“Me?” I breathed, a sudden wave of profound relief washing over me. “Take it. Take whatever you need from me. Let’s do the surgery right now!”
But the doctor didn’t look relieved. In fact, his face grew even darker. He didn’t look at me; he looked down at the paperwork in his hand, his fingers tightening against the clipboard.
“It’s not that simple, sir,” the doctor said, his voice laced with a terrifying hesitation. “While your bone marrow can save her, the pre-op screening we ran on your friend Rohit earlier today—where you also submitted a standard blood sample as a potential directed blood donor for his post-op recovery—revealed something else.”
The doctor stepped closer, his voice dropping to a whisper that felt like a blade slicing through the night.
“We cannot use you as a donor, Arjun. Because the lab results indicate that if we perform this extraction on you in your current medical state… you will not survive the procedure. And there is something else you need to know about Maya’s condition that she hasn’t told you.”
My breath hitched. I looked at Maya, whose face had gone completely ghost-white, her eyes wide with a sudden, absolute terror as she stared at the doctor.
“Doctor… no… please don’t,” Maya whimpered, trying to pull her hand away from mine.
What was the doctor talking about? What medical state was I in? And what was the final, terrifying secret Maya was still hiding from me?
