Dillon looked like he was about ready to fall off his chair. His skin had paled, and his eyes looked glassy. His chest started to rise and fall rapidly, and Dr. Stewart swiftly moved to his side.

“Put your head between your legs and try to take slow, deep breaths.” He pushed on his back until Dillon had done as he’d instructed. Then he lifted Dillon’s arm and pressed his fingers against the inside of his wrist. After a little while, he let go and stepped away. “Your pulse is good. Your breathing sounds better. Let’s get you up and make sure you’re okay.”

“I need a minute. Please.” The words were practically torn from his throat, and I wanted to weep for the sorrow I heard in his tone. Dr. Stewart moved near the door, and we waited in silence for Dillon to absorb the shock of what he’d just learned. It took a good five to ten minutes before Dillon sat up and assured us he was okay.

“You didn’t know about the transplant?” Dr. Stewart asked the question I already knew the answer to.

“No,” Dillon and I answered in unison.

“Dillon always thought his brother died during the car accident they were in,” I explained. “His parents hid the truth from him, and he didn’t find out until almost a week ago when we discovered that Declan was my donor.”

“Only there must have been a hell of a lot more to the story than they admitted to when I talked to them this morning,” Dillon added. “Because they sure as shit didn’t mention anything about me getting Declan’s heart.”

“Since you and your twin were genetically identical, it would have meant that you didn't have to take immunosuppression drugs because your body would accept the new organ as your own.” Dr. Stewart tapped on the tablet’s screen. “But this is highly unusual. I’m surprised your medical team was willing to go along with the deception.”

“Yeah, me too,” Dillon snorted. “It had to have been the crackpot psychiatrist who convinced them it would be better for me not to know that Declan survived the crash and lasted for another month. They must have also told my parents that I couldn’t handle knowing that his heart pumps in my chest.”

“They’d have needed to be extremely convincing to get your doctors on board with that plan.”

“Maybe it was because of his age?” I suggested. “He was only seventeen, so he was still a minor at the time.”

“That’s possible. It isn’t unusual for families to be concerned that knowledge of a life-threatening diagnosis will harm the patient’s psychological and physiological well-being. I could see how the same might apply in this case.”

Dillon shot to his feet and paced the floor. “And that’d be enough for the doctors to lie to me about what kind of surgery I had?”

Dr. Stewart nodded. “Physicians sometimes withhold medical information from a patient if they believe the information would harm the patient’s overall health. We refer to it as ‘therapeutic privilege.’ Of course, there are ethical dilemmas raised by nondisclosure requests when made by a parent of a minor patient. It’s difficult for medical personnel to reconcile their obligation to the patient with the parents’ authority to make decisions on behalf of child.”

“It doesn’t matter what you call it, Doc. Or how hard it was for the doctors to agree with my parents’ request.” Dillon’s fists were clenched so hard, his knuckles looked white. “No amount of fancy words are going to make it easier for me to accept.”

“And I’m truly sorry for that, Dillon. Had I known that you weren’t aware of your full medical history, I would have delivered the news in a gentler manner.” Dr. Stewart swiped at the tablet’s screen again. “We didn’t get far enough into your medical history review to find the notes about the decision to withhold the information to you. They’ve only had the chance to pass along the diagnosis codes so far, and I noticed the heart transplant on the list.”

“It’s not your fault, Doc. There’s no way you could’ve made this any easier for me. Nobody could’ve.”

“I’m still sorry all the same.” Dr. Stewart clapped him on the back before walking towards the door. “I’ll give you two some alone time. I’m sure you have a lot to talk about, and Faith will be stuck here at least until tomorrow morning. Privacy is hard to come by around here, so you need to make the most of it when you can.”

“C’mere.” I scooted over and patted the mattress. When he sat down, I tugged on his arm until he laid down next to me.

“I can’t believe it.” He pressed his hand against his chest. “Declan didn’t just save your life. He saved mine too.”

“He did.” I didn’t know what else to say. How to help him through this. So I stroked my fingers through his hair for about ten minutes until he was ready to talk again.

“They lied to me about when he died. How he died. My surgery. I don’t know what to believe anymore. What’s true and what’s a lie.” He banged his fist on the other side of the mattress several times, his chest heaving.

I leaned my head against his shoulder. “Believe in me.”

“I do.” He shook his head. “I don’t deserve to after the shit I pulled, but you’re the only thing I can hold onto right about now. The only thing in my life that’s real. That I can trust.”

“Don’t beat yourself up too much. You already promised me it would never happen again, and you’ve taken enough hits lately.” Having seen firsthand how badly the bomb Dr. Stewart had just dropped on Dillon had impacted him, my forgiveness was quickly moving towards forgetting.

If I was being completely honest with myself, part of it might have been because I didn’t worry about him looking at me differently anymore. I wasn’t the only one of us walking around with one of Declan’s organs in them. Dillon was too. In a weird way, I found that a little comforting since he’d have to hate himself if he was going to hate me. And vice versa. If he got to the point where this made him feel even more guilty about his twin’s death than he already did, I could remind him that he wasn’t the only one who’d benefited from Declan dying. We were both alive because of it, so we were in this together even more than we had been before.

“Thanks, baby.” He kissed me on the top of my head, and I snuggled into his side.

He fell quiet again, and his body was tense. I knew he was obsessing over the situation, and I wished I could make him forget. If even just for a little bit. But we were in the hospital, so our options were limited. “You want to zone out and watch some TV?”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I need to do something to get my mind off all of this shit.”

I grabbed the remote off the bedside table and turned on the TV. Clicking through the channels, I found a football game and left it there. Even though we were in a hospital bed, I was more comfortable than I’d been in days. It didn’t matter how narrow the mattress was, that the sheets weren’t super soft like the ones at home, or that the pillows were too firm. I was in Dillon’s arms, and it was the only thing that mattered to me.

I drifted in and out of sleep through almost three full quarters of the game before I heard a light tap on the door. Then a familiar voice called out, “Faith?”

“Sarah!” I sat up quickly, and Dillon’s arm went around my shoulders.

“Careful, baby.”

“But Sarah’s here!” I hadn’t seen her in too long. I’d aged out of the system when I turned twenty-one, and without our scheduled meetings it’d become more difficult to find the time to see each other. With recent budget cuts, Sarah’s caseload was heavier than ever. And I’d been trying to juggle a tough school schedule leading up to graduation, helping foster kids both at local high schools and on campus, and having a boyfriend for the first time in my life.

“I see that, but they’re keeping you overnight for a reason. No overdoing it.”

I flopped back against the pillows, shaking my head and rolling my eyes.

“Don’t give him a hard time on my account.” Sarah approached the bed, grinning down at us. “His protective attitude already earned him brownie points with me.”

“He has a name,” Dillon chuckled as he got off the bed and reached out to shake Sarah’s hand. “I’m Dillon, and you must be the Sarah I’ve heard so much about.”

Sarah’s smile widened. “Indeed I am. Hopefully she only said good things because that’s all I’ve heard about you so far.”

“Better than good.” Dillon reached down for the remote and turned off the television.

“Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt your game. Won’t it bother you to not know how it turns out?”

“That’s okay. I already know how it ends since it’s a replay of a game I’ve seen before.”

I twisted around to gape up at Dillon. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it was the perfect thing to help me zone out.”

“Help you zone out?” Sarah echoed.

I glanced up at Dillon, and widened my eyes. The hardest parts of the story weren’t mine to share. They were Dillon’s. He nodded in answer to my unvoiced question, and I gestured towards the chair that was pushed against the wall. “You’re going to want to sit down for this.”

Sarah started to drag it closer to the bed, and Dillon rounded the bed to help her. She turned towards me and gave me the thumbs-up sign as she mouthed, “Nice.”

Her mood quickly turned serious when I shared with her what Dillon and I had discovered. “Whoa. That’s a heck of a lot to deal with. I can see why you’d feel the need to zone out for a little while.”

“Yeah,” I sighed, squeezing Dillon’s hand. He’d taken the chair on the other side of my bed. “It’s been a rough week.”

“It must’ve been more than rough for you to end up here. You’re stronger than this, Faith. You can’t let your health slide, not even when things go wrong in your life.”

I hated seeing the disappointment in Sarah’s eyes, but I didn’t have much that I could say in my defense. No matter how badly I’d spiraled when Dillon had left, I should’ve known better. I should’ve taken better care of myself than I had.

“I know.” And if I hadn’t, I certainly would’ve figured it out by now with all the lectures I’d been getting from everyone today.

“And if she ever forgets, I’ll be there to remind her. To take care of her,” Dillon promised.

Sarah’s focus shifted to him. “I love that Faith gets that from you because she more than deserves all the sweet she can get in her life. But you can’t properly take care of her if you don’t figure your own stuff out first. It’s like the pre-flight safety speech when you’re on an airplane. They always tell you that you need to secure your oxygen mask first before helping anyone else.”

“That’s easier said than done,” Dillon sighed. “I’m not sure how I’m supposed to figure my stuff out. It was hard enough when it was just that my parents had lied to me about when Declan had died, but the heart transplant takes it to a whole other level.”

“With everything you’ve learned, I can see how you’d feel betrayed by your parents. Especially with the way you found out.” Sarah leaned forward, her eyes filled with sympathy. “But if there’s anything I’ve learned working for social services, it’s that parents are people too. They aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad people, or even bad parents.”

“Elaine and Lloyd are good people. Really, really good.” I peered up at Dillon. “You know that, right?”

“They’re the best.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Maybe if they weren’t, all of this would be easier to accept.”

“From everything you’ve told me, it sounds like your parents found themselves in a situation where there weren’t any good choices,” Sarah suggested.

“Yeah, maybe,” he sighed.

“There’s only one way to find out.” He was going to have to talk to them and find out what really happened.