Part One – Days of Waiting (Chicago, United States)
I donated my kidney to my son. That’s what any parent would do for their child in America, right? That’s what I told myself when I signed the papers at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in downtown Chicago, Illinois.
I never imagined that behind it all was a plan carefully constructed over months. Three days after surgery, my own son showed up with a stack of legal documents, evicting me from my own house under U.S. law.
The emotional pain cut deeper than any surgical wound. I’m Arthur Morrison, and this is what happened to me in the United States of America. A doctor would soon burst into the room with fury written across her face and say something that made my son’s complexion go almost gray.
What she revealed next would destroy everything I thought I knew about my family—and, unexpectedly, save me from a betrayal I never saw coming. Before I tell you what she said, I want you to think about something: would you ever donate an organ to your child? Would you sign away a piece of your own body to keep them alive?
I did, without hesitation. I need you to understand that, so you know why what came next almost broke me. When I opened my eyes, the world was all machines and white light.
For a moment, I didn’t know where I was. The ceiling above me was off-white, stained around the vents. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.
Everything smelled sharp and chemical, like a mixture of bleach and metal that burned the back of my throat. Then the pain hit. It started as a dull ache along my left side, then exploded into fire, like someone had pressed a branding iron into my ribs.
I tried to move, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. My arms felt as heavy as wet concrete. Slowly, I turned my head.
To my right, a monitor beeped in a steady rhythm, green lines dancing across a black screen. An IV drip hung from a metal pole, clear fluid dripping into the line connected to my arm. To my left, a window.
Outside, snow fell in thick, slow flakes over the Chicago skyline. It was December in Illinois. The world looked frozen and far away, like I was watching someone else’s city through glass.
I was in the ICU at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, one of the big, gleaming medical centers Americans brag about. The name floated through my mind as pieces of memory returned: the surgery, the consent forms, the anesthesiologist counting backward from ten in a calm Midwestern voice. And Caleb.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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