Life and death. Exact opposites. One brings great joy. One brings great sorrow. But without one, there is no other. I gave my daughter life when I was just eighteen. And now, at sixteen, she faces death. From the minute I heard her little heart beating, she was my everything. It didn’t matter that her father had left me, his empty promises a whisper in the wind. It didn’t matter that I had needed to figure out how to get an education while being a young, single mother. It didn’t matter that I had acted as both mother and father while trying to give her everything I could. It didn’t even matter that she was born with a big heart that had us in and out of the hospital for all her life. None of that mattered because just one look at her, one smile from her, and one, “I love you, Mom,” was enough to make any day better. No love greater existed than that of a mother. But now I was about to lose her. My everything. It would be up to Kieran to hold me up if my world came crashing down. Dr. Kieran Bell. He came into my life—our lives—and knocked down every wall I had ever put up. He wasn’t just my daughter’s doctor; he was my friend. He was more than my friend. And now, I knew I’d need him more than ever. I just hoped against hope that this time, life wouldn’t result in death.