When I took on Anna's story, I thought I was working on a hard-hitting journalistic piece about the experience of a patient needing an organ transplant in Israel. But in the end, her tale turned out to be a much sadder and emotional story of friendship in a time of desperate need.

It all began when a Facebook post caught my eye:

“Friends in or around Tel Hashomer. I have a good friend in need of a transplant. Because she is an Olah with no family in the country, they are monitoring her visitor numbers to decide if she is eligible. She is a single mom of two wonderful boys. If you have an extra 30 minutes, please, stop by Tel Hashomer, Pnimit Vav and help save my friend Anna's life. This is a personal message. Not a robot, not a copy paste, and she really is my friend. Msg me if you want more details.”

I wasn’t the only one who sat up and took notice; several people forwarded me the message, which deeply disturbed many members of the English-speaking immigrant community. Could one’s number of visitors in the hospital really be used as criteria to determine whether one’s life is worth saving? Are those of us who don’t have a large tribe of relatives to gather at our bedside really at a disadvantage when it comes to our place on a list for organ donation? Wouldn’t this essentially be discrimination against new immigrants?

Any of us immigrants to Israel could be Anna.

There are many wonderful things about moving to Israel, but by far, the worst part is the distance created between an immigrant and their loved ones, a distance that can only be bridged by horrifically expensive plane tickets and hard-to-acquire vacation days from work.

In this lonely vacuum, immigrants reach out to each other and form connections to fill the void, substituting for the families they left behind. This void is particularly large when one does not have Israeli relatives by birth or by marriage. These ersatz “families” of friends celebrate holidays together, share milestones, and act as substitute grandparents, aunts and uncles at life cycle events.

It’s easy to find company when times are good. But what about when things go terribly badly, as they have for Anna? I decided to visit Anna, 41, at Tel HaShomer hospital, and she agreed to see me. When I arrived, with great pain and difficulty, she shuffled from her hospital bed into a wheelchair. I pushed her to the hospital atrium, where she sipped orange juice and told me her story. Her skin was greyish-yellow, the whites of her eyes were yellow as well, and her bandaged feet were swollen. She was clearly exhausted – the pain medication made it difficult for her to focus.

She moved to Israel 20 years ago as a college student. It was a classic America-to-Israel immigration story. “I went to Ulpan Etzion in Jerusalem like all good Anglos,” she told me with a wry, tired smile. She had studied humanities, but like many native English speakers here, soon discovered that the best way to make a living was by working as a marketing and technical writer.

Life in Israel was never easy for her. After she married her Israeli husband, she had difficulties getting pregnant, and went through fertility treatments. Finally, she gave birth to twin boys, whom she adores. However, both of her sons have special needs. The family moved several times and faced continued financial distress. Eventually, her marriage went south. After a protracted struggle, she divorced her husband, and began a new chapter of her life as a single mother in Tel Aviv. She worked several jobs in the changing economy, at times serving as a freelancer while hunting for work, as she struggled to care for her boys and make ends meet.

Her real problems began last year when her liver, which she had been told was ‘fatty,’ began to fail. The condition had been exacerbated during a four-month period when she took the anti-depressant Zoloft, to which she had a bad reaction. She was told that she had developed “chemically induced hepatitis.”

That’s when she began dealing with the ‘medical bureaucracy’ as she fought to receive disability benefits, which she said was a major challenge. “Israelis don’t know how to work this system. I went to social workers, but was getting nowhere,” she said.

Then last month, the situation suddenly became grave. Her liver function dropped to a level where her kidneys shut down, and she was put in the hospital for dialysis. When she was hospitalized, her husband, who had become ultra-Orthodox and remarried since their split, agreed to take their sons during her hospitalization on one condition: that she sign away custody and grant it to him. She did so without hesitation. “I have always said that the second I can’t take care of them anymore, I will be willing to give up custody,” she said.

While in the hospital, her former husband refused to bring them to visit her or to allow her to speak to them on the telephone.

“I don’t have the strength to fight for access to them in court,” she told me. While in the hospital, she was told that she needed a liver transplant to save her life.

That was when, she said, a social worker told her that support for the lengthy recovery period after a transplant would be a factor in the hospital's recommendation to the national transplant center. “They told me, we want you to know that if you don’t have a strong network of people to help you, it will be hard for us to give you a liver," she said. "I was basically being told that if I don’t have enough people around me, I die. That blew my mind.”

Before I could find out if this was true, came sad and sudden news. Anna had been told that she was not eligible for a liver transplant on medical grounds – her kidneys were too damaged to make giving her a new liver worthwhile.

Shockingly, she was given this information as she was released from the hospital – the day after I came to visit her. When I spoke to her, she told me they had discussed release, but she hadn’t been given a straight explanation about her prognosis: "Nobody came out and told me whether I was being sent home to die or going home to wait for a new liver."

In the darkness and gloom of this achingly sad story, the only spark of light comes from Anna’s friends. If it weren’t for the caring and devotion of two former co-workers, it seems she would be utterly alone. One of them, Miriam Lottner, who posted the Facebook message that caught my eye, opened an online account for her and has raised money to help her get by, through a project she runs called “Portraits for Charity.” Lottner takes photographs of special events and makes portraits as part of the project, and donates all of the money she is paid to charity. Currently, all of the money she makes goes to Anna.

Anna believes she shouldn’t have to rely on charity – she should be receiving government disability. “I’ve worked since the day I landed in Israel, I never went on welfare, I’ve never tried to suck anything out of the system ... I suppose assistance is given to the people who yell and scream and knock over tables – but I never did it before and I’m not going to start now."

When Anna had nowhere to go upon being release from the hospital – she was far too ill to be alone in her apartment – she was taken in by her friend Tanya Rosing. Tanya had come to the hospital every day to see Anna from the day she was admitted, and took her friend into her home when she was released and had nowhere to go. The day after her release, Tanya told me that Anna was "sitting on my porch looking at the sea.”

A few days later, Anna would be back in the hospital – her condition was too grave for her to go without round-the-clock care, and Tanya, for all her devotion, lives alone and has a full-time job.

But for the moment, that view – and the company of her friend – was enough.