I donated a kidney to my husband after 22 years of marriage, but three days after the operation I heard him tell his lover, "When I get out of here, the house will be yours."
I didn't cry or make a scene; I took off my ring and asked to be discharged. When he finally left the hospital, what he found at home left him speechless.
"I swear to you that as soon as I get out of here, that house will be yours. Ana doesn't count; after twenty-two years she's still like a piece of furniture: wherever you leave her, that's where she stays."
Ana Morales heard the phrase from behind the green screen in the private hospital room in Mexico City.
The wound in his side had only been closed for three days, but it hurt him in another place.
Three days earlier she had gone into surgery to donate a kidney to her husband, Victor Salgado, a 60-year-old businessman who had been going in and out of hemodialysis for almost a year.
Ana was 58, had been a primary school teacher for more than three decades and, since the doctors said they were compatible, she didn't hesitate.
Victor had indeed hesitated, but not because of her. "Rita, understand me," he continued on the phone, convinced that Ana was asleep.
The house in Lomas Verdes is in Ana's name, but I'll sort that out. My notary will handle the donation and that's it.
