My Husband's Kidney Was Inside Her

After twenty years of marriage to Jason, I found out he was missing a kidney.
The other one was nestled safely inside the body of Olivia Preston, the one that got away.
“Don’t tell Olivia,” he’d said. “I’m afraid it’ll stress her out, and that’s not good for her health.”
His friend, Mark, had laughed at him. “If you’ve been carrying a torch for Olivia all this time, and now her husband’s dead, why not just divorce your wife and marry her? Wouldn’t that be easier?”
Jason lowered his gaze, coughing softly into his fist. A self-deprecating smile touched his lips.
“In my condition? What good would marrying me do her? I don’t want to be a burden. Besides, she’s not like Claire. I couldn’t bear to see her tied to a kitchen sink for me.”
My vision blurred. I looked down at the two large paper bags in my hands, filled to the brim with herbal remedies and expensive supplements.
I turned on my heel and threw them straight into the nearest trash can.

1
The click of the front door opening brought the conversation in the living room to an abrupt halt.
Jason glanced at my empty hands.
“Weren’t you supposed to be picking up my prescription from the clinic? Where is it?”
He asked it so casually, not even waiting for my answer before gesturing to his friend. “Mark drove all the way out here. Go whip something up in the kitchen. We’re going to have a proper lunch.”
I stood frozen in the doorway, a chill seeping into my bones. My throat felt clogged with something thick and sticky, a scream I couldn't force up or swallow down.
My eyes were fixed on his abdomen as I took one mechanical step after another toward him.
“Claire, did you hear a word I said…?”
“Claire!”
Jason’s pupils constricted as he shoved me away, his voice sharp.
But I clung to the hem of his shirt.
There it was. The pale, thin scar I’d seen for nearly two decades. Now, it gaped at me like a monstrous mouth, mocking my ignorance, my stupidity.
I vaguely remembered eighteen years ago, when his mother had fractured her ankle. We’d wanted to bring her to the city to stay with us, to make it easier to care for her. But she was stubborn, insisting she wouldn’t be comfortable and wasn’t used to city life. She demanded to go back to her home in the country.
So, we drove her back. The very next day, Jason left for a work trip. I, on the other hand, had taken a month off from my job.
It wasn't until his mother was fully recovered and I returned to the city that I learned Jason had been hospitalized.
I’d rushed to the hospital, frantic with worry, and that’s when I first saw the scar. But back then, it was fresh and raw, a testament to a vulnerability that had washed away all my questions.
My lips parted, but the sound that escaped was dry and raspy.
“What did you say this scar was from?”
Jason swatted my hand away, irritated, and smoothed his shirt down. He ignored me, turning to Mark with an apologetic look.
“Sorry about this, man. You had to see that.”
“She’s not usually like this…”
I wouldn’t be dismissed. I stepped in front of him again, tears streaming down my face against my will.
“Jason! You tell me right now, how did you get this scar!”
Mark, sensing the volatile atmosphere, awkwardly rose from his chair.
“Hey, I just came by to catch you up on some old friends. Mission accomplished. We’ll get together again some other time.”
He practically fled.
The moment the door clicked shut, the forced smile on Jason’s face vanished, replaced by a mask of pure exasperation. It was as if his patience had finally snapped.
“Claire, are you done yet?!”
Before I could answer, a frantic pounding echoed from the door. Mark was back, his voice urgent and panicked.
“Jason! Olivia—she’s on the roof at the funeral, she's going to jump!”

2
The color drained from Jason’s face. I watched, paralyzed, as his expression became a canvas of pain, panic, and desperation.
Any lingering sliver of hope I’d clung to, any desperate wish that this was all a misunderstanding, evaporated into nothing.
My hand fell limply from his arm. I summoned every ounce of strength I had left to ask him one last time.
“Jason, you told me the scar on your stomach was from appendix surgery. Was that… was that the truth?”
He frowned, his mind clearly elsewhere. “I have to go. We can talk about this when I get back.”
And just like that, he turned and left without a second glance.
After he was gone, I made a phone call. To his cousin’s husband, Dr. Mason—the very surgeon who had supposedly performed Jason’s “appendectomy.”
In less than a minute, a secret buried for eighteen years was unearthed.
Dr. Mason tried to smooth things over on the phone. “Look, Claire, Jason just said he wanted to help someone. There was nothing else between them. To this day, the woman doesn’t even know who her donor was.”
“You’ve been married for so many years; you know him better than anyone. If he’d really wanted something with her, he would have used the kidney as leverage to get tangled up with her long ago.”
“Think about it. Other than this one person he’s held a candle for, he’s been good to you, to your family. He doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t drink, he gives you his whole paycheck to manage. He talks over every big decision with you.”
He ended with a piece of paternalistic advice: “Claire, trust me on this. You could marry another man, and he likely wouldn’t measure up to Jason…”
In a few short sentences, he had twisted Jason’s basic marital duties into bonus points, painting his profound betrayal and infidelity as some kind of noble, self-restrained virtue.
I was so furious I hung up on him. I sat alone on the sofa as the day bled into night.
Jason didn't come back. He didn't even call.
I looked around at the home I had painstakingly built and maintained for twenty years, and a wave of defeat and self-doubt washed over me. I couldn’t understand it. I felt so wronged.
Jason and I had met after being set up by mutual friends. At the time, he was just a math teacher, fresh back in town, and I was a clerk at a small company. After a few dates, we decided we were a decent match and got married at the end of that year.
Over the years, while our marriage wasn't built on a foundation of passionate love, we had both worked hard to maintain our little family. Just as Dr. Mason said, Jason was a model husband on the surface. No drinking, no gambling, no vices. On holidays and anniversaries, he'd buy me a small bouquet or a piece of jewelry to make me happy. He’d bring me to work functions, where his colleagues would praise his clean-cut lifestyle and tell me how lucky I was to have a husband like him.
But was I really supposed to feel lucky?
Did I not also abstain from drinking, gambling, and all the rest? Did I not return the favor on Valentine's Day and his birthday with equal effort and sentiment?
The salary he "handed over" was never truly mine to control. For any significant expense, I had to provide a detailed explanation and justification for any discrepancy in our savings he hadn't anticipated. In layman's terms, I was merely his custodian. He’d essentially hired a free accountant, burnishing his own image in the process.
And what about me?
Ever since that “appendectomy,” Jason’s health had taken a nosedive. His mild diabetes worsened to type 2. That, combined with the chronic gastritis and herniated discs that came with his profession—ailments that might seem minor to others—became the central focus of my life.
On top of my own job and the endless list of household chores, I had to constantly monitor his diet and lifestyle. For his diabetes, I memorized the doctor's list of forbidden foods until I could recite it in my sleep. I prepared his breakfast and lunch every single day, packing them for him to take to school. He complained that the weekly physical therapy sessions were a waste of money, so I secretly spent months learning massage techniques from a professional so I could treat him at home. When his mother fell gravely ill, I was the one who had to make the sacrifice and take a leave of absence from work to care for her, so as not to jeopardize his chances for a promotion.
Didn’t all my sacrifices earn me the right to his loyalty in this marriage?
Why should I feel grateful and content simply because he hadn’t physically cheated?!
The sound of a key in the lock broke through my thoughts.
Jason, who had been gone for a full day and night, appeared in the doorway, weariness etched into every line of his face. He looked surprised, almost flustered to see me awake, like a man caught in the act.
My heart seized.
A second later, a woman’s silhouette emerged from behind him.
As if to shield her from my questions, Jason’s tall frame almost completely enveloped Olivia.
“Olivia… creditors have been staking out her place. She has nowhere else to go…”
Seeing no reaction from me, Jason took a defensive step back.
“If you mind, she can sleep on the couch…”
I cut him off with a cold laugh. “And if I didn’t mind, were you planning on sharing our bed with her?”
His face flushed a deep crimson, his embarrassment quickly morphing into righteous anger. “Claire, there’s nothing sordid between us! Stop being so disgusting!”

3
I stared at the two of them, my teeth clenched so hard my jaw ached.
“Jason! You bring a widow into our home and you have the nerve to talk to me about decency?!”
Before Jason could respond, Olivia, who had been hiding behind him, stepped forward. Ignoring his attempts to stop her, she walked right up to me.
I studied the woman before me. She had a gentle, graceful air, a delicate frame. Though she was about my age, she looked a decade younger. Every gesture exuded a scholarly refinement that matched Jason’s.
No wonder he’d never forgotten her.
Olivia stood before me, her demeanor poised and calm. “You misunderstand. In fact, I should thank you.”
I eyed her coldly. “Thank me?”
She nodded, her voice as soft as silk, a stark contrast to my own hysteria. “When you think about it, he’s saved my life twice.”
“You’re his wife, so thanking you is the same as thanking him.” She paused, then glanced at Jason with a look of profound gratitude. “I only found out today that he was the one who saved me back when my kidneys were failing.”
“And today… if he hadn’t lent me that fifty thousand dollars, I don’t know what I would have…”
“Olivia!” Jason cut her off sharply, his eyes darting nervously toward me. “It was an emergency, I…”
My mind went completely blank.
I stumbled back into our bedroom and frantically searched through the drawers. The two bank cards and the emergency cash we kept were all gone.
I looked up at the man before me, my body shaking uncontrollably. I grabbed the water glass from the nightstand and hurled it at him.
Jason didn’t flinch. The glass struck his forehead with a dull thud before falling to the floor and shattering. A trickle of dark red blood oozed from a cut above his eyebrow.
Olivia gasped and rushed to dab at the wound with a tissue, her tone toward me hardening.
“You don’t have to be so dramatic. I’ll pay you back the money. If you’re worried, I can write you an IOU. We can even add interest, at the market rate…”
She pulled out a pen and paper, ready to write then and there.
Jason snatched them from her hand and glared at me, his face a mask of fury.
“Her husband just died, and she’s being hounded by creditors for her house! How is she supposed to pay it back? Are you trying to push her over the edge?!”
“Claire, I always thought you were a reasonable person, but you’re acting like a shrew! You have no compassion at all!”
“I’ve been too compassionate, Jason!” I roared, the blood rushing in my ears. “That’s why you felt you could donate a kidney to another woman behind my back, leaving me to deal with your lifetime of health problems!”
“You want to talk about decency? Tell her to give you your kidney back, and then we can talk!”
“Claire!” Jason’s voice cracked, his brown eyes staring at me as if I were a madwoman.
He took a deep, steadying breath, and when he spoke again, his voice was chillingly calm.
“You’re being irrational. We’ll talk when you’ve calmed down.”
With that, he turned and started to lead Olivia out. He even used his foot to carefully sweep the shards of glass aside, clearing a safe path for her.
The sight sent another jolt of rage through me.
I lifted a small wooden stool and threw it with all my might.
“Jason! I want a divorce!”
He instinctively pulled Olivia into a protective embrace, taking the full impact of the stool on his back. He didn’t turn around, didn’t argue.
He just said, flatly, “Fine. As you wish.”

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