After losing my 16-year-old son, I gave his entire $80,000 college fund to my coworker Sarah so her 14-year-old son Daniel could get a life-saving transplant, a choice my husband called a betrayal before he left me and I moved away, cutting all ties.

I walked away from my marriage and old life carrying only the knowledge that I had tried to help a boy survive where my son could not. For years, I heard nothing from Sarah or Daniel and lived with both the memory of my son and the rupture my decision had caused, without knowing how things had turned out.

Six years later, as I was dying of cancer in a hospice room, Daniel walked in with tears in his eyes and thanked me for saving his life. He told me that his mother had spent years trying to find me and repay the money, but she had passed away the previous year after making him promise to track me down.

Honoring that promise, he handed me an envelope containing $80,000, the exact amount I had once given up. Then he showed me a photo of himself in a white coat and explained that he was in his second year of medical school, specializing in cardiology. He was determined to save children like himself because someone had once believed his life was worth saving.