Chapter 1

A person only has one heart, and my husband wanted mine for his student.

At a friends dinner, my husband got down on one knee and told me his student needed my heart.

"She needs the transplant as soon as possible."

I went blank for a second.

"A person only has one heart."

"I'll get you the best cardiac surgeon in the city. We'll put in an LVAD."

"I'm three months from my due date."

"The baby... we can try again. We'd have to let go of this one."

Before I could even respond, a girl's laugh cut through the room.

"April Fools, Professor! I made the whole thing up." She was grinning behind her hand. "I didn't actually think you'd go ask your wife."

The room erupted and friends started teasing.

"That was brutal, man. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place."

"If she'd said she needed my heart, I'd already be on the operating table."

I was the only one not laughing. I sat on the couch and said nothing. I'd already booked the appointment for tomorrow.

...

Julian had never once been angry at Clara. He'd always treated this frail, sickly student like she was made of glass. But this time he stood up and his face went cold.

The room caught on and fell silent.

After a long pause someone quietly reminded Clara, "You know that joke landed on his wife, right? That's the one line you don't cross with him."

"He's famous for it at the institute. First year on the job, a colleague cracked one joke about Sienna and ended up in the hospital."

Clara froze and tears gathered on her lashes. She reached out and tugged the edge of Julian's sleeve.

"I'm sorry. It's April Fools. I wasn't thinking."

He didn't answer so she turned to me and sniffled.

"Mrs. Thorne, I didn't mean anything by it. If you're upset, say whatever you need to. I can take it."

Friends jumped in to smooth things over.

"She's always been like this, says things without thinking. Don't let it get between you two."

"Come on, Julian. She's been your student for three years and you even put her in your acknowledgments. You're not going to let one bad joke ruin that, are you?"

Julian's expression finally softened and he reached over to wipe the corner of her eye.

"Don't make jokes like that again."

Clara nodded over and over.

Then he turned to me and his voice softened into something close to an apology. "I'm sorry, Sienna. I came to you before I even knew the facts."

Came to me for help. A heart transplant and he called it help. That was the word he chose.

It wasn't the first time. Anything that touched Clara turned this normally sharp and rational professor into someone emotional and careless with his words.

He drove fourteen hundred miles on New Year's Eve because she texted him about cramps.

When I asked he just said, "She's not well. I was worried."

But I was five months pregnant and alone the whole night. He wasn't worried.

I was in pain with contractions coming in waves and I couldn't even speak. He wasn't worried.

Morning sickness, edema, clumps of hair on the shower floor every day. He wasn't worried.

With me he was always perfectly rational, like a machine. "Sienna, growing a life is hard. You'll feel better once the baby's here."

I became short-tempered and easy to cry and easy to snap, but he chalked it all up to hormones and said a few words and went to his study.

Every time, I had to force down the urge to go after him.

And yet in the acknowledgments of the paper he'd spent five years writing, the first name listed was hers. Clara, an undergrad who had no real research experience to speak of.

By the time I found out it was already in the news.

In the interview Julian was relaxed, almost offhand.

"In five years of teaching, Clara isn't the most talented student I've had. But she's the most resilient."

"I'm grateful she came into my life. She gave me the courage to keep going."