We could not have children. I do not know the reasons for this, and I assure you that we tried. It was simply how it went, and I got used to it. My wife and I live a full and satisfying life, just the same. The working hours are heavy, and the pay is not what I had dreamed of, but I do love my job.

I am a hospital courier. I do not do traditional transports—I transport human organs.

Being a courier I am often on call, requiring me to live in constant association with my smartphone waiting for that fateful ringtone. Sometimes, my phone sleeps with me, in between me and my wife, in that place that we hoped, when we were younger, our child would occupy. I do not know if there is anything morbid about this. But for me, that phone is pure life.

I’m not one of those tech or social media buffs. What I mean to say is this: every call, every ring of that phone resonates in my ears like the sound of a new life that simply wants to return and take what it deserves and what has been taken away so unjustly.

I cannot hesitate. The seconds I spend idle as those rings play out are seconds that I unjustly steal from someone else who might need a new vital boost.

I am already there in front of the operating room with my briefcase and my instruments.

Waiting in front of those blue doors, I always play a game in my mind. This is something which I have confided only to my wife and no one else.

I imagine the donor’s faces, their bodies, their lives, their experiences, their dreams, their aspirations, and what they were doing at that moment when everything stopped, frozen in a moment. I hope they were happy; I am sure they were good people. I do not consider myself a bad person, but in front of a gesture so great as this, I feel so small. However, it is a fleeting feeling. I think they have put such a great gift in my hands. I cannot disappoint them; I will be their vessel, their messenger.

Every night, I enter this circle of life. Here, one life does not close as another begins. A whole life is born and lived.

The experiences, aspirations, and dreams of those who lived will pass in this circle of life directly to another person, who will then be enriched by this act and the donor will live forever through the donee.

As I am riding my van across miles and miles of asphalt, I also think of families: those like me outside the blue doors, those at home, and those far away.

I think of the dreams, aspirations, fears, and hopes they had placed on their loved ones.

I lock them all with me in that briefcase, next to that great gift.

Letting something go of someone is always difficult.

In the cold of that briefcase, I hope that they reassure him, advise him, watch him, whisper to him the sweetest words, those things that could not be said before, the words that lull him in his journey, which I hope will be as short as possible, for that circle to close.

I have never written a letter to an unborn child. Since we are now in confidence, dear reader, I could start with this:


Dear son,


Your dad is tired, but he is happy and has the most beautiful job in the world.

Dad misses you. If you were here one night, he would take you with him in the side seat of his car and fantasize about the lives you have left behind and the lives you have yet to face. It would be our secret, shared only between me, you, and mom. We will close another circle of life that night, and we will live forever.