Let me get this completely straight. This man, who looked at my six-month pregnant belly and decided that paying for diapers and waking up at 3:00 AM was simply too much to ask of him. This man, who allowed me to go through the most vulnerable, terrifying, and painful medical event of my life—childbirth—entirely alone. This man, who hadn’t contributed a single dollar or a single minute of his life to raising the brilliant human being we created.

This man boldly returned twelve years later, not to ask for forgiveness, but to demand a major organ.

He didn’t want the massive responsibility of fatherhood, but he felt entirely entitled to a massive kidney donation from the woman he abandoned. The audacity was so profound it practically had its own gravitational pull.

“Are you out of your mind?” I finally asked, my voice barely above a whisper, laced with a mix of amusement and total disgust.

“Please,” he whined, his hands gripping the handle of the screen door. “I’m dying. You have to help me. I’m the father of your child! You owe it to him to save his father!”

I let out a laugh that was sharper than broken glass.

“You are not his father,” I said, my voice hardening into steel. “You are a sperm donor who breached contract. You haven’t earned the title of father for a single second of that boy’s life. Do you even know his name?”

He blinked, suddenly deer-in-the-headlights panicked. He opened his mouth. Closed it. He didn’t know. He had never even bothered to look up the birth certificate.

“Exactly,” I sneered. “You don’t even know his name. You don’t know that he plays the piano, or that he’s allergic to strawberries, or that he wants to be an aerospace engineer. You know absolutely nothing about the magnificent life I built without your terrible help. And you think you can show up here and ask me to undergo major surgery? To risk my own life and health—the health of the only parent my son actually has—to save yours?”

“I made a mistake!” he pleaded, tears actually welling up in his eyes.