Chapter 2

Cindy brushed her hand across my cheek and said, "Don't worry. I'll keep you alive."

Her mentor had performed heart transplants before, so she was confident that she could pull this off. "Once Tristan recovers, your whole family will finally accept you. And I'll be right there with you."

She and her colleagues worked through the surgery with focused precision. After a long time, Cindy removed a heart from my body. She didn't even stop to look at it before rushing it into Tristan's operating room.

My chest was still open, my body lying alone on the operating table. The shrill flatline from the monitor woke the doctor left on watch.

"He's dead? I thought he had two hearts."

One of Cindy's colleagues couldn't make sense of it.

"You actually believed Dr. Green when she said that?" Kelly Thompson answered.

"Good riddance. He did so many awful things and wouldn't lift a finger to save Dr. Green's husband. On top of that, he tried to make a move on her."

"So what do we do now?"

"He's dead. Wait for someone to come collect the body. If nobody claims him, let the morgue deal with it," Kelly added.

And with that, every doctor in the room walked out.

Cindy was fully focused on Tristan's surgery. Even though she was confident, this was her first time performing a heart transplant on her own. But after several hours, she successfully finished the procedure.

When it was done, she followed Tristan back to his room. It wasn't until he was settled in that she remembered me. She was about to head back to the operating room when she ran into a colleague who'd assisted her in the hallway.

"Where's my husband?"

The colleague thought for a moment. "He's already in the room, isn't he? Don't worry. There's always someone keeping an eye on post-op patients. The nurses on the floor will take care of him."

Cindy didn't realize that something about the answer didn't add up. She figured her colleague was right. With her working here, the nurses would at least keep an eye on things. So she went back to her office and got back to work.

A day later, Tristan woke up. Cindy was at his bedside.

"Tristan, you're finally awake."

The moment he saw her, he broke down crying. Cindy pulled him into a hug. "It's okay. The surgery went well. Your heart won't give you any more trouble."

Tristan pressed his hand against his chest. Knowing the disease that had plagued him for years was finally gone, he clung to Cindy and sobbed. She told him to calm down, that he couldn't let his emotions spike like this, and rubbed his back to soothe him.

One of the nurses on the floor saw them and teased him. "Dr. Green really does take good care of her husband."

Cindy froze when she heard that. She thought of me, still in another room down the hall, and started to explain. "Oh, you've got it wrong. He's not my—"

But Tristan clutched his chest at just the right moment, cutting her off. Cindy had no choice but to pat his back instead.

"I told you to stop crying. All you need to do right now is rest so you can recover."

Something about seeing him like that made her suddenly think of me. She realized that she hadn't seen me at all since the surgery.

"Tristan, get some rest. I'm going to go check on Hayden."

She started to stand, but Tristan grabbed her hand and said, "I had this surgery behind our parents' backs, and right now is the most critical part of recovery. I don't have anyone here with me, and I'm worried I won't heal properly."

He looked so pale that Cindy's resolve softened. She figured that the doctors and nurses on the floor would look after me, if only as a courtesy to her, so she let it go.