Matthew was completely freaked out. He had noticed the mysterious old lady following him around a fortnight ago.
He still vividly remembered the first time he had seen her. He had just been discharged from the hospital and was on his way down to his brother’s car who had come to drop him off home. He noticed the old woman just a few paces behind him struggling to keep up with him and his brother. Her walk was more of a shuffling gait where she shuffled between side to side and was not very fast, as was befitting her age. Matthew put her age somewhere between 85 and 90 yrs. But for a woman that old, she looked quite active.
On that day, he didn’t realize that she was following him. He had dismissed her as somebody who was at the hospital for reasons of her own. It was only when he noticed her the next morning near his apartment parking lot that he began to have second thoughts. He was just taking a walk within his apartment complex and happened to pass near the parking lot, he noticed that she was sitting there, watching his car intently, as if she was waiting for him to get into it.
Even after this incident, he dismissed it as a mere co-incidence. The next few days, he didn’t do too much walking as he was busy recuperating from his surgery.
Matthew had undergone surgery as he had donated one of his kidneys to a patient who had suffered the loss of both his kidneys and was surviving purely by staying hooked on to the Dialysis machine. Matthew’s own father had died due to multiple kidney failure a couple of years ago as he could not get a kidney donor whose tissue samples matched his own. Even Matthew or his brother could not donate their kidneys to him as their tissue samples did not match. It was then that he had decided that he would donate one of his kidneys to the first possible oncological patient with whom his tissue samples matched.
Although it had taken the doctors at Dickinson’s Medical Center a couple of years to find a suitable patient for Matthew’s kidney, he ensured that he led a healthy life by following a healthy diet, active lifestyle coupled with regular exercise. After all, he wanted to donate a healthy kidney to whoever was lucky enough to get it.
Around a fortnight ago, the doctors performed a successful surgery and had transplanted one of his kidneys to the patient. Both Matthew and the patient had responded well to the surgery and the patient was well on his way to leading a normal life. As was the norm, Matthew was not allowed to interact with the patient or get any other details about him and vice versa.
But now Matthew was being followed around by this mysterious old woman. When he started going back to work, he started seeing her everywhere. She was in the apartment parking lot, the office parking lot, the supermarket parking lot where he bought his groceries. He was completely freaked out and all kinds of wild theories formed in his mind.
On one occasion when driving, he was stopped at a red light when the old woman opened the passenger door and got into the car.
Matthew didn’t quite know how to react to this intrusion. The light turned green and he was forced to shift gears and move the car. He pulled over at the next possible opportunity and faced this old woman in the passenger seat.
She just smiled at him and told him “Thank you very much for saving my son’s life.” It turned out that she was the mother of the patient who had received Matthew’s kidney. Although the doctors expressly forbade her from approaching Matthew and contact him in any form or fashion, her maternal instinct had completely taken over and she had to personally thank the generous donor who had saved her only child’s life by donating a kidney.
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This post has been written as part of Today’s Author prompt where the line “He was stopped at a red light when the old woman opened the passenger door and got into the car” had to be used in the post.
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Image courtesy: http://www.digital-art-gallery.com
