Taylor Givens had worn a favorite Urban Outfitters dress to school that morning in the spring of 2011 and was horrified that an ER team at Inova Fairfax Hospital was cutting the cool boho frock off of her. Just hours earlier, she’d been sitting in Mrs. Ritchey’s AP Comparative Government class, muddling through a worksheet on the political institutions of China and talking with friends about graduation. So neither Taylor nor her parents were absorbing what a doctor was telling them—that the otherwise healthy 17-year-old was in acute heart failure.

Taylor’s senior year at Centreville High School had been her best yet. A trained soprano who sang everything from Italian arias to Elton John, often accompanying herself on the piano or ukulele, she had become president of the school’s competitive choir and been accepted to Virginia’s Radford University, where she planned to study music therapy.

With shoulder-length red hair, heather-green eyes, and a faint sprinkle of freckles atop her cheekbones, the twiggy teen was never the most extroverted kid but had a close circle of friends (mostly from choir, mostly good students like her), a fondness for the quirky, and an obvious streak of determination. In seventh grade, she’d panicked and walked off stage in the middle of a talent show when she fumbled her song, only to return at the end for a do-over of “Colors of the Wind”—and a standing ovation.

That strong will served her well when senior spring came along and she began feeling like something was wrong...read more