was at the top.
The date was ten months ago — two months after his diagnosis.
"They told him it didn't work that way," Lily said.
"Directed donation to a non-family member is complicated.
There are rules.
He wrote back three times.
He was very polite and very persistent."
"That sounds like him," I said, and my voice broke slightly on the last word.
Lily waited.
"How did you get this?" I asked.
"He sent it to me." She paused.
"Three weeks before he d*ed, he finally contacted me directly.
He told me everything.
He told me who he was, what he'd done, and why."
I looked up from the paper.
"He told you he'd been watching over you."
"Yes."
"And that didn't frighten you?"
"It would have," she said, "if he hadn't also sent me proof of everything.
Every step he'd taken.
Every email.
Every call to the transplant office." She looked at me steadily.
"He wasn't watching me in a strange way.
He was making sure I didn't fall off the list.
Twice, there were administrative errors that could have delayed my ranking.
He caught them.
He called.
He followed up." Her voice was very quiet.
"He saved my life before he ever saved my life."
I sat down on the nearest chair.
I didn't plan to.
My legs simply stopped cooperating.
"Why didn't he tell me?" I said.
It came out smaller than I intended.
Lily sat down across from me.
"He said you were already carrying too much.
He said you had sold everything and you were exhausted and he didn't want you to spend your energy worrying about a stranger when you needed to be present for him."
"He was protecting me."
"Yes."
I pressed my hand over my mouth for a moment.
Then I lowered it.
"You said there was a reason he wanted me to meet you before reading the second part of the letter."
Lily looked at her hands.
For the first time, she seemed uncertain.
"There's something he didn't tell you in the first part," she said.
"Something about why he chose me specifically.
Not just because I needed a heart."
"Then why?"
She looked up.
Her eyes were steady again, but there was something behind them now — something that looked like it had been waiting a long time to be said.
"Because he knew me," she said.
"Not from online.
Not from the transplant list."
She reached into her bag again.
This time she took out a photograph, old and slightly worn at the edges, and placed it on the chair between us.
I picked it up.
Two children.
A boy and a girl, maybe seven and six years old, standing in front of a carousel.
The boy was grinning at the camera.
The girl was looking at him.
I recognized the boy immediately.
My hands started shaking again.
"Where did you get this?" I whispered.
"He sent it to me," Lily said softly.
May you like
"He said you had the original.
He said if you saw it, you'd understand everything."
