The kidney had bought nothing, because you cannot buy sight, and you cannot pay a person into loving you, and every sacrifice I had ever made toward that secret ledger had been money poured into a hole.

That is the thing I had to learn, and it is the thing I most want to pass on: giving is beautiful when it is a gift and corrosive when it is a payment, and the woman who gives and gives while secretly keeping accounts, waiting to be repaid in love, is not being generous.

She is starving, and calling the starvation virtue, and she will give away her whole self at that hidden counter and get nothing back, because the only love worth having was never for sale and never needed buying in the first place.

Chapter 5 — The Envelope

There is a thing I had not told Gregor, or anyone but my sister, and I need to tell it now, because it changes the shape of everything and because I am done keeping other people’s comfort ahead of my own truth.

Six weeks before the transplant, I had learned that I was dying.