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A perfect match.

I’d been braced for today to be so shitty. And now I didn’t even care that I was officially divorced. Didn’t care. Nothing could cast a shadow on this moment. Not even Nick.

Gibson hung up the phone and motioned me inside.

I stood in front of his desk feeling buoyant and light. “I need to request two weeks off in July,” I said.

“All right.” He logged on to his computer. “Going anywhere fun?” he asked, tapping into his keyboard.

“Rochester. To the transplant center.”

He stopped and looked up at me over his glasses with a grin. “Well, I’ll be damned. You see? Everything happens for a reason.” He went back to tapping. “And to think he might have gone to a different hospital.”

I laughed a little. “Why would Benny go to a different hospital?”

“Not Benny. Jacob. He’d never have met your brother if he had. Look at that, everything works out.” He shook his head with a smile and went back to the screen.

I stood there, my brain trying to make sense of what he was saying. “Jacob?” I asked.

“He’s doing it for Joy,” he said, talking to the screen. “Did he tell you that? His mother had a kidney transplant when he was a kid. Always dreamed of paying it forward. At least that’s what he said when Zander asked him if he wanted to run the labs. Glad it worked out.”

My soul. Left. My body.

“Jacob is my brother’s kidney donor?” I breathed.

Gibson looked up at me. “What’s that?”

I swallowed. “The donor is anonymous…”

I watched Gibson’s smile melt, then morph into sheer panic. “It’s…he didn’t…Briana, I had no idea.” He stuttered. “He spoke about it freely, the…the two of you seemed to be friends—you…you were eating lunch together yesterday. I—I didn’t know, I just assumed…”

I turned and ran. I had to find him. Now. Immediately.

I threw open the door to our supply closet as I darted past. He wasn’t there, so I bolted to the ER floor dialing his number.

My heartbeat was thudding in my ears, my mind careening forward faster than I could keep up, the details shifting and reconfiguring.

Jacob was Benny’s kidney donor.

Jacob. Was Benny’s. Kidney. Donor.

How???

I’d been so mean to him.

I wasn’t even nice to him in the beginning. I was a total nightmare. And he’d have to have been working on this even back then because it takes weeks for the labs and the tissue samples and the medical and mental health evaluations, and I knew they took that long because I’d done them myself once when I was trying to see if I was a match.

I pulled back sliding glass doors to patient rooms and yanked away curtains with my phone to my ear, his number ringing. He didn’t answer, so I ran through the doctors’ lounge and checked the stairwell and the cafeteria.

Then I started to cry.

He didn’t want me to know.

He didn’t want any of us to know. He just wanted to do this in secret when he could have done this in the open and let everyone love him for it—and they would have. Every single person who worked in this department would have instantly adored him for his selfless act, worshipped the ground he walked on. He would have been beloved, forgiven for anything, a hero.

But Jacob wasn’t like that. He was a hero, but he was the kind that never let anyone know.

A sob burst from my mouth, and I had to cover it with a hand.