The Fortunate

“Explain it again,” she said, looking up at me with those pale green eyes unique to our family. “Please.”

“The physician and the surgeon will make me comfortable first.”

“How will they do that?”

I smiled. “They have special physic. After this, they will take me into the operating theater where they will take out my bad liver and replace it with a good one.”

“Where do they get the good one?”

“From one of the Unfortunate.”

“Don’t they need their livers?”

“Well, yes. But the money the family receives helps everyone.”

“And then they’ll be part of you forever!”

Friday Fictioneers

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    • J Hardy Carroll

      I was reading an Elmore Leonard novel about a couple who steals kidneys from people and then sells them back. I also watched John Oliver playing a recording of a man telling a woman to sell plasma to pay her debts. This is a combination, I guess! Thanks for stopping by.

  1. Jelli

    Oh, that sent shivers up my spine at the very thought of organ harvesting as a trade. Ugh! Gulp! Very, very disturbing… and I fear in some places maybe even true.

  2. 4963andypop

    Echoing the comments above. Disturbing. Interesting rationalization. Sounds like a very stratified society, with the fortunate and the unfortunate divided into some kind of castes. The horrors of a society where life has varying degrees of worth.

  3. Dale

    Really well done, in such a matter of fact voice.
    Ironic that I’m bingeing on “Justified” and one of the characters had his kidneys cut out to be sold… He was most unfortunate.

  4. Abhijit Ray

    Unfortunate liver donor can be someone dying of other ailment and liver matches. Since there is only one liver, I doubt anyone, no matter how unfortunate, will donate a the whole liver. May be a part of it. Liver has the ability to regenerate.

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