The Fortuity Duet

by Rochelle Paige

  “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 a 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 sigh
ed, 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.

  13

  Dillon

  I’d just pulled into the driveway when my phone rang. Again. It was about the tenth time already that morning.

  “You can’t avoid them forever, Dillon. They’re your family.” Faith squeezed my hand before climbing out of the SUV. The hospital had discharged her an hour ago, but she’d insisted that we needed to stop at the grocery store on our way home because we didn’t have anything healthy to eat in the house. When I suggested that it’d be better for me to drop her off and head to the store by myself, she refused to hear of it. And with the big puppy dog eyes she was giving me, I couldn’t bring myself to say no.

  “They’ll have to wait,” I told her as I pulled bags out of the back of the SUV. “We’ve got groceries that need to go into the fridge and freezer right now.”

  “Groceries,” she snorted. “I guess that’s as good an excuse as any other to keep avoiding them.”

  Her point was valid, but it also felt unfair. “It’s only been a day. They lied to me for five years.”

  She waited until we were inside the house, setting the groceries on the kitchen counter, to respond. “Sometimes one day can feel like an eternity. Like when you know that someone you love is angry, but you don’t know where they are and they’re not picking up the phone any of the times you call.”

  Which was exactly what I’d done to Faith after she’d shown me the letters. She’d led a life where she hadn’t been given many reasons to trust, and I was asking her to do just that with me after I’d hurt her. Which meant I needed to do whatever I could to prove to her that her belief in me wasn’t misplaced. And that included balling up and facing my parents sooner rather than later. “You’re right.”

  “I am?”

  “I learned my lesson the hard way, seeing what my silence almost cost you. I’m not going to make the same mistake again. Not with you, and not with my parents.”

  “Really?”

  The sweet smile she gave me and the way her eyes lit up told me I was making the right decision. “Yeah, really.”

  She wrapped me up in a hug, and whispered against my chest, “Thank you.”

  “It’s as much for me as it is for you, baby.” I just hadn’t realized it until I felt a surge of relief once my decision had been made. “But I don’t want to do this over the phone. It needs to be face-to-face.”

  “I think that’s smart. It’s better to talk the serious shit out in person because it’s too easy to hang up on someone. It’s a lot harder to walk away.”

  “Fuck,” I groaned.

  “Shit.” She reared back and looked at me. “I didn’t mean it that way at all.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. You promised me you’d never do that again, and I’ve chosen to believe you. That means we both need to let it go. I know I just brought it up to try to get you to understand why I feel so strongly that you need to talk to your parents. But I can’t keep dragging what happened into arguments, and you can’t wonder if I’m hinting at it all the time. The past is the past as far as our relationship is concerned, and we’re moving on from it. Deal?”

  I nodded. “Deal.”

  “Good.” She rose up on her toes and pressed a quick kiss against my mouth. “One problem down, but we still have a doozy to go. What do you want to do about your parents? I bet your mom’s at home.”

  “But my dad should be at the office, and I need to talk to both of them together.” Not just for me, but for them too. My mom was bound to fall apart when I confronted them over this, and she’d need my dad at her side to get through it.

  “We’re any of those calls this morning from him?”

  “Yeah, about half of them.”

  She tugged my cell out of my pocket and handed it to me. “Then send him a text. Tell him you need to talk and you want to meet with them at their house as soon as possible. If he’s at work, I’m sure he’ll cancel whatever he has on his calendar and rush home if you tell him you need him. He’s got to be frantic with worry by now.”

  She was right, so I tapped out a text while she put the groceries away. I’d barely hit send when three little circles popped up beneath my message, letting me know he was writing a reply.

  Dad: Come home now. I’ll be there.

  Me: We’ll be there in thirty minutes.

  “He wants us to come over now.”

  “Then let’s go,” she offered, grabbing her purse. “No time like the present.”

  “Soon,” I promised. “But first I’m going to make you a quick meal while you shower and change.”

  She eyed my clothes and wrinkled her nose. “And then while I’m eating, you should probably hit the shower too.”

  When we arrived at my parents’ place half an hour later, we’d both eaten, showered, and changed. My food felt heavy in my stomach, and I swallowed down a lump in my throat as I led Faith up their front steps. The door opened before we made it to the top, and my parents stood there.

  “Dillon! Faith! We were so worried,” my mom cried. She started to move forward, but my dad took one look at my face and pulled her back.

  “C’mon, honey. I think Dillon needs a minute. Let’s go inside and make some tea or something.”

  “Oh, but—”

  “Hot chocolate,” I blurted out. “You always made it when we had a bad day.”

  My mom’s eyes filled with tears as she searched my face and nodded. “I can make hot chocolate. Whipped cream, marshmallows, or both?”

  “Both,” Faith and I answered in unison.

  “Both. Okay, I can do both.” She looked even more worried as she turned and went back inside. I knew it was because I o
nly ever asked for both when things were really bad. As in the worst. Like this was going to be.

  “I hope this doesn’t go sideways until I’ve at least had the chance to finish my hot chocolate. Your mom makes the best; from scratch with whole milk. I can already taste it.” Faith slowly licked her lips before smacking them together, and I realized she was trying to break the tension.

  “Remind me to stock up on hot chocolate supplies.”

  Her eyes went wide. “You know how to make your mom’s hot chocolate?”

  “Yeah, she taught Declan and I how to make it when we were about ten years old.” It was such a great memory that I couldn’t help but smile as I thought about how we’d both ended up covered in cocoa powder.

  She swatted me on the shoulder. “And you’ve never made it for me? You’re slacking on the boyfriend duties.”

  “I’ll make some for you tonight. I have a feeling we’re going to need it.”

  “I’ll drink as much hot chocolate as it takes to help you get past all of this,” she promised.

  “Thanks, baby.”

  She offered me an encouraging smile. “It’s not like it’s much of a sacrifice.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t.” I shook my head and held my hand out to her. “Let’s get this over with, and then we’ll hit up the grocery store again.”

  I led her into the family room and got us settled on the love seat. It was only big enough for the two of us, and I didn’t want to risk my mom trying to sit down next to me. A few minutes later, my parents joined us, and my mom set a tray with four mugs of hot chocolate on the coffee table.

  “Why do I have the feeling I’m going to wish your mom had let me put a shot of Irish whiskey in mine like I wanted?” my dad asked as he picked his up and took a sip.

  “Because you’re probably going to need it.”

  My mom almost dropped her mug at my answer. She set it down before asking, “Is this about Declan and what we talked about yesterday?”