If Stefan sees someone on his left and waves, the boys pirouette so Tyler can see him also. "The best thing about having a brother with whom I'm conjoined is that I always have a best friend to talk to," Tyler says.
"Tyler is my best friend," echoes Stefan. "I wouldn't have it any other way."
The other students don't even notice the twins anymore. They are just part of the crowd.
Tim Delp and Nancy Hoffman-Delp, who live in South Jersey, were 26, married four years, and thrilled at the prospect of becoming parents. At 14 weeks into an uneventful pregnancy, they eagerly kept an appointment for a routine ultrasound.
"I could tell right away something was wrong," Tim Delp said. "No one said anything, but the look on the tech's face was one of shock and bewilderment." Two days later, Hoffman-Delp answered an urgent call from her doctor's office. She and her husband were to come in immediately. It was an anxious several hours until the doctor delivered the stunning news: "You are having conjoined twins."
The next day they met George Davis, a perinatologist who specializes in high-risk pregnancies. Every couple of years, he encounters a case like this one. "Dr. Davis, this kind, gentle man, told us that he thought our babies shared facial features - maybe their cheekbones," Hoffman-Delp said. "He said the fatality rate was high - in the neighborhood of 95 percent - and it might be in our best interest to think about terminating the pregnancy."
