Daniel stopped breathing. The air seemed to freeze in his throat. The cemetery, the headstones, the morning sunlight, everything faded into a blinding, silent blur. “What?” Daniel whispered, the word barely audible. “The organ donation program is strict about anonymity,” Noah explained, tears streaming down his cheeks. “They don’t give names.”
“All they told me was that my donor was a twenty-one-year-old woman who died in a motor vehicle accident in Oakridge County. A woman whose father had consented to organ donation in the middle of his worst nightmare.” Noah reached into his jacket pocket with a trembling hand and pulled out a small, worn piece of paper, protected inside a clear plastic sleeve.