What Cannot Be Replaced

The pages nearly tear against my calloused fingertips, stripped thin from years of desperate turning. They hold fingerprints and dried tears from those before me, feverishly searching for answers that were never there. I know I am looking for something I will not find, and calling this a book is an insult.

It should be hauled by horse and buggy, given its size—pages bound together over time, not meaning. It’s not a book. It’s a trap.

Labeling policy as literary—as if tens of thousands of pages have ever brought anyone justice.

My eyes skim the pages, reading without retaining. I need to find something to stand up against them.

“The donor can be of the recipient’s choosing once currency has been exchanged and an agreement reached by both parties. The government is not held liable for harm to the donor.”

My eyes sting.

It is as if we all forgot that exchanging body parts was never normal. Organ donation used to be lengthy trials of legality, privacy, and consent, but now we live in a world where money can be exchanged for body parts like buying a stick of gum. Need a leg that works? Muscle, tendons, and bone are included. Find a willing donor, exchange in trade, and the hospital removes and installs. One party limps away while the other improves.

We didn’t find the fountain of youth; we created it.

The pages tore as my hand ripped through them, frustration building. Where was it? There had to be something in the historical record that showed how this used to work.

A man huffs behind me. A dozen people stand in line for this atrocity that the government calls a book. Everyone needs to look. Everyone has a story. In this impoverished town, we all want answers, but theirs are not mine. They scavenge pages to understand risk and liability. I searched for the record from before we exchanged body parts.

I am stuck in a time warp, looking for what I know they destroyed. This library no longer serves as a safe haven or a dignified place of record.

Dust fills my lungs as I slam the documentation closed. I find nothing. I walk through the demolished library toward home. No one is reading. People wait in line for food banks or seek shelter, too poor to heat their homes. No one reads anymore.

The walk home is filled with the usual: people dressed in threads, their clothes dissolving into the air; animals scurrying with only ribcages left, reminding us that we are all hungry and cold. It is always cold. Even the sun has abandoned us.

As I turn the key in the flimsy lock, I close my eyes and wish. I wish for health. I wish to walk in and find the world changed. The wish turns bitter before it finishes. The door unlocks, though the lock keeps nothing out—and I step into the same life I’ve been living.

The hum of the oxygen machine reminds me that nothing has changed.

She is still sick.

I hope she is sleeping as I tiptoe across the hardwood floor, but my sock snags in a hole, and I stumble.

“Where have you been?” a whisper asks.

“I’ve been at the library looking for some books for you to read.” I lie.

She is too ill to know that I am lying.

I open the fridge, searching for anything edible. There is little, but with hot water, I can make soup after cutting the mold from a bell pepper and a potato.

My mother is ill in ways medicine refuses to fix. Medicine could have fixed her, but within the last decade, the government chose not to heal people with therapy or treatment, but with replacement.

Government, policy, and legality were not discarded in a single day or in a single heroic act. They eroded over the years.

Organ donation had always been accepted once doctors proved one person’s organ could save another. Why wouldn’t we replicate that success?

We tried.

Scientists attempted to grow hearts and lungs in tanks. They failed. Human body parts need humans.

So, they gave them humans.

Body farming began. Living people were born solely for the sake of their insides—plugged in, grown, harvested. When the organs were removed, the bodies were no longer needed. It worked briefly. Then the government and insurance companies wanted more.

Why stop at organs?

They tried to farm legs and arms, but bodies raised in tanks lacked something essential: conditioning.

Now, ten years later, what used to be called the black market operates openly. With enough money or value, you can purchase a conditioned leg, heart, or immune system from someone of similar size and build.

It is legal.

My mother’s immune system tries to kill her. She lost the ability to walk years ago. I tried to buy her new legs, but the price was too high. Then she lost the ability to eat. Stomach transplants were just as unreachable. Now I search every market for a stem cell transplant to replace her immune system with one that works, but the price can never be met.

Replacement is not for the poor.

I stir the soup as the spoon clinks against the pot. I wince. Dinner will only last tonight, and tomorrow I must rethink what to do.

Mother does not eat. I wait until she is asleep and the soup is cold to consume her portion, and I scavenge through the backpack filled with books and papers I’ve collected throughout the year. Old documents showcase the medical system from years past. Old government policy about consent, illegal organ donation, and the papers have holes in them as my eyes burned through them searching for answers with invisible ink.

How can we have the means to heal my mother, but only by taking from someone else? How has it turned into profit? How did we get here?

At the bottom of the backpack, I find my favorite book, the one I have not sold. I slide next to Mother on the sofa and begin to read, keeping my voice low, as if the words themselves might buy us time.

I glance at the oxygen machine and know there are only days left for her to breathe.