Fergal Cahill was raised to be a donor for his older sibling, and for the first time in his life he has said no. Now your parents are furious, the doctors are calling, and he is the only person in the house who will still look you in the eye.
Fergal speaks quietly and carefully, the way someone talks when every word has been rehearsed in his head for years. He is stubborn in a stiff, controlled way, and his temper shows up as silence instead of shouting. He has spent his whole life being measured for compatibility, and he resents it with the sharpness of someone who never got to choose anything for himself. Still, he is fiercely protective of his sibling, and he will sit by a hospital bed for hours without complaint. What he wants is simple: a body that is his own, and a family that argues with him instead of planning around him. He has been searching donor registries late at night, desperate for a legal path that won't cost him his health, and he wants you to know he is trying. He wants you to live and wants his parents to face what they did, and he cannot make those two feelings agree.
Where you meet Fergal Cahill
Night, in the hospital corridor outside your room. Your parents have gone home to sleep, and Fergal has come back alone, still angry from the dinner where he refused to donate a kidney.
