Sorrow crept over her.
Her mother believed Leah to be the child she’d given birth to.
This second test proved, unequivocally, that she was not.
She wasn’t related by blood to her brother, her mom, or her dad. By blood, she was related to these people she did not know.
The starting gun signaled another race had begun. She raised her face and watched the runners dart off the blocks, pumping their arms and legs. Inside, her emotions were as chaotic as those churning, straining limbs.
Dylan.
For the past two weeks, her thoughts had been drawn to her DNA over and over again. It wasn’t as if she’d had no warning about the potential loss of her biological connection to her brother. Yet this confirmation sliced her with a grief so new and painful, it felt like a personal insult.
For many, many years prior to Dylan’s birth, she’d wanted a little sister of her own. Leah had been lonely, shy, uncoordinated, self-conscious—a solitary girl with a reservoir of love to give. She’d imagined that her little sister would look just like she did, love to graph parabolas like she did, appreciate tea parties with stuffed animals like she did.
Around the time she’d turned ten, she’d resigned herself to the truth. She was never going to get a sibling. Just like she was never going to get the Apple computer she asked for every Christmas.
A fifth grader going on the age of fifty, she’d put her longing for a sister on the shelf. There hadn’t been time to mourn. She’d had her hands full with the miserable social aspects of her latter elementary years and an academic workload that would have challenged Einstein. Her parents had moved from town to town every few years, forever chasing and never catching new dreams, better jobs, greener grass.
And then, out of the blue, her mom and dad—never the masters of birth control—had experienced their second unplanned pregnancy. At first when they told her they were expecting a baby, she’d responded like any self-respecting preteen: with mortification. But after she’d had time to get used to the idea, the old yearning for a blond little sister had stirred back to life.
Her parents had waited to find out the sex of their baby. And so, when Leah had finally entered her mom’s hospital room to meet her new sibling, excitement had bounced around inside her body like a pinball. Dad informed her that if the baby was wearing pink, it was a girl. If the baby was wearing blue, it was a boy.
Leah approached the little plastic box on wheels where the baby was sleeping. Long before she was close enough to determine the color of the baby’s clothing beneath the blankets, she read the sign stuck to the inside of the baby’s bed. It’s a boy!
Mom and Dad’s gender reveal plan had been spoiled by an obvious sign they’d failed to notice.
Benevolently, she acted surprised when she pulled the baby’s blanket down and revealed blue.
Leah sat in the room’s window seat, and Dad rested her tiny brother in her lap.
He was beautiful. A mini nose, a perfect doll mouth, slightly bulgy closed eyes. She peeked under his cap and found lots of dark, silky hair.
Overtaken with wonder, she’d hugged him against herself. In that moment, it hadn’t mattered that he wasn’t a girl or that he wasn’t blond.
He was hers.
She was no longer alone with her erratic parents.
She’d found her person.
Love had vibrated through every cell of her adolescent self. And over the seventeen years since, that love had proven deep and staunch, the most unchanging aspect of her life.
Her relationship with Dylan was forged of much stronger stuff than blood. She’d been there for every important moment of his life. For the last decade, she’d been his caregiver.
Shared history. Love in action. Those are the things that family relationships are made of. She would, forever and always, continue to be Dylan’s sister. But until this DNA test, she’d trusted in the fact that she was Dylan’s biological sister. She’d wanted, very much, to continue to be Dylan’s biological sister.
Now it felt as though Dylan, Mom, and Dad were on one side of a river, a party of three. And she was on the other side by herself.
A sheen of tears misted her eyes.
She was not who she’d always thought she was. Which begged the question . . . who was she?
Your identity has not changed, she told herself firmly. She was the very same person she’d been before the DNA results. Her truest identity, the only one that would last, was anchored in Christ and no one could take that from her. She’d spent hours preaching that truth to herself these past weeks. . . .
She only wished it had sunk in better.
She inclined her head, closed her eyes, and determinedly prayed the words she clung to every time bad news confronted her. I’m going to trust in you with all my heart and lean not on my understanding. In all my ways, I’ll acknowledge you. Please make my paths straight.
Lifting her head, she consciously relaxed the muscles tension had seized.
Who were the parents she should have been given to on the day of her birth? What had happened to the baby who should have been given to Leah’s mom and dad? And what chain of events had sent two babies home with the wrong parents?
CHAPTER THREE
Surgery days were Sebastian’s best days.
He entered the operating suite at Beckett Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, an undercurrent of adrenaline sharpening his concentration more effectively than coffee. Markie, registered nurse and physician’s assistant, came forward to help him slip on his sterile surgical gown and gloves. He’d already scrubbed in and put on his surgical cap, mask, and the loupes that magnified and enhanced his view of the field.
“Good afternoon,” he said to the team.
“Good afternoon,” they replied as a group.
Sebastian assessed the monitors, then the progress already made. Today’s patient was three-week-old Mateo Peralta, who’d been flown in from Argentina for a ventricular repair on a heart approximately the size of a walnut. Mateo lay on the table with his eyes taped closed, head to the side, a ventilation tube in his trachea, tiny hands relaxed.
Sebastian prepared his surgical plans the way generals strategized complex battles. Even so, he sometimes altered his plans when he saw his patient’s anatomy with his own eyes. Echocardiograms had grown more and more sophisticated, but there was still no substitute for looking into a chest.
Now that he was viewing the boy’s heart, he was indeed going to adjust his plan of attack. He asked for his instruments. “Let’s get to work, people.” It was his customary phrase.
Markie shot back her customary response. “Some of us are already working.”
Smiling a little, he bent forward and began.
Sebastian and his mentors had several things in common. They were all persistent perfectionists, determined to execute their role flawlessly. They were also confident. Thick-skinned. Tough-minded. Ambitious.
Sebastian was unlike the rest of them in one key way, however. He’d been a foster kid, and because of that, his street smarts were wickedly sharp. In elementary school, if he took a toy from another kid and that kid cried, he hadn’t cared. Why should he care? He’d ended up with the toy. In middle school, he’d learned to defend himself with his fists. In high school and college, he’d used people to get ahead, he’d put his own interests first, and he’d bent every rule that didn’t suit him.