14 DAY TRIAL // People can live with a broken heart, it has been proven countless times, but there is little to do when you’re missing a kidney that happens to be precisely in the body of the person who also broke your heart. The only way out of this situation, as a Long Island vascular surgeon, Dr. Richard Batista, has just showed, is to sue and ask for the kidney back.
Batista and his soon to be ex-wife met when they were both young and working at the same clinic. They wedded in 1990 and, in 2001, in an attempt to save Dawnelle’s life and their quickly sinking marriage, Richard gave his wife, who had been battling kidney failure for years, his healthy kidney. Now, he’s asking for that back. Or $1.5 million, whichever she finds more convenient.
Of course, Batista is not actually asking for his wife to have the surgery again and return to him the kidney, because that is illegal. What he is trying to do, in fact, is to make a point. After the surgery, Dawnelle took up classes for her master’s degree and karate. While training for the latter, she suffered an accident that had her in therapy, which is also where, Batista claims, she met her lover. “There’s no deeper pain you can ever express than to be betrayed by the person you devoted your life to. I saved her life. But the pain is unbearable.” the doctor told reporters the other day.
As if the cheating was not enough, Dawnelle also filed for divorce and then, to add fuel to the already burning fire, prevented Batista from seeing his three children while the divorce dragged on. The infuriated parent and cheated husband thus believes he is more than justified to be asking some kind of retribution for offering her the one thing that made all this possible, his kidney.
“I was the first and only one to step to the plate,” Batista recalls of the moment he discovered he was a perfect match for the transplant, a 1-in-700,000 chance. “My first priority was to save her life. The second bonus was to turn our marriage around.” he openly admits. Since none worked out, it’s time he asked for that which made the cheating and the lying possible back. “Of course he wouldn't really ask for that [the kidney] but the value of it.” his legal representative assured all concerned media outlets.