“I saw her boobs when she leaned over,” says Youssef Al Najjar. He leans back against his pillow, closes his eyes and smiles. “It was a good day.”

“Why do you always get all the luck?” asks Yosef Peretz. He is lying in the bed on the other side of the room, playing Candy Crush on his phone. It’s a Sunday evening in early April, and visiting hours are over for the day. “No pretty girls ever come to visit me.”

“I’m a babe magnet, what can I say?”

“Yeah, right. She was probably your cousin or something.”

Youssef laughs. “She was, actually! But who cares? I still saw boobs.”

Yosef laughs, too, first just a chuckle, then dissolves into a fit of hysterical giggles. The jerking of his chest sets off one of the alarms, and a nurse runs in to check the monitors.

“YoYos! Take it easy,” she says. “Don’t make me run in here a hundred times a day.”

Youssef and Yosef are known as “The YoYos” on the pediatric cardiology floor of Hadassah Medical Center. They’ve been there for a while – Youssef nearly a month and Yosef almost three – while they wait for heart transplants. Their wide blue room is sectioned off in the middle with yellow curtains that can separate the area into two rooms, but now the boys like to be together, so they keep them open. One wall is windowed, with views of the green pine and cypress trees in the Jerusalem forest. The boys’ beds are positioned opposite each other on the two perpendicular walls, which are painted with aquarium murals to try to camouflage the many medical devices and machines. A giant red coral reef is painted just above Yosef’s head, and Youssef teases him that he looks like an underwater unicorn.

They have different backgrounds as an Arab (Youssef), and a Jew (Yosef). But both are teenage boys from Jerusalem, and they are so close in age (16 and 15, respectively), and appearance that from afar they could be twins. The regular hospital staff can differentiate the YoYos, but when first meeting them, most people need to look at their charts to tell them apart. They both have dark hair, sparse facial fuzz, and naturally dark skin, although now they appear more ashen from their advanced cardiac diseases.

Yosef crumples a sheet to his mouth to stifle his laughter. It’s ironic that as he and Youssef get weaker, their friendship has strengthened. Their friends’ visits have become much less frequent, and even their families can’t dedicate all day to sitting with them in the hospital. A lot of the time, it’s just the YoYos.

“Those flowers your cousin brought are really strong,” says Yosef. “I can smell them even through the sheet.”

The purple hyacinths are in an empty water bottle on the table next to Youssef. “I like them,” he says. “It reminds me that it’s spring. I hate that we don’t feel the weather in here.”

The boys are wheeled to the hospital garden for a few minutes each day, if they feel up to it. The weather has been unseasonably warm for early April, and the blooming flowers and budding trees are a stark contrast to the cold linoleum and antiseptic smell of the hospital.

Youssef picks up his phone and starts watching a YouTube video about basketball dunks. Yosef stares into space.

““How do you think he’ll die?” asks Yosef.

“What? Who?” Youssef doesn’t put down his phone.

“The person whose heart you’ll get.”

“Why do you always say it’s me?” Youssef sounds exasperated. He puts down his game. “You’ve been sicker longer than me. I bet you’ll get one first.”

“I may be too sick already,” says Yosef, sadly. “They’re not going to waste a heart on me if they think it won’t last.”

“You’re not too sick,” Youssef says. “Your liver function was better than mine tonight.”

“Well whatever. How do you think the donor is going to die?”

“For sure a motorcycle accident. Don’t they call them donor cycles?”

“It depends how he crashes. He might be too messed up.”

“It matters how he falls, like if his skull is all bashed in but his body is okay.”

“Yeah.” Yosef is quiet. “It’s weird, isn’t it, wishing that someone will die?”

“Well, we’re not killing the guy,” says Youssef. “And in a way, a little part of the donor stays alive.”

“Well that creeps me out even more, I think. What if he was an asshole? Will I suddenly turn into one, too?”

“Suddenly?” laughs Youssef. “Come on, bro. It doesn’t work that way.”

“It might,” insisted Yosef. “I heard of someone who hated tomatoes and then got a new heart and now he loves tomatoes.”

“What if we get a girl’s heart and then we love boys so we turn gay?”

There’s a silence, and then both boys erupt into laughter.

“Nah, not gonna happen! Not with our boob obsessions!”

***

Yosef has been sick for almost five years. He has a rare, inherited illness called arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC), a progressive genetic condition that causes muscle cells in the ventricle wall to die. The muscle is replaced by fat and scar tissue, which cause irregular heart rhythms.

When he was 13 years old, just after his bar mitzvah, Yosef fainted during a game of basketball. His parents, Anat and Shlomo, attributed it to the heat, and ignored it. Then it happened again, and again – both times while running down the basketball court for a layup. Yosef also complained that even when he wasn’t exercising, he could feel his heart fluttering like a butterfly in his chest. After many medical tests, he was diagnosed with ARVC.

It was a devastating diagnosis for any family, but particularly hard for Yosef’s. When he was a baby, his maternal grandparents were killed in a car accident, so Yosef’s family had to move back to Israel from the United States to care for his great-grandmother. He has only one younger sister, Miriam, who has Down’s syndrome. They live in Rechavia, a large, Jewish, residential neighborhood in the center of Jerusalem, without any of their extended family. Everyone else is in America, except one relative, an elderly cousin who lives in a nursing home a few hours’ drive away.

“How could lightning strike us twice?” Yosef once overheard his mother ask a friend on the phone. “We’ve already been through a cardiac surgery with Miriam’s congenital defect. I don’t think I can bear it again.”

Now, despite having a defibrillator surgically implanted two years ago, Yosef’s heart is rapidly deteriorating and he needs round-the-clock monitoring, as well as a continuous infusion of milrinone, a cardiac medication that helps the heart contract and relax. He has a PICC (peripherally inserted central catheter) line – a long, thin tube inserted into his upper left arm that carries the medicine through the veins into his heart. To keep it free of germs, there is a cap over the end of the PICC that sticks out of his arm, and it is taped down to his skin. He also wears EKG leads on his chest to monitor his heart, and a pulse oximeter on the pointer finger of his right hand.

Lately, Yosef finds it hard to breathe even while he is resting in bed. He’s exhausted all the time, and his physical therapy had to be decreased from lifting light weights to simple stretches. When he walks down the hallway, either for exercise, or to go to the game room, he leans on the handles of his wheelchair for support, and now sometimes he even needs to stop midway to rest. He’s miserable.

Youssef is miserable, too, but unlike Yosef, who has been sick for years, Youssef’s illness came on rapidly. He’s a year older, 16, and because he has only been sick for a short while, he still retains a semblance of his buff, muscular body. Youssef suffers from viral myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that is caused by a virus.

He had been a healthy, active teenager when sometime in the beginning of February, he became very fatigued. He usually played basketball with his friends for an hour or two every day after school, but he could barely get through a game without needing to sit and take a break. He coughed a lot, and complained that his chest hurt. Youssef had been sick with the flu in January, so his mother Fatima thought he might just be taking a long time to recover.

One night, Fatima was in the kitchen of their small apartment in Abu Tor, a mixed Arab- Jewish neighborhood on a hillside in Jerusalem, south of the Old City, when she heard Youssef breathing very heavily from the living room. She rushed in to check on him. He tried to talk, but then began vomiting. His forehead was hot to the touch, but his hands were pale and cold. She called Omar, Youssef’s father and her husband, and told him to rush home from work – something was terribly wrong with Youssef.

At Hadassah Medical Center, doctors quickly diagnosed Youssef with myocarditis, and kept him overnight until he could be seen by the pediatric cardiologist. The prognosis wasn’t very encouraging:

“With viral myocarditis, it’s the rule of thirds: a third of the patients will recover completely, a third will need to stay on long-term heart medications, and a third will need a heart transplant.”

“A heart transplant!” Fatima cried. “But that makes no sense…he’s only been sick for a few weeks.”

“Will I be able to play basketball?” Youssef asked.

“Not until you have a healthy heart,” said the doctor.

“How long will that take?”

“I really don’t know. It depends if you heal on your own, or if you’ll need a transplant.”

Youssef cried for the first time in years. Basketball was his life. He wasn’t a great student, but he excelled on the court. Playing ball was the only thing that made him happy.

Within a matter of weeks, however, Youssef went from being a little tired to barely being able to walk. His heart was enlarged, and failing fast. Last month, doctors implanted a mechanical pump called the Heartmate 3 LVAD (a left ventricular assist device) into his chest, to help his weakened heart deliver blood throughout the rest of the body. The doctor explained that the LVAD was not a cure, rather just a bridge to a heart transplant. The LVAD wire pokes out of an incision in Youssef’s upper abdomen, and is attached to a controller that he wears as a belt. The controller is either connected to a battery pack, or to a power device plugged into the wall.

The doctor warned Fatima not to check Youssef’s pulse, because he won’t have one with the LVAD. It pumps the blood in a continuous flow, so there’s no noticeable rhythm.

Technically Youssef could wait at home for the transplant, but the incision site keeps getting infected, so he’s been hospitalized for weeks. He has a tube in his chest to drain the pus from the wound infection, as well as an IV inserted into the top of his hand, to deliver antibiotics to treat the infection. He also has EKG leads on his chest, which are attached to a heart monitor.

Both Yosef and Youssef are listed status 1A – the highest priority – for heart transplants.

***

When Youssef got the LVAD implanted, he was put in a single room on the PCICU (Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit) while he recovered from the surgery. But once it was clear to the doctor that he would need a longer hospitalization because of the recurring infection, it was decided that he should share a room with another patient, so he would feel less lonely and have a support system.

“What the fuck is this?” he raged, when Fatima told him he would be moved into a double room. “Can’t the one thing I get out of this is to finally not have to share a room?”

“It’ll be good for you,” said Fatima. “You’ll have someone to talk to who knows exactly what you’re going through.”

“I don’t want to talk to anyone.”

That Friday, when Youssef moved in, Anat and Miriam were visiting Yosef. Yosef’s father runs a corner grocery market, so he was busy with people shopping for Shabbat. Anat was just about to leave when there was a knock at the door, and a nurse wheeled in Youssef. His mother followed behind.

Miriam had been sitting on the floor, playing with her doll. Her blonde hair was pulled into two pigtails on the sides of her head, and she wore tiny gold star earrings, and bright purple, round glasses. When Fatima walked into the room, Miriam scrambled over to her with arms extended, shouting: “Fati!”

Everyone else in the room looked confused.

“Miri! What a surprise to see you here!” said Fatima. “Is this your brother?”

Miri smiled widely. “Yosef.”

Anat stood up and waved to Fatima from across the room. “Hi, I’m Anat Peretz. I guess you know Miriam.”

“Yes, I’m her hydrotherapist at Shalva. My name is Fatima Al Najjar,” said Fatima.

Shalva is an educational center in Jerusalem for people with disabilities that also provides therapies, recreation, and family support. It’s located in the neighborhood of Bayit Ve’gan, right by Shaare Zedek Medical Center. Miriam goes to school there every day, and has hydrotherapy sessions with Fatima three times a week.

“Oh yes!” said Anat. “Now that I’m looking at you closely I can sort of tell. But on the Facebook pictures you’re normally wearing a bathing cap and goggles so it was hard to recognize you.”

Fatima tugged at her hijab. “Yes, I look different now.”

“So, for how long have you been working at Shalva?”

“Five years.”

There was an awkward silence, and the mothers both retreated to their respective son’s bed. Fatima started to unpack Youssef’s bag into the drawers of the night table next to his bed. Youssef mouthed to her: “Close the curtain!”

“I’m sorry Anat, Yosef, Miri. Would you mind if I closed the privacy curtain for a little while? I think Youssef is going to rest.”

“Of course! We’ll get out of here soon so it can be quiet, don’t worry.”

After everyone had gone, a Russian nurse named Olga came in to check on the boys. She pulled the yellow curtains open so the boys could see each other. “Youssef, meet Yosef. Yosef, meet Youssef.”

Youssef didn’t look up from his phone.

“Hi,” said Yosef.

“Talk to each other,” said Olga. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“What’s wrong with your heart?” asked Yosef.

“It’s fucking broken, idiot,” said Youssef. “Why the hell else would I be here?”

“Is that an LVAD battery pack next to your bed?”

“Why are you asking me so many stupid questions?”

“We’re in the same boat, that’s all I was trying to say.”

“We’re not anything the same.” Youssef glowered.

The boys didn’t talk again the rest of the night.

The next morning, Youssef raged. He cursed at everyone that came into the room. He missed basketball, his friends, his almost-girlfriend.

“I shouldn’t be here. I belong out on the court, sinking baskets. I need to get back to the gym. I was about to get a girlfriend.” He seethed constantly, and berated Yosef. “I’m not a weakling. Look at you, with your arms like sticks, just lying there in bed. You don’t DO anything, you just sit around. I’m not like that. I’m a mover and a shaker. I hustle.”

Yosef was silent.

Nurse Olga chastised Youssef, telling him to calm down or it would raise his blood pressure. She closed the curtains between the beds.

Later that day, Anat came to visit Yosef, and he whispered to her that Youssef was giving him a hard time.

“Let’s go for a walk, motek,” she said. “I know it’s hard, but you have to keep up your strength.” She helped him wheel out his IV pole and his pole with the monitors, and together they walked down the hall, with Yosef pushing his wheelchair and Anat pushing the poles.

“Ema, I can’t stand it! It’s bad enough being in the hospital, but I can’t be with someone so mean!” Yosef’s eyes welled up with tears, and his lips quivered as he talked.

“I know, motek, I’ll see what I can do.”

“But you really don’t know!” Yosef sat down in the wheelchair, his chest heaving. He struggled to talk. “It’s so hard being here. I’m all alone, without you, without Abba or Miriam, without any of my friends. The nurses come in at all hours, poking and prodding and checking and I never have any privacy or anything. It’s so awful and I hate it!”

“Oh Yosef, I would do anything to fix this. Anything.”

“I just want to go home.”

Anat bit her lip, and blinked back tears. She kissed Yosef on the top of his head, as she pushed him to the game room. They sat there for a while in silence, and then Yosef said he needed to sleep.

The next day, Child Life sent a therapist named Rina to help Youssef channel his anger and use his competitive spirit through art therapy. For three consecutive days, she led Youssef and Yosef in speed painting contests, and yelled: “Brush it to crush it!” They vied with spin art machines, and she encouraged them: “Spin it to win it!” The cheering was so ridiculous that the boys ended up laughing, and it helped to break the tension between them. She dubbed them “The YoYos,” and the nickname stuck.

The YoYos warmed quickly to Rina, and they also liked Olga, the nurse who worked the night shift. When the last of the boys’ visitors left for the night, she would sit in their room for a few minutes, telling them what it was like growing up in Russia, waxing nostalgic about ice skating and drifting snowflakes, and asking them questions about their lives.

She was in her early 30’s, tall, with strawberry-blond hair worn in a tight bun, and a large chest that was emphasized by the v-neck in her fitted scrub top. She wore a gold locket necklace that rested right in the fold of her cleavage. When she leaned over to check something, the locket would swing like a pendulum, and had a hypnotic effect on the boys.

Every night, after she left their room and shut the lights, Youssef would say: “Thank you, Allah, for giving me one tiny joy in this awful place.”

And every night, Yosef would answer, “Amen.”

“She’s not so pretty, but those boobs…” Youssef sighed.

“Perfect,” said Yosef.

“You ever see ones for real?”

“You mean like naked?” Yosef squirmed in his bed.

“Yeah.”

“Nah. Have you?”

“Almost.” Youssef sighed. “This girl was really into me before I got sick. She would come watch my basketball games and cheer for me. But now she doesn’t even text me anymore so…I guess it’s over.”

“That sucks, I’m sorry.”

“At least we have Olga.”

***

Six days after Youssef moved in with Yosef, Anat went to Shalva for her parent support group. They meet every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon they gather in the building’s lobby cafe, and it has been a lifeline for Anat. She’s been going to the group for four years.

Just as she was walking down the stairs from the cafe to the main lobby, Fatima called to her from below.

“Anat! Hi! Anat!”

Fatima was standing in the lobby, waving to Anat.

“Oh, hi Fatima! Isn’t it funny? We’ve never seen each other here before, and now suddenly here we are.”

“Well, we probably saw each other before, but didn’t realize it.”

Anat nodded.

“Are you here to pick up Miri?” Fatima asked.

“Yes, but I have a few minutes before her class ends. I come here every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon for my parent support group.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

Anat pursed her lips. “Well, enjoy…is a strong word. I get something out of it. I’ve made nice friends. And it’s good for me to see the happiness and energy of this place.”

The lobby of Shalva has large, painted butterflies hanging in the high ceilinged lobby, and the decor throughout the building is brightly colored and cheerful. Groups of singing children pass through, and the teenaged volunteers chatter excitedly as they walk.

“Yes, it is a happy place,” agreed Fatima. “Certainly a lot better than the hospital.”

“Oh God, yes,” said Anat. “I can’t wait for Yosef to get out of there.” She paused and took a deep breath. “I pray he’ll get out of there alive.”

Fatima put her hand on Anat’s shoulder. “Inshallah.”

Anat smiled slightly, with her lips closed. “How are you doing? It must have been scary for Youssef to get sick so quickly.”

“Terrifying. I still can’t believe it. He was such a strong, active boy, and now…well, he seems like a different person.”

“Illness changes your personality,” said Anat. “Certainly, it’s changed Yosef’s. He was never the loudest kid, but now he’s so quiet. He spends a lot of time playing video games and reading. I’m not sure how many of his friends are still texting him.”

Fatima smoothed her hands on her pants and adjusted her hijab. “Would you mind if we talked outside? I love watching the kids on the playground, and the weather is so warm for this early in April.”

Anat and Fatima walked outside to the front of the building, to the large, inclusive playground with adaptive, wheelchair-accessible equipment. Able bodied children as well as children with disabilities could play here together, so it was a favorite spot for the Shalva children and their siblings. The women sat on a bench underneath a palm tree.

“I’m glad the boys are getting along better,” said Fatima. “I know Youssef has a temper. I’m sorry he took out his anger on Yosef.”

“It’s okay,” said Anat. “I think Yosef understood not to take it personally.”

“Yosef is probably the only one who can understand Youssef now. It’s so hard to imagine what his life is like, and I’m his mother! I think his friends are just too far removed from the situation. And most of the time, he just played basketball with his friends, anyway, and he certainly can’t do that now.”

“Yosef loves basketball, too,” said Anat. “And he was pretty good at it! But he had to give it up almost two years ago when his heart started to get worse. He just didn’t have the energy.”

Fatima sighed. They sat watching the children jump all around the playground, shrieking and laughing.

“It’s weird to see the world going on like everything’s normal,” she said.

“That’s the only thing better about the hospital,” said Anat. “We’re in an alternate reality there, but so is everyone. I don’t feel so alone there.”

“I can’t sleep anymore, can you?”

“Sleep? Ha! Only with a lot of whiskey…”

“I lie awake counting my fears,” said Fatima. “I’m scared he’ll die – of course that’s the thing that terrifies me the most. But also everything else: Is he in pain? Will he get a blood clot, or have a stroke? Will the transplant go smoothly? Will he reject the heart? What if he gets too depressed just lying there in the hospital and…?” She gulped and blinked back tears.

“And what?”

“Well, I read that some kids get so depressed lying in the hospital that they cut their own LVAD wires.” A single tear dripped down Fatima’s cheek. “I’m worried that Youssef is already thinking about this. Like, maybe his wound keeps getting infected because he’s purposely not being careful with the controller and it keeps falling and slowly pulling out the driveline.”

Anat took Fatima’s hands in hers. “We can’t despair, or we won’t be able to stay strong for our boys. All we have is hope. That’s all the doctors can give us, really. None of these medications or treatments will cure our boys, they’re just buying them time.”

Anat scribbled her number on a piece of paper and handed it to Fatima. “I’m here for you. Call me anytime.”

***

As a Child Life therapist, one of Rina’s jobs is to help the boys to understand any medical procedure they might need. One day, she came in with two iPads loaded with explanatory videos, and brought sample surgical tools and other medical instruments so they could see what would be used. “How would you guys like to watch a heart transplant?”

“What?” Youssef looked alarmed.

“Right now?” Yosef struggled to speak.

“Not for real, guys, on the iPad. We don’t do this with little kids, but I thought you guys were old enough that you might want to see what the surgery is about.”

Rina was only about ten years older than the boys, and with her toothy smiles and perky personality, she easily assumed the role of big sister. She gave each boy an iPad, and walked from one side of the room to the other to point things out.

“The scariest part of the procedure to watch is probably opening up the chest, and I think we should skip that part,” she said. “It’s the least complicated, medically, but it’s not fun.”

“Yeah, they have to crack open your rib cage!” Yosef shuddered. “That must kill!”

“Well, it won’t be painful while they’re doing it, because you’ll be totally asleep from the anesthesia,” said Rina. “But after the surgery it can hurt. You’ll have to be careful not to sneeze or cough, or even to laugh too hard.”

“If I’m still hanging with this guy that won’t be a problem, because his jokes are stupid,” said Youssef, pointing his finger at Yosef.

“Haha. Aren’t you hysterical?” said Yosef.

“Okay, guys. Do you see what happens next? The patient will have already been hooked up to a heart-lung bypass machine, to help oxygenated blood flow through the body during surgery.”

The boys both looked intently at their screens.

“And then, after the chest is open, the surgeon will remove the diseased heart and sew the donor heart into place. Then they’ll attach all of the blood vessels to the new heart, and blood flow should resume almost immediately.”

“And that’s it?” Yosef asked.

“That’s the main part of the surgery,” said Rina. “We can do the post-op stuff now, too, or we can take a break and I’ll show you that video another day.”

“I’m tired,” said Youssef, yawning. “Let’s do it another day.”

***

As the boys became friendlier, so too did their families. Youssef has three siblings and many cousins, and always has a rotating cast of visitors. Yosef has a much smaller family, and so over the past month, the families have blended their visits. The curtains stay open all the time, because visitors come for the YoYos, not just for one of the boys. Fatima brings her famous knafeh, a dessert made with tiny, buttered noodles that are covered with crumbles of goat cheese and then seared on both sides until golden. She used to pretend that she made it herself, but now that the families know each other better she confessed that she buys it from a special sweets store in Nablus.

The fathers aren’t there very often, because of their work schedules. Shlomo, Yosef’s father, owns a corner grocery store. He has a worker helping him, but he doesn’t trust him enough to leave the store for long. Omar, Youssef’s father, works as the catering manager in the Inbal hotel, a luxury hotel in the center of Jerusalem. Two weeks before Passover, the kitchens are even more chaotic than usual, because as a kosher hotel, they have to be scrupulous not to have any bread products come in contact with the food being prepared for Passover. The hospital has made exceptions for them to come very early in the morning or very late at night, but the fathers are only able to come sporadically.

Only once since the boys have been sharing a hospital room have both fathers been there at the same time. That Saturday night, the men both came around 5 P.M. They rode the elevator together, not realizing who each other was, until they both came to the door of the YoYos’ room.

“Ah, you must be Youssef’s father,” said Shlomo. “I’m Shlomo Peretz. Nice to meet you.”

“Omar Al Najjar. Pleasure.”

The men shook hands, and greeted the boys. After they bantered around with their sons, they turned on the television to Sport5 so they boys could watch an American NBA basketball game.

“So I hear you work at the Inbal?”

“Yes, I’ve been there for almost 10 years. Gearing up for Passover…the hardest holiday.”

“It’s a pain, yes,” said Shlomo. “We aren’t very religious, but we do keep the laws of not eating any bread on Passover.”

“Do you have a Seder?”

“Yes, of course. We’re very traditional, just maybe not so strict with everything.”

“Well we are 110% strict at the Inbal,” said Omar.

“I bet you know more about the rules than we do!”

Omar chuckled. “If you want, come by the hotel on one of the days of the holiday and I’ll be glad to have you for a meal as my guests.”

“Well that’s very kind of you, thank you.” Shlomo tapped Yosef on the shoulder. “Hey, you here, Omar invited us to the Inbal for a meal on Pesach.”

Yosef gave Shlomo a death stare. “Abba, how dumb are you? Pesach is in two weeks. There’s no chance I’ll be out by then, even if by some miracle I get a heart tomorrow.”

Shlomo smacked his forehead. “Oy! I’m such an idiot. I’m sorry, motek, I wasn’t thinking.”

“Hey bro, don’t worry, you’re not missing anything,” said Youssef. “I had their Passover food once and it was terrible!”

“You go there a lot?”

“Yeah, I play ball in the park right behind – Gan HaPa’amon (Liberty Bell Park).”

“No way!” Yosef said. “I used to play there all the time.”

Gan HaPa’amon is a large park with a replica of the Liberty Bell, which is how it got its name. It’s located in the Talbiyeh neighborhood of Jerusalem, right behind the Inbal hotel. The courts are located in the middle of the park, with built-in bleachers alongside the far court. Some of the local schools run leagues there, but as a public park, the courts are open to anyone.

The fathers stayed until visiting hours were over. After they left, the boys wondered if they had ever played basketball against each other.

“Were you one of those annoying Jewish kids who complained that we took your court?” Youssef asked. “I bet you were.”

“I don’t know,” said Yosef. “But you guys are really rude, usually. I haven’t played in a few years, though, since I got sicker.”

“We would smoke you on the court.”

“Maybe, I don’t know. I don’t think we ever played against you guys.”

“Yeah, we don’t usually play the Jews.”

“Hey,” Yosef clears his throat. “Did you care, I mean, did it matter to you when you realized you had to share a room with me and I’m Jewish?”

Youssef shrugged his shoulders. “Nah. I didn’t care who you were. I didn’t want to be with anyone. I didn’t want to be in the hospital. I still don’t.”

“Yeah.”

“What about you? Did you care that I’m Arab?”

“Well,” Yosef hesitated. “I guess I felt a little intimidated by you. I don’t really have any Arab friends. My only interactions have been on the court, and the Arab kids end up trash-talking us and fighting over who gets to play.”

“But you’re okay now?”

“Yeah, bro.” Yosef reddened. “Don’t make a big deal out of nothing.”

“Hey – What’s your top score in a game?”

“48 points.”

“Yeah, right.”

“How many three-pointers in a row?”

“Five.”

“What a liar!”

***

Last week, Rina brought the boys paint-by-number kits to keep the YoYos occupied for an hour. They were both getting weaker, and it was easier for her to bring projects to them rather than have them come to the crafts workshop room in the basement. They each sat in their bedside armchairs, with their tray tables in front of them. Youssef had a picture of a sailboat, and Yosef had a picture of a lighthouse.

“This is kind of boring, but I’ll admit, it is relaxing,” said Yosef, after the boys had been painting for a little while.

“Yeah, it’s nice to focus on something mindless like this,” echoed Youssef.

Rina clapped her hands. “Yay me! I thought you guys would like this.”

She propped herself up on the wide ledge of the window and crossed her ankles. “Should I put on some music? I just made a new animal-themed playlist.”

“Animal themed?” Yosef asked.

“Yeah, Eye of the Tiger, Hungry Like the Wolf, Free Bird…”

“Um, that’s probably more appropriate for a trip to the zoo, but sure.”

As the thumping beat of the first song started, Youssef asked: “Hey Rina, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Do you know which one of us is listed higher for transplant?”

Yosef stared at Youssef, but Youssef kept his eyes focused on his canvas.

Rina hopped off the ledge and pulled out the elastic from her ponytail. She wound her hair into a bun, and re-fastened the elastic.

“I think you both have the same status – 1A – which means you both are in the highest category to get transplants if a donor heart becomes available.”

“Yeah, but which one of us is higher?” Youssef held his paintbrush still.

“I really don’t know,” Rina said. “There are so many things that have to align: you and the donor have to have compatible blood types…”

“We’re both Type A.”

“Well, they do HLA marker testing – so even though you’re both the same blood type one of you could still be a better match. Do you know what HLA markers are?”

The YoYos shook their heads.

Rina turned off the music. She scrolled through her iPad and found an image of a circle with lots of different-shaped icons sticking out of it, similar to a child’s picture of a sun with rays. “HLA stands for human leukocyte antigens, which are proteins found on most of the cells in the body. The closer you match with the donor, the less likely you will reject the heart.”

“Well, how do we know what our HLA markers are?” asked Youssef.

“You don’t need to know them, but about once a week when they take your blood, they test them to make sure they have the most up-to-date information. One type isn’t better than another, it’s just how closely you might match with the donor. Get it now?”

The boys nodded.

“The donor has to be of similar body size or smaller, to make sure the heart will fit in your rib cage.”

“Youssef is a bit bigger than me,” said Yosef. He dabbed his paintbrush into the red paint pot on his tray and focused intently on his canvas. Now Youssef was staring at him.

“Not by much,” said Youssef. “I’m losing weight and muscle every day that I’m in this fucking place.”

“Okay, Youssef.” Rina turned off the music. “And you need to be in the same geographic location as the donor, but obviously…”

“Does the donor know who we are?” asked Yosef.

“No,” said Rina. “And you won’t know who the donor is, either, unless the family wants you to.”

“I definitely wouldn’t want to meet them,” said Youssef.

“Why?”

“What if they were disappointed that it was me?”

“I’m sure they’d be thrilled to know they saved the life of a teenage boy.”

“Yeah, but what if they were Jewish, and didn’t like that I was Arab?”

Rina stood up and walked right up to Youssef. “I can’t speak for all Jewish people, but I think I can speak for a lot of us: no one would care. You’re a human being.”

“You just say that because you work in a hospital. Things are different here.”

“Yo – would you be ok with a Jewish heart?” Yosef piped up. “Be honest.”

Youssef put down his paintbrush and looked back and forth at Rina and Yosef. “Okay, honestly…a year ago I might have said no. But now I don’t care who it’s from, I just want to get the hell out of here and be normal again.”

“I guess that’s why people seem to get along in the hospital,” said Rina. “Because you realize we’re all the same inside.”

She turned the music back on and admired the boys’ paintings.

“So back to my original question,” said Youssef. “Which one of us is higher?”

“I told you – I don’t know,” said Rina. “Things can change day-to-day, as well. They don’t want to give a heart to someone so sick that the body is too weak to accept it, but they also need to give it to the sickest patient. It’s a very delicate balance.”

“Well, Yosef seems sicker than me so I guess he’ll get it.”

“I don’t think you guys should play that game,” said Rina. “Hopefully you will both get hearts really soon. In the meantime, the one good thing I can tell you is that you’re both old enough and big enough to accept an adult heart, which means that you both trump any adult waiting for a heart. Kids get to cut the line.”

The YoYos continued painting in silence for a few minutes, absorbing the information. Rina’s phone alarm dinged, and she told the boys they could keep working, but she would have to go to her next patient appointment.

After she left, Youssef stopped painting. “I’ve heard that sometimes a donor heart comes in but then they can’t use it. Like, it’s either too big or there’s some problem with it, the arteries or something.”

“Well, that would suck.”

“Yeah.” Youssef swallowed hard. “And then what if that’s it? Like, there’s no other heart and we just keep getting sicker?”

“Don’t you think the doctors think that’s a good possibility? I mean, do you see how they never look our parents in the eye?”

“And then what?”

“I guess we’ll die.”

“You seem pretty calm about that.”

Yosef put down his paintbrush and looked at Youssef. “I’ve been sick for a lot longer than you. I’ve had time to think about this.”

Youssef started to cry.

“Hey, bro, it’s gonna be okay.” Yosef pushed aside his tray and stood up. He grabbed his IV pole in one hand, and the pole with all of the monitors in the other, and he slowly crossed the room to Youssef’s side. He bent over Youssef’s chair and gave him an awkward hug.

Youssef shook him off, but pulled his hand in for a bro handshake. “Thanks, man.”

Yosef wheeled his poles back to his side. “I find dark humor to be helpful. Like, for example, I’ve been planning my last meal for a while.”

Youssef wiped the tears off his cheeks. “Yalla.”

“Okay, first, super spicy olives, fresh pita from Haba Pita, and hummus from Taim.”

“No way, man,” said Youssef. “The best hummus is Abu Shukri.”

“I’ve never heard of that,” said Yosef.

“Whaaaaat? Seriously?”

“Where is it?”

“The Old City.”

“Well it must be in the Muslim Quarter, if I’ve never been there.”

Youssef nodded. “Yup. Well, when we get out of here, I’ll take you there.”

“Would you really go with me?”

“Betach. You’re my bro.”

***

Later this Sunday evening, after their laughter has died down, and the YoYos have seenOlga’s hypnotic pendant nestled in her breasts, they talk while they play more video games. The boys were supposed to be skyping into their classes and doing schoolwork, but neither has had the attention span nor the strength. No one is fighting them.

“And we start it all again tomorrow morning,” said Youssef, sighing.

“What?”

“Waking up and wondering if today is going to be the day. Or are we just going to have another sucky day in this awful place and lie here and get sicker?”

Yosef could barely talk. His breath was ragged from all the laughing. He rasped: “Tell me your dream day.”

“What dream day?”

“Let’s say you were healthy, but you didn’t have to go to school.”

“Dude, at this point I want to go to school,” said Youssef.

“I know, but I mean, if you had a day off, and you could do anything you wanted, what would it be?”

“Am I rich?”

“Sure. You’re rich and healthy and you’ve got nothing but time on your hands.”

Youssef whistled. “I’m a lucky guy!” He thought for a minute, and then said, “Honestly, a day at the beach with my cousins, some great shawarma in a laffa for dinner, and then a nighttime basketball game with my boys.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah,” said Youssef. “I’m a simple dude. Why, what about you?”

“I want to go to New York,” said Yosef. “I was born there, but I haven’t been back since I was a baby. I want to be in Times Square and see all the excitement. Eat hamburgers and fries. Go to an amusement park. And obviously, I want to fly first class to America and get driven to the airport in a Lambo.”

“Sick.”

Yosef took shallow breaths. One of his monitors beeped, and the night nurse came in to check that everything was okay. She gave him some oxygen through a cannula in his nose. “Just for a little bit,” she said. “Until you’re feeling better.”

The nurse shut the main light, and only the glow of the boys’ phones illuminated the room.

“I don’t think I’m going to make it,” said Yosef.

“Yeah, except you’re number one,” said Youssef.

“What?”

“Number one. Don’t you ever hear the nurse calling us One and Two?”

“I thought she was just talking about us as the two teenage boys.”

“No, you dope,” said Youssef. “We’re one and two on the transplant list. You’re sicker than I am – you’re number one. If you’ve already been waiting for three months, what are the chances I am going to get a heart in time? I’m getting weaker every day.”

“Well, then maybe you’ll be number one.”

“Maybe there will be a crazy car accident or something and there will be two hearts and we’ll both get them.”

“Maybe. Doubtful, but maybe.”

***

The usual sleepiness of the night shift changed dramatically an hour later, once it was certain there was a donor heart available. There was a flurry of activity as family members were called, and nurses and doctors hurried in and out of the room. One of the nurses tried to pull the curtains to section off the room, but the YoYos wanted to be able to see each other.

“I knew it would be you.”

“I really thought it would be you.”

The tension was palpable, as the contradictory emotions battled: fear and excitement and sadness and elation. Yosef and Youssef stared at each other with tearful eyes, just before it was time for the lucky boy to go to the operating room for the transplant surgery.

“See you on the basketball court.”

“Don’t pretend not to know me!”

***