Spare Parts

My sister, in a moment of genuine tenderness that caught me completely off guard, told me she had asked her employer if I would qualify for her health insurance since I am currently unemployed. I was slightly alarmed by the gesture, but also very touched.

Then she clarified.

Apparently, to qualify, I would need to be disabled.

I thanked her, and we moved on. Changed the subject. Ate snacks. Prepped for dinner.

A few hours later, we found ourselves discussing which body parts are optional. And somehow, this still did not rank as the strangest dinner conversation we have had. What does the appendix actually do, if no one seems to miss it? The gallbladder handles bile, but apparently that is negotiable since it can be removed without much ceremony. Tonsils are expendable. I always wanted that procedure as a kid because the post-op ice cream diet felt like a solid trade-off. You can lose a spleen and still carry on. One lung will technically get the job done. And, as it turns out, you don’t actually need both kidneys to live a perfectly healthy life.

This is the point in the conversation where my sister, who earlier had been so caring and earnest, looked me dead in the eye and said, “If you needed a kidney, Nicole, I wouldn’t give you one. My quality of life would be seriously impacted.”

I wasn’t offended. That’s our dynamic.

“Well, bingo,” I said. “No kidneys would definitely qualify me as disabled under your excellent insurance. So, good news. I’d be covered! Plus, I wouldn’t live very long. Win-win for everyone.”

We laughed. Because what else can you do?

Today, I should be writing solely about the mass shootings at Brown University and at Bondi Beach in Australia. And yet, it is impossible not to also think about grocery bills climbing while wages stagnate. About housing that feels permanently out of reach. About insurance premiums rising while coverage shrinks. About student debt that never disappears. About democracy under profound strain.

It feels like we are living in a constant state of emergency. We are forced to triage our attention and our empathy, deciding what deserves our outrage and what we simply do not have the emotional bandwidth to process anymore. Instability and uncertainty recede into the background, merging into a steady, numbing hum that exhaustingly blurs together.

And yet, I keep coming back to the conversation about my kidneys. Because it reveals something fundamental about where we are. We are being asked to adapt endlessly to volatility, to live inside chaos. A nation stretched thin. Unwell.

The real question is: How long can our country survive like this?