On July 14th, a call came in from the international donor registry. A compatible donor had been found in Germany.
On the morning of the transplant, the room was silent. Maya was sitting up in bed, her cheeks a little redder than the day I’d found her in the hallway. Her mother was sitting in a corner, praying silently with her rosary, while I adjusted the pillows behind Maya’s back.
She looked up at me, her pale hazel eyes finally losing that deep, heavy sadness I had fled from a year before.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go back to your quiet apartment, Arjun?” she joked weakly, regaining a glimmer of her old sense of humor. “The food here is disgusting.”
“I tried the quiet life, Maya,” I said, leaning forward to rest my forehead against hers. “It’s overrated. I prefer the noise.”
The nurse entered the room, carrying the small, clear bag of peripheral blood stem cells—the cells that would regenerate her immune system, the cells that would save her life. As the liquid began to flow through the IV, Maya closed her eyes, her fingers intertwining tightly with mine.
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