He’s a donor.

Sean is the one who makes this declaration, and Thomas Rémige jumps up from his chair, shaky and red-faced, his chest expanding with an influx of heat, as if his blood had sped up. He moves toward them, suddenly stops. Thank you. Marianne and Sean look down, the two of them rooted to the spot in the doorway of the office, speechless, their shoes soiling the floor with mud and black grass, barely able to comprehend what they have just done, just said—their son is a donor, they are giving him away, abandoning him, the thoughts and words echoing inside their eardrums. The telephone rings—it’s Révol. Thomas quickly tells him that it’s okay, three quickly spoken words in an encrypted language that Sean and Marianne do not understand, the acronyms and hurried speech intended to scramble meaning, and soon they leave Rémige’s office and are taken back to the interview room. Révol is there waiting for them. There are four of them in the room now, and the dialogue begins again immediately, with Marianne asking: What happens now?

*   *   *

It is 5:30 p.m. The window is open, as if the room had needed airing, a cool blankness replacing the stale, ruined dialogue that had filled the space before—the exhaled breaths, the spilled tears, the odor of sweat. Outside, a strip of lawn running perpendicular to the wall, an asphalt driveway, and, between the two, a hedge the height of a man. Thomas Rémige and Pierre Révol sit on the vermilion chairs while Marianne and Sean return to the apple-green couch, their anguish palpable—still their eyes are so wide open that their brows are creased, the area of white around the pupil enlarged, still their mouths are half open, ready to scream, their bodies tense with waiting, with fear. They are not cold, though, not yet.

We will make a comprehensive evaluation of the organs and we will transmit that evaluation to the doctor from the Biomedical Agency. Based on that information, he will be able to suggest one or several removals, after which we will organize the operation itself. Your son’s body will be returned to you tomorrow morning. As Révol speaks, he accompanies each phrase with a hand gesture, tracing in the air the steps of the next sequence. His words contain a great deal of information, even if they also suggest ellipses, things left unsaid, an opaque area that catalyzes their fear: the operation itself.

Suddenly Sean breaks his silence: What will be done to him exactly? He asks his question clearly, not in a strangled stammer, showing the courage of a soldier going over the top, exposing himself to machine-gun fire, while Marianne bites her coat sleeve. What will happen that night in the operating theater, the image they have of it—this carving up of Simon’s body, its dispersal—all of this horrifies them, but they want to know. Rémige takes a deep breath before answering: Incisions will be made in the body, the organs will be removed, the body will be closed up again. Simple verbs, atonal information, intended to counteract the emotional drama linked to the sacredness of the body, to the transgression suggested by its opening.

Are you going to perform the operation? Sean lifts his forehead—still the impression that he might charge from below, like a boxer. Simultaneously Révol and Rémige discern in this interrogation the visible tip of an iceberg of ancient terror: being declared dead, by doctors, when you are still alive. Let us not forget that Révol has a copy of Mary Higgins Clark’s thriller Moonlight Becomes You in his office, a book that involves a funerary practice once common in England: a ring is placed on the finger of the person to be buried, a ring attached to a cord that will ring a bell on the surface if the dead person wakes up underground. The definitions of the various criteria for death, developed in order to allow organ removals, contribute to this age-old fear. The nurse turns to Sean and, with his thumb and index finger, draws a solemn sign in the air: The doctors who declare a patient’s death never take part in the process of organ removal—never. In addition—his voice deepens, his tone grows firmer—there is always a dual procedure: two doctors observe the same protocol and two distinct signatures are required for the official report of the patient’s death. This demolishes the scenario of the criminal doctor who knowingly decrees his patient’s death in order to dispossess him afterward, destroys the rumors linking the medical mafia to international organ trafficking, invisible dispensaries located in the chaotic suburbs of Pristina, Dhaka, or Mumbai, and discreet clinics protected by security cameras, shaded by palm trees, installed in the upper-class areas of western cities. Gently, Rémige concludes: The surgeons who remove the organs will come from the hospitals where there are patients waiting for transplants.

*   *   *

A drift of silence, and then Marianne’s voice again, muffled as if she were speaking through a caul: But who will be with Simon then?—that “who” emphasized, naked. Me, Thomas replies, I will be there. I will be there for the entire operation. Marianne slowly moves her gaze toward his—the transparency of crushed glass—so you will tell them about the eyes, that we don’t want them to, you’ll tell them. Thomas nods, I’ll tell them, yes. He stands up, but Sean and Marianne continue to sit still, some force weighing down on their shoulders and holding them to the ground. This lasts for a while, and then Marianne says: So we don’t know who will get Simon’s heart, is that it? I mean, it’s anonymous, we’ll never know, right? Thomas goes along with these questioning declarations, these declaratory questions, but clarifies: You will be able to find out the sex and age of the people who will receive the organs, but you will never learn their identity; if you wish, however, you can be given news about the transplant. He goes on: The heart, if it is transplanted, will be given to a patient according to established medical criteria—and gender is irrelevant to compatibility. Bearing in mind Simon’s age, however, his organs should be offered first to children. Sean and Marianne listen, then confer in low voices. It is Sean who next speaks to the doctor: We would like to be with Simon again now.

Révol is needed elsewhere, so he leaves them while Thomas accompanies Marianne and Sean to the door of the room. They walk in silence, and then: I’m going to leave you with Simon now, I’ll be back later.

*   *   *

The room has darkened as evening falls, and the silence seems to have thickened. They approach the bed with its motionless folds. They probably imagined the announcement of Simon’s death would be followed by an alteration in his appearance, or at least that some aspect of the way he looks would have changed since the last time they saw him—skin color, texture, glow, temperature. But no, nothing has changed at all. Simon lies there, and the infinitesimal movements of his body still make the sheets rise and fall weakly; what they have been through finds no correspondence here, no echo or reflection, and this is a blow so violent that their thoughts are unhinged, they fidget and stutter, talk to Simon as if he could hear them, talk about him as if he couldn’t hear them, seem to struggle to remain within the realms of language while their phrases become dislocated, their words bang together, fragment, and short-circuit, while their caresses become collisions and then breaths, sounds and signs soon tapering off into a continual buzz inside their chests, an imperceptible vibration, as if they had now been expelled from all language and their acts now had no time or place in which to occur, and so, lost in the cracks in reality, they themselves cracked and broken and fragmented, Sean and Marianne find the strength to lift themselves onto the bed so that they can be as close as possible to their child’s body. Marianne ends up lying on the edge of the bed, her hair falling over the side, while Sean half-sits on the mattress, resting his head on Simon’s torso, his mouth at the exact location of the tattoo, and the parents close their eyes together and are silent, as if they too were sleeping. Night has fallen now, and they are in darkness.

*   *   *

Two floors above, Thomas Rémige is glad to be alone so he can concentrate, take stock, and call the Biomedical Agency: the next step is an in-depth evaluation of the organs. The woman who answers the phone is one of the founders of the organization; Thomas recognizes her deep, husky voice, visualizes her at the center of a classroom, the tables arranged in a U, the large plastic amber-colored chain attached to her glasses, which hide her face. Then, sitting at his computer, following a complex process that involves entering a series of identification numbers and encrypted passwords, he opens a software application in the database and creates a new document into which he carefully copies all the information regarding Simon Limbres’s body: this is the Cristal file, an archive and dialogue tool that is now connected with the Biomedical Agency, guaranteeing the traceability of the organ and the anonymity of the donor. He looks up: a bird is hopping about on the window ledge—the same bird as before, with a round, staring eye.