Ashton Kutcher watched his twin brother Michael almost die when they were 13, and it's a moment that's still vividly engrained in his mind.
The brothers appear in “The Checkup with Dr. David Agus,” a new Paramount+ series that just premiered, and get candid about the health struggles that Michael faced when they were teenagers.
At the time, the 13-year-old got sick and thought he had a simple virus. But it turned into something much scarier when the virus affected his heart, which soon grew to four times normal size. Doctors then told Michael he had three to four weeks to live.
At first, Ashton Kutcher didn’t realize the severity of his brother’s condition. But one day, his parents brought him to visit Michael in the intensive care unit, and he knew something was wrong.
“In hindsight, you realize, ‘They want me to see him because they don’t know where this is going,’” he explained.
A visibly emotional Ashton Kutcher recalled how Michael flatlined while he was in the room, and the actor was immediately ushered away from his brother.
Doctors told the twins' parents that they had two options: say their goodbyes or take their chances on a device called an ECMO machine, which oxygenates the patient's blood outside the body. The ECMO machine was a temporary solution, and Michael needed a heart transplant just days afterward.
Finding a match in such a short amount of time was incredibly challenging, and Ashton Kutcher was understandably concerned about his brother.
“I'm sure in hindsight it was so annoying for my parents, but I was like, 'I'm going figure out what the situation is, and I'm going to figure out how to fix it,'" he recalled.
Ashton Kutcher's 13-year-old mind also veered into dark territory at the time.
"I'm thinking to myself, 'Well wait, if anyone's a match, I'm a match.' So now you start running that cycle through your head and you're like, 'This balcony looks far enough to take things...'" he said, seemingly implying that he had contemplated hurting himself.
Soon enough, Michael was secured a donor. The incident made the brothers think about the fragility of life.
"You don’t see a lot of 13-year-olds tell their siblings that they love them. But to me, it was the most important thing that I could do, that I could say to (my brother and sister). It just brings the value of life a little bit closer,” Michael Kutcher said.
Two years later during a routine medical test, doctors found a clot in the atrium of Michael's heart and told him he needed open heart surgery. Ashton Kutcher, who had begun to build a successful career as a model, couldn't help but feel guilty that his life was going so well while his brother was yet again facing health struggles.
"The dynamic had changed and then there was also the guilt of everything. I think standing on the balcony going, 'I'm a match' — that moment is probably the exact moment where the shift took place, where I (was) like, 'How’d I get to be this lucky?'" Ashton Kutcher explained.
The brothers drifted apart a bit once the "That '70s Show" star's career took off, but they had a meaningful conversation when Michael visited Ashton Kutcher in New York early on in his career.
"He looked at me, and he said, 'Every time you feel sorry for me, you make me less.' He said, 'This is the only life I've ever known, so stop feeling sorry for the only thing I have,'" Ashton Kutcher recalled. "That then created an entire shift back to where we are today, which is, 'No we're straight up equals again.'"