I’ve always known he was an impressive guy, but boy did he show his true colours that day in the kitchen. And yeah, he’s teased me before that he’s good at throwing both money and his weight around, but this was far more than that. This was the kind of power flex that came from a parallel universe.

My plan was to call GOSH and see if they could squeeze Tabs in for an emergency appointment that day to conduct the follow-up tests the doctor had told us would be needed to diagnose an infection in the valve itself. But Brendan’s proposal blew that out of the water.

First, he insisted that this would all happen privately and at his expense.

‘You’re not jumping through NHS hoops,’ he said. We were all sitting on the sofa together, Tabs on his lap and his arm around me. At that point, I’d take his physical comfort over any concerns about what Tabs might think.

When I tried to push back—because the money involved would be crazy—he shut me down.

‘It’s the best thing for Tabs,’ he said tersely. ‘End of story. And nothing else matters but that.’

So he called his swanky health insurance provider and had Tabs added to his coverage. Just like that. Then he got them to hook us up with the Portland Hospital, a private women’s and children’s hospital where celebrities give birth, and their cardiology team said they would meet with us that day. His health concierge then got on the case with pulling Tabby’s files from both GOSH and Duke to send over in time for our appointment.

Apparently, when Brendan Sullivan tells people to jump, they ask how high.

We saw the consultant there and she took some tests, including those blood cultures. After a tense forty-eight hour wait, during which Brendan refused to let me go into the office at all, she confirmed that Tabs did indeed have endocarditis and would need a full valve replacement posthaste.

It was nobody’s fault.

It was just one of those things.

This was where it got stressful. I had chosen Duke for a reason. The private London hospitals have fancy equipment, but Dr Elliot and his team are the world’s leading experts at valve replacements for children. A transatlantic trip wasn’t an option for us.

Most normal people would admit defeat and settle for Plan B. Not Brendan. To say he behaved like an emperor was an understatement. He called and called and hustled and hustled, with two outcomes.

One. Brendan formed a multi-million dollar endowment to establish the Tabitha Winters Fellowship in Pediatric Cardiac Innovation at Duke Children’s Hospital.

And two. Poor old Dr Elliott agreed to take a jet—chartered by Brendan, of course—to London yesterday.

I was as mortified as I was horrified.

And I’ve never been so grateful to another human being in my life.