Inherit Tense

Bridget roamed the grocery shops looking to find past their use-by-date bargains, usually stuff in cans since she wasn't all that keen on risking her health to get 20% off and staphylococcus into the bargain. Her phone rang somewhere from within the bowels of her bag, she wasn't fast enough to dig it out from between her spare pair of glasses and her apartment keys. She felt the phone vibrate; maybe they had left a message.

Over breakfast and a crossword the next morning, while she tried to figure out 6 across (6) - 'National tree of the Philippines' – Bridget remembered that she had a phone message. On the second listen she put her spoon down and pushed the phone hard up against her ear. An Aunt Sissy had died? Bridget didn't have an Aunt Sissy, did she? Huh, Bridget thought, I might have to give this guy a call back. Exactly how this could involve her still didn't quite gel.

Getting time off from her archiving work ended up being a little more difficult than Bridget had imagined. Her boss, Julie, wanted the archivists to hit a target of 800 items for the month so that they would be eligible for the small museums award and a possible $2500 cash bonus. Bridget promised to come in on Saturday to make up for the lost time she'd spend at the executor's offices.

“I'll try to make this as succinct as I can Ms Khan.” Two staff of the executor's office fidgeted nearby while a third spoke directly to Bridget, reading from prepared documents. Susceptible to distraction, Bridget kept looking at the two fidgeters to see exactly what they were doing. One was a nail-biter and the other had the leg-jigs. She almost felt like getting up, walking over and slapping the one on the hand and the other on the knee; for her own sake, not theirs. “Your Aunt Cecilia spent a good deal of her later life in accommodation suited to one suffering from her ailments. In fact nearly thirty years.”

“Ah, that might explain why I didn't know about her. I'm only thirty-one.” Bridget offered.

“These things happen. We had a similar case to yours just recently. But a father.”

“The person didn't know they had a father?” Bridget's eyes goggled

“But how can that be?”

“Not that father, no.” the executor said “There were several paternity......'issues' - might be a good word.”

“Ok. Onward.”

“Yes, of course. Looking at the documents before me, Cecilia Blaupunkt, nee Singer, was quite a progressive thinker and she also had a number of valuable assets, some of which were bequeathed to her by her late husband, and some of which were her own. She has requested that these combined possessions, in-toto, are bequeathed to you, her niece, Bridget Ali Khan. On completion of this transfer of inheritance, once the appropriate government taxes and levies are deducted, the total value of these assets-”

“No, stop. Don't tell me.” Bridget put up a defiant hand. “If I don't know then I can't be susceptible to avarice.” She smiled at her own impromptu decision and liked the way it sat.

The executor looked up from the document and nodded briefly, unfazed. “As you wish Ms Khan. One of the other-”

Deeming that she had performed faultlessly, Bridget prepared to leave, she began to rise “I'll leave all my details with you. Is there anything I need to sign? Or anything else that needs to be arranged?”

“Er, from our point of view, that of the executor's office, no. The chair creaked a little as the executor changed position, leaned back a little.

Bridget slung her bag over her shoulder before it twigged that the executor had not attempted to store the documents, nor stood up. She smiled, just in case that was the trigger they were looking for. She stopped. “Then..... There is something else?”

“I think that I mentioned from my reading of the documents that your Aunt was a progressive thinker, Ms Khan.”

“Yes, you did.” Bridget wasn't sure where this was going. “How......does this affect me?”

“Cecilia Blaupunkt has stated that although you are not obliged, she thought it morally and ethically incumbent upon you to assist, by donation of bodily tissue, namely a kidney, to prevent the premature death of her longtime companion, Gertrude Stein.”

Silence. Bridget ran the sentence back and forth through her head to make sure that she had parsed it correctly. “Wait!” A kidney? I should give a kidney? Is that what she is demanding?”

“As stated Ms Khan, Cecilia Blaupunkt is not demanding anything of you. Should you see fit to assist Gertrude Stein in her time of dire need, your donation of a kidney would literally represent a gift of life.”

Bridget walked to a nearby window and gazed out at the pavement; people of all colors and shapes passing by, on their way to somewhere else “I.... Jesus Christ. I've never had to think about....” Outside a tall stooped man waited by a car, smoked the last of his cigarette, lifted his wristwatch to his face and looked around, his eyes briefly flicking over Bridget through the window before moving on. He stubbed the cigarette butt against the car tire, hopped inside the vehicle and pulled a U-turn.

“Are you sure you don't want to know the value of the estate, the inheritance, Ms Khan?” The Executor shuffled the papers as if to bring her mind back to the here and now. “Perhaps it would give you an idea of what..... kind of...... sacrifice you might be making.”

Bridget's previous request not to know the value of the inheritance hit home. Without any encroaching dilemmas it was the simplest thing for Bridget to take the moral high ground, convinced that she would, could, come to the same decision under any circumstances, believing herself impartial to the pull of any material incentives. Now there was a mixture of short-circuited morality, primal fear and an unknown payoff. Bridget envisioned a set of scales and she knew without a doubt that on one side of those scales was the value of the inheritance in dollars and cents; she could not deny that without knowing that value she was unable to establish the worth of her own kidney, its weight. But surely her kidney should have the same weight, value, under any circumstances if it meant saving another person's life? If Bridget had known Gertrude Stein would it alter the balance point of that set of scales? What if it were her own companion needing the kidney? Where would it put the tipping point then? What if Bridget were to need a kidney herself? She recognises that there is something else going on; that the complexities of the situation underline the vagaries of the human mind. How, on the surface we convince ourselves that we are logical beings not given to emotion or ulterior motives, while in the caverns of our subconscious there are totems and amulets at the altar of our temple, from which we divine meanings and beliefs that govern the way in which we live, love and die.

The executor broke in on the shuffling darkness of her mind “Many people have only one kidney and they live happy and healthy lives.”

“Yes. Yes, I know.” She scratched at her side. “It's just that, when it's my kidney....”