— Usually, they either grovel or look down on you. You’re neither.
He returned the next day for a scarf they didn’t have in stock and never had. Then again, without a reason, just to talk, just to stand by the counter while she arranged the new collection. A month later, he invited her to dinner at a restaurant whose name Arina had never heard before, although it was in the very center of the city, five minutes from her work.
She sat across from him, looking at a menu without prices and not understanding half of the dish names, and couldn’t believe that all this was happening to her — an orphan from a state home, whom fate had for some reason decided to reward for years of loneliness.
— Are you all alone? — he asked then, covering her palm with his.
— No relatives. No one. At all.
— That can be fixed.
They got married six months later — a modest wedding, almost without guests, at a registry office on the outskirts of the city. Arseny explained it was his mother’s reluctance to spend money on “show.” And Arina didn’t argue, although she secretly dreamed of a white dress and a bouquet, of photos to hang on the wall and show her children. The main thing was different: she had finally found a family, a home, and a man who promised to be by her side for the rest of her life. Even if her mother-in-law, Alla Mikhailovna, looked at her with poorly concealed contempt and never missed an opportunity to remind her of her origins. Even if in the huge house in an elite neighborhood, Arina felt like an uninvited guest, afraid to walk down the corridor or open the refrigerator. All this could be endured, waited out, earning love with patience and devotion, as she was used to earning everything in her life.
For two years, she tried her best, putting her soul into every little thing. She cooked dinners from internet recipes, which her mother-in-law barely tasted, wrinkling her nose and pushing the plate away. She bought gifts for holidays: perfumes, shawls, jewelry, which disappeared into the depths of the walk-in closet and never appeared on Alla Mikhailovna again. She smiled when her mother-in-law called her “our Cinderella” or “Arseny’s find” in front of guests with an intonation that left no doubt about the true meaning of those words.
And then her mother-in-law fell ill. The diagnosis sounded like a sentence: chronic kidney failure, dialysis three times a week at a private clinic, her heart weakening with each month. Doctors in expensive offices threw up their hands: the waiting list for a donor kidney from the state registry would stretch for years, and the patient had no time; it was a matter of months, maybe weeks.
Arseny started the conversation in the hospital corridor while his mother lay behind the wall, connected to a dialysis machine. He knelt before Arina on the cold tiled floor and took her hands in his. A gesture she had only seen in movies and read about in books, never believing it happened in real life.
— I know what I’m asking, — his voice trembled. — I know it’s too much, but you are the only one who can save her. The only one in the whole world. I… your test results… Remember you had a check-up six months ago? I asked the doctors to check for compatibility at the same time, just in case. You’re a perfect match, Arina. A one-in-a-thousand chance, and it’s you.
Arina was silent, trying to process what she had heard through the growing noise in her head. To give a kidney, a part of her body, an organ… However, people live with one, she had read about it, searched for information at night when she couldn’t sleep.
— And you? — she finally asked, her voice sounding hoarse, unfamiliar. — You’re her son, her own blood, why not you?
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