He Sold His Kidney For His First Love
It started six months ago, the day his old flame, Isabelle, moved back from Europe, newly divorced.
From that moment on, something in him shifted. His gaze, his moods, his very essence became tethered to the ghost of the girl he once loved and lost. He was a good husband, a wonderful father. Every asset we owned—the house, the savings, the investment accounts—was in my name. His entire salary was direct-deposited into my account without him ever seeing a dime.
He fought it. I know he did. He was trying so hard to be honorable, to respect the boundaries of our marriage, to keep his feelings for her locked away.
But then he sold one of his kidneys behind my back. He took the money and bought Isabelle a small condo.
That’s when I placed the divorce papers on the table, along with a bank check for half of our liquid assets.
“You don’t have to sell your organs to fund your romance, Ethan,” I said, my voice calmer than I felt. “This should be enough to cover it.”
1
Panic seized him. He didn’t touch the papers. Instead, he shot his hand up as if taking an oath, his eyes wide and frantic.
“Nora, I swear on my mother’s life, on my whole family, nothing happened with Isabelle. We haven’t slept together. We haven’t even kissed. We haven’t held hands.”
He looked like a child caught in a lie, terrified by my composure. His eyes, usually so steady, began to swim with moisture. In ten years of marriage, with an eight-year-old son between us, this was the first time the word ‘divorce’ had ever been spoken. It was the first time I had ever seen him look so broken, so utterly unlike himself.
“What about holding her?” I asked quietly.
A flicker of guilt crossed his face. He dropped his gaze, his voice thick with shame. “Twice. We hugged twice. Not for more than a minute either time.”
He looked back up at me, his voice pleading. “Nora, I know I messed up. I lost my sense of perspective. I don’t want this family to fall apart. Please… please don’t leave me.”
A sharp pain, more ache than anger, tightened in my chest. Even now, with his heart emotionally cheating on me, my first instinct was to protect him from the very torment he was putting himself through. I couldn’t erase ten years of his goodness, of his devotion, just because of this.
I forced myself to remain steady. “I don’t hate you, Ethan. Even if we divorce, you’ll always be Sam’s dad. Always. But more importantly, I want you to be happy.”
I took a breath, the words tasting like ash. “If our marriage has to end, I’d rather it be with a clean cut than a slow, painful death.”
His panic intensified, a thousand unspoken arguments dying on his lips. I left him there, giving him the space to process.
I didn't expect Isabelle to come to me.
She arrived at my front door holding a fruit basket and a six-pack of the specific organic probiotic yogurt my son loves—a brand that’s hard to find, one you’d only know about if someone told you.
Ethan had obviously been doing his homework for her.
“Hello, I’m Isabelle,” she said, her smile gentle. “May I come in?”
She was more polite than I’d imagined. More beautiful, too, with an effortless elegance. A decade hadn't touched her. She looked exactly the same as she did in the photograph Ethan kept hidden in a password-protected file on his laptop.
“Please,” I said, battling the storm of emotions inside me as I led her to the living room and poured her a glass of water.
Her eyes drifted around our home, a subtle, scanning appraisal.
I met her gaze directly. “If you like this house, I can make sure Ethan gets it in the settlement.”
I meant it. This wasn’t me being generous; it was me being realistic. I’d been a stay-at-home mom for ten years. The savings, the properties—they were all the result of Ethan’s relentless hard work. I had seen the blood, sweat, and sleepless nights he’d poured into building this life. I couldn’t bear the thought of him walking away with nothing.
Isabelle’s composure faltered. “Oh, no, you’ve misunderstood. That’s not what I meant at all.” She leaned forward, her expression a mask of sincerity. “I heard from Ethan that you were talking about divorce. I came to talk you out of it.”
She sighed, a delicate, practiced sound. “I truly never intended to disrupt your family. I had no idea Ethan was still… holding on to that time in our lives. He told me you two had an arranged marriage. That while there wasn't love, there was a deep family bond. You shouldn't throw that away over an impulse.”
A bitter taste filled my mouth. “He told you there was no love between us?”
Isabelle fell silent, her silence a deliberate confirmation. Just like that, the sliver of respect I might have had for her vanished. She was just like all the others, hiding her thorns under a layer of soft wool.
As she stood to leave, she "accidentally" tripped on the leg of the coffee table, crying out in pain as she crumpled to the floor.
And right on cue, the front door opened. Ethan was home.
2
Isabelle let out a soft sob, making a show of trying to push herself up, her body seemingly too weak to manage it.
The worry in Ethan’s eyes was a physical thing, a wave of raw emotion he desperately tried to suppress the moment he saw me watching him. He schooled his features into a mask of neutrality, but it was too late. The shift was a needle to my heart.
I kept my own voice even, a deliberate act of calm. “What are you waiting for? Go help her.”
Isabelle looked up at him, her eyes glistening with manufactured tears. “Ethan, don’t be mad at Nora. It’s not her fault. I’m fine.”
The implication hung in the air, a poisonous suggestion that I had pushed her. I offered a small, dismissive smile.
Ethan was frozen, torn. He, who always listened to me, hesitated, his eyes screaming that he wanted to rush to her side but was terrified of my reaction. He was trying to spare my feelings, but he didn't realize his eyes had already betrayed him.
“I’m just going to use the restroom,” I said, my voice level. I was offering them a moment of privacy, an act of grace I wasn’t sure they deserved.
When I returned, Isabelle was gone. The fruit basket and the yogurt were gone with her.
Ethan rushed to explain, his words tumbling out. “I didn’t ask her to come. She just wanted to help, to explain. She doesn’t want us to divorce either.”
I managed a faint smile. How could a man so brilliant be so blind to her intentions?
“Honestly, Ethan, I think she loves you more than I do. You two are a better—”
“I bought that salmon you like,” he interrupted, holding up a grocery bag. “I’ll start dinner. You go watch some TV.”
He fled to the kitchen before I could finish my thought. A better fit.
For ten years, he had taken care of me so completely that I still didn't know how to cook a proper meal. I used to think that kind of care was love. Now, whether it was love or not didn't seem to matter anymore. From the perspective of family, of someone who genuinely cared for him, I was willing to step aside and give him what he truly wanted.
Our son, Sam, came home from school, and we ate dinner together, the conversation flowing as it always did. The first piece of fish Ethan picked up with his chopsticks, he placed in my bowl—a habit so ingrained that Sam had picked it up, too, often adding his own contributions to my plate.
“Mom,” Sam said suddenly, “can we go to Grandma’s this weekend?”
The thought of facing Ethan’s mother while we were navigating a divorce was too much. “Maybe in a little while, honey.”
Sam’s face fell, his lower lip pushing out in a pout.
Ethan saw the flicker of annoyance in my eyes and immediately turned on our son. “Hey, you listen to your mother. In this house, Mom is the boss. I listen to her, and you listen to her. Don’t you dare make her upset, you hear me?”
Sam, used to this dynamic, just rolled his eyes. “Dad, you’re so whipped. You’re always sucking up to Mom.”
It was true. Ethan had always, without fail, put me first. He shot a nervous glance my way now, as if seeking my approval.
Later that night, in bed, he wrapped his arms around me from behind, burying his face in the curve of my neck. His voice was a heavy murmur against my skin.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost focus. I’ll fix it. I promise.”
How could he fix it? A part of his body was already gone.
I said nothing, my heart aching with a dull, persistent pain.
Just after midnight, her call came. Inevitable. Ethan, thinking I was asleep, tiptoed out of the room, phone in hand, and shut himself in the bathroom.
Two minutes later, I heard the faint click of the front door closing.
He said he would change, but the ghost of his past had beckoned, and he had followed.
3
The next morning, I was in the kitchen, awkwardly following a YouTube tutorial for making pancakes, when Ethan returned. He rushed straight to the bedroom first, and only when he didn't find me there did he track the smell of burning batter to the kitchen.
He gently took the apron from around my waist, like a parent shooing a child away from the stove. “Let me do it. You go back to bed for a little while.”
He handed me his phone, a video already cued up. “Isabelle had an emergency appendectomy last night. She doesn’t have any family here, so she had to call me to take her to the hospital. I recorded it so you wouldn't misunderstand.”
He watched me, his expression earnest, desperate for me to believe him.
I handed the phone back without watching. Whether it was true or not no longer mattered. “You just had major surgery yourself,” I said softly. “You need to take it easy. You only have one kidney now; you can’t overexert yourself.”
His face crumpled with guilt. “I’m sorry. I was being stupid.”
“If you’re really sorry,” I said, my voice firm, “then let me do this.”
I pushed him out of the kitchen and locked the door from the inside. After a long struggle, I emerged with a plate of burnt, salty pancakes and a fresh cut on my index finger.
Ethan’s eyes filled with tears when he saw it. He gently cleaned the cut, applying antiseptic and a bandage with a tenderness that made my own eyes burn.
Sam saw the scene and piped up with his usual refrain, “Mom, you’re the luckiest woman in the world. Dad treats you like a princess.”
It wasn’t just our son. Everyone said it. Everyone told me how lucky I was to have a husband like Ethan.
If this were just a simple case of emotional infidelity, maybe I could have looked the other way. But I had seen the evidence of his struggle. The prescriptions for antidepressants hidden in his desk drawer. The research on electroconvulsive therapy on his browser history. He was torturing himself, caught between his guilt and his obsession.
Ever since Isabelle returned, he hadn't had a single night of peaceful sleep. He called her name in his dreams and woke up crying silently in the bathroom. He was drowning in a severe depression.
I knew he was trying, with every fiber of his being, to hold our family together. But I was more afraid of losing him to his own private hell than I was of losing his love.
The next day, he came home with a duffel bag half-full of cash.
“Isabelle gave the money back,” he said, his voice hopeful. “Nora, can you please just forgive me this one time?”
He didn’t know that fifteen minutes earlier, I’d received a text from her.
Thanks for making this so easy for us. Don’t worry, the money Ethan gave me for the condo can just come out of your joint assets. That way, you won’t lose out.
Attached was a photo. It was the inside of a closet, filled with brand-new men’s clothing—Ethan’s size. Taped to the closet door was a picture of her, radiant in a white dress, clinging to Ethan’s arm.
I looked at the crisp, new bills in the bag. “Give it back to her, Ethan. You know I don’t care about the money.”
I went to our bedroom and retrieved a debit card. “We have about six million in savings. This card has three million on it. The other half is for me and Sam.”
I tried to have the conversation again, to be calm and rational, but the moment he saw the card, he panicked, shoving it back into my hand.
“I am not getting a divorce. Just give me some time. We can go back to how things were.” His grip on my hand was tight, trembling. His eyes were wet again.
My heart broke for him. I pulled him into a hug, stroking his back. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “Don’t be afraid of hurting me. We were an arranged match, remember? There was no great love story. We have a family bond, not a romance.”
I pulled back to look him in the eye. “You’ve given me so many good years, Ethan. I’m grateful. And because I’m grateful, I want you to be happy, not shackled by duty. I truly believe we both need to be free.”
He clung to me, his tears soaking the collar of my shirt. “I want this family,” he choked out. “I don’t want a divorce.”
4
I couldn’t get through to him. My only other option was Isabelle.
She couldn’t quite figure me out, but she was clearly delighted that I was willing to step aside.
“Ethan is a man with a powerful sense of duty,” I told her over coffee. “A powerful sense of responsibility to his family. Even if there’s no love left in our marriage, he’ll hold on for our son’s sake.” I paused, letting the next words land. “If you really want to be with him, your best bet is to get him drunk and get him into bed. It’s probably the only way to force his hand.”
Her eyes narrowed, searching my face. “Are you seeing someone else? Is that why you’re in such a hurry to end it?”
“No,” I said honestly. “I’ve seen how much he loves you. It’s killing him. After ten years together, I don’t want to watch him suffer. And my son deserves a father who is mentally healthy. So I’m willing to let you have him.”
My words seemed to move her. She placed a hand over mine. “I will love him with everything I have,” she promised. “We’ll be so happy.”
It didn’t take long for her to make her move. She sent me a photo from her bed, the sheets tangled around Ethan’s sleeping form.
Come and catch us. It’ll make the divorce go faster.
But I couldn’t. I didn’t have the strength. I was already in the ICU.
Lying on the cold operating table, my consciousness fading, I could faintly hear a doctor on the phone with Ethan. His voice was strained with terror. “We have the money. Just please, you have to save my wife.”
A tear slid from the corner of my eye. Oh, Ethan. Why does your sense of honor have to be so damn strong? I wish you could have just been a complete bastard. It would have made letting you go so much easier.
He rushed to the hospital, Isabelle trailing behind him.
The doctor’s voice was grim. “Your wife has had a major heart attack. The chances of saving her are low. Even if we do, she’ll likely be in a persistent vegetative state.”
Ethan didn’t hesitate for a second. “Save her. Even as a vegetable, save her.”
The doctor pressed on. “It’s not just the heart attack. She has an underlying heart condition that’s causing other complications. The medical bills will be in the millions. It could be a bottomless pit. I have to be honest with you—you’ll most likely lose both her and the money.”
The fear in Ethan’s eyes was overwhelming, but his voice was firm. “Save her.”
“Okay. The nurse will bring the consent forms. You’ll need to sign.”
The moment the doctor finished speaking, Ethan pulled out his phone and dialed his real estate agent. “I have five properties. I need you to sell them all. As fast as you can.”
Isabelle’s face went pale. “Ethan,” she said, her voice a low, urgent whisper. “I know you’re a good man, and you can’t just let Nora die. But you have to be realistic. The doctor is telling you it’s hopeless. Risking everything you have is… it’s reckless.”
She took a step closer, her voice dropping. “Have you thought about me? About us? Today is my ovulation day. We were just together. I get pregnant easily, Ethan. There’s a ninety percent chance I’m carrying your child right now. You’re not just going to walk away from that responsibility, are you? Please, listen to me. Don’t do this. We’ve done all we can.”
She tried to frame it as logic, as caring for him. “If you ignore me, if you choose to bankrupt yourself for Nora, then it means she’s more important to you than I am. And if that’s the case, we should never see each other again.”
It was a blatant power play. She was so sure he would choose her that she even made a show of turning to leave.
Just then, a nurse hurried over with a clipboard. “Have you decided? Do you want us to proceed with resuscitation?”
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