Boaz’s Kidney Infection and Alex’s Secret Offer to Donate a Kidney

Two months before his divorce from Ilana, Alexander Gideon secretly explored donating one of his kidneys to her eight-year-old son, Boaz, then hospitalized with a kidney infection. Boaz recovered, so the donation never occurred; the episode became known later through Ilana’s account and stands in sharp contrast to Alexander’s subsequent rejection of the family.

Circumstances and Secret Consultation

Boaz was taken to Shaarei Zedek Hospital with a kidney infection, and complications made the possibility of a transplant a concern. Without Ilana’s knowledge, Alexander consulted Dr. Blumenthal about whether an adult could donate a kidney to an eight-year-old child. He intended to offer one of his own, while insisting that neither Ilana nor Boaz should ever learn of the plan.

The secrecy was part of the offer’s meaning: Alexander wanted the possible donation to remain unknown to its intended beneficiaries. Ilana learned about it only after becoming friends with Dr. Adorno, Dr. Blumenthal’s assistant. The disclosure carried a further irony, since Alexander was planning to sue Dr. Adorno over Boaz’s treatment.

Recovery and Estrangement

Boaz got better, and Alexander did not donate a kidney. Ilana nevertheless believed that he had seriously intended to do so. Her account sets this uncompleted offer beside what followed: Alexander made no donation, then cast Ilana and Boaz out of his house and withdrew his name and presence from their lives. The secret consultation does not undo that rejection, but it prevents the estrangement from being read as the whole measure of his conduct toward Boaz.

Ilana’s disclosure also revises Alexander’s image through a specific contradiction. His later treatment of the family was harsh, yet the earlier plan was a serious effort to protect a sick child, undertaken without seeking recognition or gratitude. The act remained unrealized, but its intention mattered to Ilana as evidence that his attachment had not been entirely absent.

Later Illness and Reversal

Years later, Alexander himself developed kidney cancer. He reported that he had undergone two operations and that the cancer had spread through his abdomen; doctors in New York did not recommend another operation. He returned to Israel and found Ilana at his childhood home, where she chose to care for him. As his condition worsened, she helped him through daily routines and attended to him at night when he woke in distress.

This later dependence gives the earlier offer an added, but distinct, resonance. Alexander’s secret plan had imagined his body as a possible source of life for Boaz; in his final illness, he instead relied on Ilana’s sustained care. The novel does not present the later cancer as a consequence of the childhood infection or as fulfillment of the proposed donation. Rather, the two episodes frame a reversal in the family’s pattern of care: an unrealized offer from a father to a child is followed, much later, by the former wife’s practical care for the dying man.