…donate one of his kidneys to her. The surgery is in three weeks.”
I stood very still behind a decorated column.
The woman in the white dress was Barbara Klein. She and my husband, Frank, had been engineering partners for twenty-five years. They’d designed bridges in four states together. I’d met her at office parties. I always liked her.
Barbara had kidney failure. She’d been on dialysis for two years. She was retiring because she could no longer work. Her family members weren’t matches.
Frank was.
“He was tested four months ago,” his boss whispered. “He didn’t want to tell you until he was sure. He was afraid you’d say no. He asked me to make sure you were here tonight, because he wanted to tell you in front of the people who love her.”
The banner, “25 YEARS TOGETHER — A NEW BEGINNING,” was about their partnership. The new beginning was the transplant. Frank had chosen the words himself.
Then Frank tapped his glass and started to speak. He talked about Barbara’s work. About the bridge they’d built in Oregon that everyone said was impossible. Then he said, “Barbara, there’s one more project I’d like to do with you.” He told the room about the kidney.
Barbara burst into tears. So did half the room.
Then Frank looked up and saw me behind the column. His face fell, then lit up. “And there’s my wife,” he said. “Who I was supposed to tell first. I’m in so much trouble.”
Everyone laughed. I walked across that ballroom, still furious that he hadn’t told me first, and hugged him anyway.
The surgery went perfectly. Barbara’s new kidney started working within hours. Frank was home in five days, complaining about hospital food. She sent him a card that said: “You’ve been carrying half my workload for 25 years. Now you’re carrying half my life.”
Barbara comes to dinner every month now. Last week, she brought the blueprints for their Oregon bridge, framed, as a gift for our living room. Frank says it’s the second most important thing they ever built together.
