The Bijani twins were unlike any of the other twins Ben had separated because they weren’t babies - they were 29 years old. Born in Iran, Laden and Laleh learned to walk together and went to school, but soon they wanted different career paths. Laden wanted to be a lawyer and Laleh wanted to be a writer.
At first Ben turned down the offer to separate them. They said, however, that they would rather die than go on living the way they were, so he changed his mind. He thought that he should help them because if there was the smallest chance of them surviving, the twins would get to live a life where they were not completely miserable.
The surgery was performed in 2003, and included 28 physicians and more than 100 nurses. 32 hours in, they encountered problems with the blood circulation. The twins brains were very adherent to each other. With babies you can flip them over to work on them, but that was impossible with Ladan and Laleh. Ben wanted to stop the surgery and figure out what had gone wrong, but the twins insisted they either walk out separated, or not at all. The twins ended up dying from uncontrollable blood loss, Laden first, and Laleh ninety minutes later.