The Donor

Two Lines

He knocked twice.

"Come in."

He closed the door behind him and she did not tell him to leave it open and neither of them said anything about that.

"Sit down," she said.

"I'm fine standing."

"Adonis."

"Cherish."

Her name. Just like that. No title. Like he had decided it was his to use and was not going to stop.

"Sit down," she said again.

He sat.

"The clinic called this morning," she said.

"Okay."

"Three week window. Cancellation slot. They need an answer by five today."

"What kind of answer?"

"Whether I am moving forward. And with which donor."

He said nothing.

"The known donor option," she said. "I asked about it at my last appointment. The doctor said the medicine is the straightforward part. The conversation that has to happen first is where it either holds or it doesn't."

"So have the conversation."

"I am having it."

"Then say what you called me to say."

She looked at him across the desk.

"Last night you said I didn't have to carry it alone."

"I meant it."

"I need to know what that means. Specifically. Because I do not operate on implication and I cannot afford to misread something this important."

"It means if you want me to be your donor I will do it." He held her gaze. "Properly. Whatever the clinic requires. Whatever you need on paper. No claims. No conditions. Just me being here."

"You understand what you are saying."

"Yes."

"You are twenty-eight years old."

"You keep telling me that."

"Because it keeps mattering."

"It matters to you," he said. "It doesn't change anything for me."

"Adonis."

"Let me finish." He leaned forward. "I know what I feel. I know what I saw last night. A woman who has been carrying something impossible alone for eight months and is still standing and still running a company and still showing up every single day. I am not asking you for a relationship you are not ready for. I am asking you to let me help you with this one thing because I want to and because I can."

"And if it works," she said. "If I am pregnant. Then what."

"Then we figure it out."

"That is not an answer."

"It is the only honest one I have right now. What I can tell you is that I am not the kind of man who disappears. Whatever happens I will still be here."

She looked at him for a long time.

She had been looking for the angle since he sat down. The thing underneath the thing. The version of this where he wanted something he had not said yet.

She had not found it.

Marcus had walked in the same way once. Steady. Sure of himself. Full of words that sounded like promises. And then he left and told her she was too much and not enough at the same time and she had built every wall she owned from what was left of that.

She had sworn.

"This is a terrible idea," she said.

"Maybe."

"I am fifteen years older than you."

"I know how subtraction works."

"I will be difficult."

"You are already difficult."

"I mean it."

"So do I." He did not smile but something in his face shifted. "Cherish. I did not come here to be talked out of this. I came because you called me. And you called me because some part of you already knows what you want to do."

The office was very still.

She looked at the bottom left drawer.

She opened it.

Picked up the folder.

Looked at it for a moment.

Put it in the waste bin beside her desk.

He watched her do it and said nothing and she felt what that silence meant from across the room.

"Five o'clock," she said.

"Five o'clock," he said.

She picked up her phone. Called the clinic.

"Ms. Auton."

"I have made my decision. Known donor. I will send his details by end of day."

"Wonderful. If everything clears on the screening we can begin Monday."

"Thank you."

She ended the call.

Put the phone down.

Looked at him.

He was looking back at her with something on his face she was not ready for so she looked away first and that almost never happened.

"You should go," she said. "I have work."

"Are you alright?"

"I will be."

He stood. Picked up his jacket. Walked to the door. Stopped.

"Cherish."

"What."

"Whoever told you that you were too much. He was describing his own limitations. Not you." A pause. "Put it down."

She said nothing.

"I mean it," he said.

He walked out.

She sat alone.

The waste bin was beside her desk. The folder was in it. The bottom left drawer was empty for the first time in eight months and the weight in her chest was different now. Not gone. But different. The kind of difference that came from a decision made and meant.

Just a phone call.

Just okay.

Just him.

She got back to work.

She did not retrieve the folder.

Not once.