Chapter 11 — LUCAS

Lucas Jenkins had a kidney transplant fourteen months ago at Lurie in Chicago.

He takes tacrolimus twice a day and mycophenolate twice a day and he will take some version of both for the rest of his life. They work by holding his immune system down so it does not attack the kidney.

The trade for that is that ordinary things are not ordinary for him. A respiratory virus that puts a healthy five-year-old on the sofa for four days can put him in an ICU. His transplant team gave Sarah a printed sheet and the sheet has a line on it in bold that says: *avoid close contact with anyone who has a respiratory illness. Contact the transplant team the same day if exposure occurs.*

She had that sheet in a plastic sleeve in her handbag. Okoro photographed it.

I did not know any of this.

I want to be precise about the shape of not knowing, because there are two kinds and only one of them is innocent.

Nobody told me. That is true.

I also never asked. In three months and eleven days I never once asked that woman why her son was living in my back hallway, or what had happened to them, or why she flinched every time somebody coughed.

I had decided who she was in the first week. She was the sister who had turned up with a suitcase. She did not work. She drank wine on my sofa in the afternoon. She left cups.

I had a whole person filed under *cups*.