I picked up an old Sci-Fi book at the library a few days ago.
One of the characters in the book is dying with a “terminal illness.”
Her husband is standing outside the door of the hospital room and hears her conversing with someone inside.
That “someone” is offering her the opportunity to get well, be totally healed. The catch is, someone must die in her place. She is promised it will not be someone she knows.
She refuses, and her husband barges in to find ~gasp~ no one there. Since its after hours he hides in the closet when a nurse comes in to check her. As he watches through a crack in the door, he mumbles something like, “Whoever you are, she would not take your bargain, but I WILL.”
A disembodied voice says, “So be it.”
That’s as far as I read before falling to sleep.
But this morning when I woke its on my mind. Would I be able to do the same thing? If say, my child or husband lay dying of a painful disease, could I sacrifice another life for theirs?
Would you?