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year, his chances improve,” Dr. Averitt recited, as if they were talking about the warranty on a dishwasher, not a tiny little boy.

“Even with the transplant… he could still… not make it?” Julian

asked, choking on the words.

“Yes,” Dr. Averitt said quietly. “If the heart rejects, he contracts an

infection, or his kidneys fail post-op, we could lose him. That’s why each day, each month, and each year he survives after the transplant, his chances improve.”

“Oh my God,” Julian whispered, finally succumbing to the tears. He

wished he’d asked his parents to come back for the meeting, but he hadn’t wanted to worry them. Liam and Clay were a consolation, but right then

he needed flesh and blood people. When Dr. Martinez said they needed to

have a conference about Robbie’s condition, he had no idea the diagnosis would be so horrific.

“Take a day or two and talk about the option of a transplant with

your family. But with your permission, we’d like to install the shunt

tomorrow morning,” Dr. Averitt said quietly. The doctor closed a

notebook with a six-building linear representation of the Chicago skyline on the cover.

“Why wouldn’t I choose to save his life?” Julian looked between the

doctors and then finally at Liam, feeling confused. If a chance existed to save Robbie’s life, even a chance smaller than 70 percent, what parent

wouldn’t take it? Seven out of ten, thirty-five out of fifty, seventy out of a hundred… they weren’t great odds, but better than half, or less.

“Transplants are traumatic, both for the recipient and for the family.

In order to qualify, you’re going to have to meet with the transplant team and undergo psychological and financial examinations. You need to have

a plan in place for someone to care for him if you were to become unable.

In order for a candidate to be considered, they must prove they are capable and willing to commit to all of the follow-up care, because even in the first five years, it can run into a million dollars in medical costs,” Dr. Dane said, speaking up for the first time. “I am the transplant coordinator for St.

Mary’s, and it’s my job to prepare you for the reality of what you’re

facing. He will need to be on medications for the rest of his life. Because of the recovery from the transplant, he will be developmentally behind

kids his age for several years. He will need constant medical care for the first year while we make sure the heart is functioning correctly. It’s a huge undertaking for a family, much less a single father.”

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“And if I were a single mother?” Julian asked, trying to keep the

anger from his voice.

“My concerns would still be the same,” Dr. Dane answered evenly.

“My job includes matching the best recipients with the best donors in

order to get the best possible success rates. A failed transplant is a wasted heart, Mr. Holmes. That is my only concern here.”

Julian nodded. He desperately wanted to get out of this room with its

even chairs and odd cheap prints hanging on the coordinating walls. The

air suddenly felt thick and stale. The overwhelming news of his son’s

condition threatened to suffocate him. Helpless and almost hopeless, he

pushed his chair back in order to stand.

“Julian, do we have your permission to install the shunt?” Dr.

Martinez asked gently. “I have the papers here for you to sign, and then I suggest you go and talk to your family. We’ll schedule the procedure for early tomorrow morning. You should stay home and rest tonight, because

tomorrow will be a long day.”

He took the paper from the doctor, signed his name at the bottom

without reading it, and then ran from the room. He noticed Liam and Clay didn’t follow. The hospital allowed him an hour with Robbie before the

nurses asked him gently but firmly to go home and sleep. He’d been going on two days with no sleep, and they said they thought he might collapse.

What did that matter when his son might die?

Julian barely remembered walking back to his car in the hospital’s

huge parking garage. The drive to his parents’ house was even less clear.

When he got over the threshold, he called Erin and put her on

speakerphone in the middle of the coffee table because he didn’t think

he’d be able to explain this over and over.

“Whatever it is, baby, we’ll deal with it,” she said, her voice tinny

and not Erin-like at all.

Julian just shook his head. He couldn’t deal with it. It was all too

much.

The couch dipped, and his mother sat beside him, one hand on his

where it rested on his leg.

“How are you, Erin?” Linda asked.

Julian suddenly felt very selfish. In the face of the devastating news

about Robbie, he’d pretty much forgotten that Erin was still lying in the hospital recovering from major surgery. He just couldn’t do anything

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right, and more than that, it was time for Julian to break his mother’s

heart.

He tried to relay, word for word, the horrible conference from that

afternoon. Neither Erin nor his parents spoke throughout his entire

explanation. Then, they asked a series of questions, some to which he had no answers.

“A heart transplant?” his mother whispered, her frightened eyes

darting back and forth between her son and husband.

“It’s the only thing that will save his life,” Julian sighed, nodding

solemnly.

“Oh God, I knew it was bad, but….” She trailed off, looking at her

husband.

“What happens from here?” his father asked. Throughout his entire

life, Julian’s father, Bobby, had been a take-charge kind of guy. If you gave him the bottom line, he could help make any kind of decision. In that way he was much like Julian, only he didn’t have the characters-in-his-head thing.

“He will have an operation tomorrow to install the shunt, and then if

I decide to move forward, we start the process of putting him on the

transplant list. I don’t understand why they would think I wouldn’t want to move forward. He needs the transplant in order to live. Why wouldn’t I

make sure he gets it?” Julian slumped back against the couch. It wasn’t

that long ago he’d told his parents in that very room they were going to be grandparents.

He noticed his parents share a significant look.

“What?” he asked, looking between them.

“Honey,” his mother said as she patted his knee. “When you’re a

parent, you have to think about what’s best for your child, not what’s best for you. I’m not saying that a transplant isn’t the best option for Robbie, but you have to consider what he is going to go through. Do you

remember what Auntie Ellie went through when she had open-heart

surgery last year? How long it took her to recover? How much pain she

was in? She only had surgery on her heart. They will be taking that baby’s heart out and putting in a completely different one. What if…. God, what if he goes through all of that pain and suffering and it doesn’t work? You have to at least consider the possibility that it would be better for him just to keep him happy and comfortable. That’s not what I would do, and I’m

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not telling you that you should, only that you need to consider it. You need to consider all of the alternatives seriously before you make a decision that affects your child’s life.”

Julian closed his eyes and asked into the phone, “You have four kids

of your own, Erin. What would you do?”

“Honey, given everything you told me, I’d take the chance,” she said

with a sigh. “It would kill me to watch him in pain or to think about them opening him up for surgery, but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t give him every chance. If his chances of survival were lower or he was born

premature, maybe my answer would be different. Robbie was born at a

full, healthy nine pounds, after my due date. He’s a strong little boy.”

“Dad?” Julian asked, looking up to him next. His father was one of

the most levelheaded people Julian knew, and with his own emotions

running so close to the surface, he needed to hear his father’s opinion to know that he was making the right decision.

“If it had been you… I have to agree with Erin. I wouldn’t have been

able to live with myself if I hadn’t done everything I could to save your life.” Robert Holmes put his arm around his wife, and she took his hand.

“Then when we go to the hospital tomorrow for his surgery, I’ll let

them know that we’ve decided to go forward with the transplant.”

His mother broke down, crying quietly into her hands as his father

comforted her. The Christmas sweatshirt she wore, though it was early

March, looked huge on her small frame as she hunched in on herself. The

grief and fear were taking their toll. She said something, muffled by her tears.

“What, Mom?”

“I shouldn’t have prayed for a girl,” she repeated. Her devastated

voice shook with each word.

As awful as he felt, he couldn’t snap at her, but simply asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I prayed for a girl. All our family has had boys, and I just… I

wanted a little girl. I should have just prayed for a healthy baby.”

He looked over her head at his father while she sobbed her grief into

the older man’s shoulder. His father shook his head, a silent request to let it go.

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Julian stayed for another hour, talking over things with his parents

before saying good night and heading home. He would stop by in the

morning and pick them up, while Erin and Paul would wait for news at the hospital. Julian already had a room reserved at a local hotel for a few

nights to be near Robbie while he recovered after the surgery. The doctors didn’t need to tell Julian that these first few days would be critical. His sweet little boy seemed so fragile, and to open up his chest just seemed so dangerous.

Julian’s home, his pride, usually brought him a tremendous amount

of joy. The two-story townhouse in Chicago’s Lake View area had

captured his heart from the very first moment he saw it. A delicate

ironwork fence separated him and his neighbor, Mrs. Dwyer, from the

world. Forty-three decorative iron spikes, which he had counted more

times than he could remember, topped the fence. He’d considered having

five more added but couldn’t think of a rational explanation, except the odd number made him a little crazy.

Much to the delight of the older widow who occupied the adjacent

townhouse, Julian employed a very talented landscaper, who transformed

their shared space into a sanctuary. The two young oaks they had planted when Julian moved in were growing nicely, shading not only their

respective porches but their balconies as well. The twenty-four purple

irises and twelve bluebell flowers that lined the base of the house set off the building’s stone façade, adorned only with a beautifully carved

entryway surrounding the cherry and brass front door.

His house right then felt like a stranger’s, surreal and foreign. It

seemed as if his entire life had changed since he’d left to take Erin to the hospital just two days earlier. Before he’d left his house, he wasn’t a

father, and a little boy’s life didn’t rest in his hands. He grabbed the mail Paul had dropped on the small antique writing desk near the front door,

rifled through it, and tossed the envelopes on the dining room table. Then Julian went into the living room and fell into his favorite leather chair. His laptop bag lay at his feet, but he made no move to open it. He simply

stared into the empty fireplace and allowed himself the luxury to think of absolutely nothing, if just for a little while. He considered pouring himself a scotch, but if he started, he wouldn’t stop.

The townhouse opened up into a small living room right off the

interior hall, comfortably furnished in soft brown leather. A large, heavily padded couch lined the front wall and had found Julian falling asleep

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reading on it more than once. The chair in which he sat was next to a

functional ivory-colored fireplace set into a mantle that spanned the entire western wall. On either side of the fireplace, built right into the mantle, were twelve shelves that Julian used for his treasured collection of fifty-six leather-bound books. One purchased for no other reason than to keep

their number even. The space was his favorite, even more beloved than his office in the next room.

Liam sat on the couch, his translucent form barely visible in the dim

light. He always came to Julian when Julian felt lost or scared and alone.

“He’ll be okay. You know that, right?” Liam asked, pulling his feet

up under him on the plush cushion. Julian found it interesting that

whenever Liam came to him, he always wore the same black Sinner’s Gin

T-shirt, the same navy hoodie, and the same distressed jeans. His dark

brown hair, casually messy, always had that same little spike in the front, like he’d just pushed it straight up. The dark eyes, not exactly black but not quite brown, expressed more about him than even his pale handsome

face. Liam the character was seventeen, but the Liam who came to talk to him about the books or just to listen, seemed closer to his own midthirties.

“You mean Robbie? Yeah, I know.”

“You were different before him, sadder. You had less hope.”

“More depressed, you mean?”

“Maybe. You’d just closed yourself off so much.”

“I know. God, Liam, how am I supposed to care for a sick child

when I can’t even take care of myself?”

“Of course you can take care of yourself. You do very well,” Liam