I Gave Him My Kidney, He Gave Her The Credit

The diagnosis report crinkled between my trembling fingers, the words blurring together through my tears. *Organ failure. Three months.* The sterile hospital room felt suffocating, the steady beep of monitors marking time I no longer had.

I pressed the paper against my chest, feeling the rapid flutter of my failing heart beneath the thin hospital gown. Three months. Ninety days. It seemed both impossibly short and unbearably long.

The sound of expensive leather shoes clicking against linoleum made me look up. Alexander stood in the doorway, his tall frame filling the space with an authority that had once made me feel protected. Now, his presence only brought a chill that had nothing to do with the hospital's air conditioning.

His dark eyes swept over me with undisguised disgust, taking in my pale complexion and the IV line snaking from my arm. "Catherine."

Even my name sounded like an accusation on his lips.

"Alexander." I tried to keep my voice steady, tucking the diagnosis beneath my pillow. "I wasn't expecting you."

"I'm sure you weren't." He stepped into the room, his movements sharp and deliberate. From his briefcase, he withdrew a thick stack of papers and dropped them onto my bedside table with a sound that seemed to echo through my chest. "Divorce papers."

The words hit me like a physical blow, though I'd been expecting this moment for months. I stared at the official documents, their legal language a stark contrast to the vows we'd once exchanged.

"Sign them," he commanded, his voice devoid of any warmth. "I want this finished."

I reached for the papers with shaking hands, my vision blurring as I tried to focus on the text. "Alexander, please. Can we talk about—"

"There's nothing to discuss." His tone was ice-cold, final. "Vanessa told me everything."

My blood turned to ice water in my veins. "What did she tell you?"

A bitter laugh escaped his throat. "Don't play innocent with me, Catherine. She told me the truth about the company crisis last year. How it was her money that saved everything, not yours. How she sold her assets, liquidated her trust fund, while you sat back and did nothing."

The room spun around me. My grip tightened on the bed rails until my knuckles went white. "That's not... Alexander, that's not what happened."

"Stop lying!" His voice cracked like a whip, making me flinch. "I know you've been taking credit for her sacrifice. All this time, I thought you were the one who saved my family's legacy. But it was Vanessa. It was always Vanessa."

Each word was a dagger to my heart. I opened my mouth to defend myself, to tell him the truth about the sleepless nights I'd spent liquidating my inheritance, about the calls I'd made to every contact I had, about the pieces of my soul I'd sold to keep his company afloat. But what was the point? He'd already chosen to believe her version of events.

"She showed me the bank records,"