He'd learned long ago: perfection isn't what families are all about.

After a lifetime of nods, frowns and stoic smiles, they were both fluent in emotional shorthand.

A young nurse, someone new whom he didn't recognise, came up to Henry and patted him on the arm. "Are you a friend or a family member?" She whispered the question in his ear, trying not to disturb Sheldon. The question hung there like a beautiful chord, ringing in the air. Henry was Chinese, Sheldon obviously wasn't. They looked nothing alike. Nothing at all. "I'm distant family," Henry said.

But choosing to lovingly care for her was like steering a plane into a mountain as gently as possible. The crash is imminent; it's how you spend your time on the way down that counts.

As an author, I get paid to break my own heart on a regular basis.

Henry, this isn't about us. I mean it is, but they don't define you by the button you wear. They define you by what you do, by what your actions say about you. And coming here, despite your parents, says a lot to them- and me. And they're Americans first. They don't see you as the enemy. They see you as a person.

The hardest choices in life aren't between what's right and what's wrong but between what's right and what's best.