Don't Believe It

by Charlie Donlea

“Grace was born with a rare type of leukemia. The only thing that would save her was a bone marrow transplant. My parents couldn’t find a matching donor. So they had another child—me. I was a perfect match. Grace likes to say that part of me is inside her, so we’ll always be connected. And we each understand that neither of us would be around if the other didn’t exist. If I didn’t come around, Grace would have died. And if Grace hadn’t gotten sick, I wouldn’t have been conceived.”

Drinking coffee and reading the paper had been one of the joys of life, and for the first time in many weeks, he was beginning to notice such subtle benefits of being alive.