One woman asked whether I regretted saving Margaret.
I thought about the hospital room, the divorce folder, and the message glowing on Daniel’s tablet.
“No,” I said.
“Her life was mine to help save.
My life was also mine to protect.
Those truths can exist together.”
For years, I believed love meant enduring whatever another person demanded.
Now I understand that endurance is only noble when it protects something worthy.
When it protects cruelty, it becomes a cage.
Daniel believed taking part of my body would leave me easier to control.
Instead, I woke from surgery with one less kidney and, for the first time in eleven years, no doubt about what I deserved.
