The dust motes danced in the slanted afternoon sun that cut through the blinds of Herman’s apartment. They swirled in the stagnant air, each particle a tiny, frantic planet in a miniature, unmoving universe. Ann watched them, tracing their paths with a weary eye, as she waited for the kettle to boil. The silence was a physical presence, thick and velvety, broken only by the low hum of Herman’s refrigerator and the distant, muffled thrum of city life from which this apartment felt hermetically sealed.
Herman sat at his small, Formica-topped kitchen table, scrolling through something on his phone. A faint, private smile played on his lips. It was a smile Ann had come to know well over the past six months, a smile that never appeared when they watched a movie, or debated the merits of different brands of peanut butter, or even when she’d surprised him with tickets to a concert for a band he’d loved since college. It was a smile reserved for his phone, for the emails and notifications that lit up his screen with a soft, hopeful glow.
“Tea?” Ann asked, her voice too loud in the quiet room.
“Hmm? Oh, yes. Please,” Herman said, not looking up. “Just… one sec. Almost done.”
Ann knew what ‘almost done’ meant. It meant he was finalising another appointment, another donation. She poured the boiling water over the tea bags, the steam momentarily fogging her glasses. She saw it all with a painful, crystalline clarity now. The specific days he’d be ‘out running errands’—always on a Tuesday or Thursday afternoon. The new, almost clinical neatness that had crept into his bathroom, devoid of the usual messy bottles of cologne and assorted potions. The way he’d started casually mentioning articles about fertility and the science of genetics, topics that had never once interested the man who could barely remember to water his ficus.
It had started with a joke. They’d been watching a sitcom where a character discovered his sperm donor father. Herman had laughed, a little too hard, and said, “Imagine that. A legacy in a cup.” Ann had chuckled along, but a seed of unease was planted. The clues, once she started looking, were everywhere. The clinic’s logo on a letter he’d hastily shoved in a drawer. The bank statements she’d accidentally seen while helping him look for a lost charger, showing regular, modest deposits from the ‘Northwood Fertility Centre’.
Her initial reaction had been one of bewildered support. “Herman, that’s… incredible. So generous,” she’d said, her voice faltering only slightly. He’d beamed, his whole face lighting up with a pride she hadn’t seen in years, not since he’d lost his job as a junior architect when the firm downsized.
“It’s about helping people, Ann,” he’d said, his voice earnest. “Creating families. It’s the most tangible good I can do.”
And she had believed him. For a while. But that was before the ‘tangible good’ became his entire identity. The job hunt had stalled, then ceased altogether. His world had shrunk to the four walls of this apartment and the sterile, white corridors of the Northwood clinic. His social outings were now just with her, and even those were becoming less frequent, often cancelled last minute for a ‘time-sensitive commitment’. He was a satellite in a decaying orbit, and the only thing that pulled him out of his gravitational slump was his monthly pilgrimage to give a part of himself away.
The tea steeped, turning the water a deep amber. Ann carried the mugs to the table and sat down opposite him. He finally put his phone face-down, the private smile fading into his usual, gentle placidity.
“So,” she began, stirring her tea though she took it black. “How’s the… helping people going?”
His eyes lit up immediately. “Really well. Got a notification today. Another successful implantation. That’s the third one this quarter.” He said ‘implantation’ with the practised ease of a medical professional. “They send these little updates, you know. Not identifying, of course. But… you get a sense of it. The hope.”
“Hope,” Ann repeated, the word feeling like a stone in her mouth. “Herman, we need to talk about this.”
“About what? The hope?” He chuckled, taking a sip of his tea.
“About this.” She gestured vaguely around the apartment, at the unopened mail piled on the counter, the faint layer of dust on the television screen, at him in his same worn sweatpants. “About you spending all your time here, only leaving to… to do this.”
His face tightened slightly. “I told you. It’s important. It’s helping people in a way I actually can. It’s not like sending out a hundred resumes into a void that just sends back automated rejections. This is… concrete. I produce something, and it helps. It creates life, Ann.”
“I know what it creates!” she said, her voice rising sharper than she intended. She saw him flinch and forced herself to lower it. “I know what it does. And I’m not saying it’s not a good thing. For some people, in some circumstances. But Herman, look at you. This isn’t a hobby. It’s an obsession. It’s the only thing you do.”
“That’s not true,” he said defensively. “I see you. I…”
“When? Once a week for a takeaway that you barely eat? You’re fading away, Herman. Your life is this room and that clinic. This isn’t about helping people anymore. This is about you needing to feel… necessary. And you’ve decided this is the only way you can be.”
The words hung in the air, cruel and blunt. She watched the colour drain from his face. This was the heart of it, the truth she had been circling for weeks. His philanthropy felt less like generosity and more like a frantic, desperate transaction: his genetic material in exchange for a fleeting hit of validation.
“How can you say that?” he whispered, his voice raw. “You, of all people. You’re my best friend. You’re supposed to understand.”
“I am your best friend!” Ann leaned forward, her hands flat on the cool table. “That’s why I have to say it. A stranger would just pat you on the back and tell you what a great guy you are. A best friend tells you when you’re using a noble act to hide from your life.”
“Hide from what?” he shot back, a flash of anger in his eyes. “From a world that doesn’t want what I have to offer? I spent two years trying, Ann. Two years of interviews and networking and ‘we’ll keep your resume on file’. This… this thing I do… they want it. They’re grateful for it. It has immediate, positive results. Can you say the same about your job?”
It was a low blow, and he knew it. She worked in customer support for a utilities company. Her days were a litany of complaints and bureaucratic dead ends. She took a steadying breath.
“This isn’t about my job. This is about you substituting one thing for a whole life. You’re not a philanthropist, Herman. You’re a… a serial donor. You’re addicted to the thank-you emails, to the idea of your DNA swimming out into the world fixing problems because you feel you can’t fix your own.”
He stood up abruptly, his chair scraping against the linoleum floor. “You don’t get it. You think it’s just… biology. It’s not. It’s legacy. It’s a part of me, out there, making a difference. Maybe I’ll never design a building that changes a skyline. But I might have helped create the person who will. That’s something. That’s more than nothing.”
“But you’re not nothing!” Ann cried, standing to meet him. “You’re here! You’re Herman! You’re funny, and you’re kind, and you draw these incredible, stupid little cartoons that make me laugh, and you remember my mum’s birthday every year when even I almost forget. That is your legacy. The you that is right here, in this room. Not some microscopic, hypothetical version of you scattered across the state!”
Tears were welling in his eyes now, and he turned away from her, walking to the window to look out at the brick wall of the adjacent building. The defiant anger seemed to drain out of him, leaving behind a profound weariness.
“What else is there, Ann?” he asked, his voice so quiet she barely heard it. “What else is there for me to do that matters? This is the one thing I’m good at. The one thing that’s wanted.”
Her heart broke for him then, shattered into a thousand pieces. This wasn’t about confrontation anymore. It was about rescue. She walked over and stood beside him, not touching him, just sharing the same view of the dull red bricks.
“Everything else,” she said softly. “The world is full of things that matter that don’t come with a confirmation email. Being a good friend matters. Showing up matters. Trying again matters. This…” she gestured back towards his phone, “…it’s easy for you. It requires nothing of you but a few hours a month. The hard thing, the truly brave and generous thing, would be to stop hiding behind it and re-engage with the messy, complicated, disappointing world that needs the whole Herman, not just this one biological part.”
She let the silence settle again, this time not stagnant, but charged with potential.
“I’m scared,” he admitted, a single tear tracing a path down his cheek. “I’m so scared of failing again. Out there.”
“I know,” she said. “So we’ll be scared together. But you have to stop this. Not because it’s wrong, but because it’s a crutch. And you don’t need it. You can walk on your own.”
He was silent for a long time, watching the dust motes in his own window. Finally, he took a deep, shuddering breath.
“What would I even do?”
Ann felt a surge of relief so powerful it made her knees weak. “First, you delete the clinic’s app off your phone.”
A small, choked laugh escaped him. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Then, tomorrow, you meet me for coffee. And we will go to the library and get you a new card, and you will take out books on something, anything, that isn’t architecture or genetics. And we will find a volunteer programme that needs a real, living person to show up and read to kids or plant trees or walk dogs. Something where you can see the person you’re helping look you in the eye and smile.”
“And if I’m no good at it?”
“Then we’ll try something else the next week,” she said, finally placing a hand on his arm. “The point isn’t to be perfect. The point is to be present.”
He turned to look at her, his eyes red-rimmed but clear. The obsessive fervour was gone, replaced by a familiar, tentative vulnerability she hadn’t seen in so long.
“It felt like I was building something,” he said quietly. “A family tree I’d never see.”
“You were,” Ann said. “But you were neglecting the garden right in front of you.”
He nodded slowly, absorbing her words. He pulled his phone from his pocket, his thumb hovering over the screen. He didn’t open it. Instead, he held down the power button and watched the screen go black.
“Okay,” he said, the word a whisper, a promise, a beginning. “Okay. Coffee tomorrow. What time?”
“Ten,” Ann said, squeezing his arm. “Don’t be late.”
She left him then, standing by the window, the setting sun casting long shadows across the dusty floor. She didn’t know if he would actually delete the app. She didn’t know if this would stick. Recovery was never a straight line. But as she walked down the stairs and out into the vibrant, noisy, imperfect street, she felt a sense of hope that was more tangible than any laboratory confirmation.
He wasn’t a hero for giving away parts of himself. He would be a hero for choosing to keep them, to nurture them, and to finally offer his whole, flawed, and wonderful self to the world. The legacy he so desperately sought wouldn’t be found in a anonymous child’s smile years from now, but perhaps in the smile of a lonely old man at an animal shelter tomorrow, when Herman handed him a dog’s leash. It would be quieter, and it wouldn’t come with a notification. But it would be real. And it would be his.
ns216.73.216.133da2
and then Add to home screen.