Mother, Help Me Live

by Lurlene McDaniel

  Janelle picked up her purse and draped the strap over her shoulder. “As I told you, I felt you both deserved some kind of explanation. I didn’t want you to leave thinking I hated you.”

  Sarah’s throat felt swollen shut as she nodded her understanding.

  Janelle walked to the door, where she turned and gazed longingly at Sarah. “Could you … would you mind terribly if I hugged you good-bye?” she asked.

  Sarah glanced at her mom, who dropped her arm from Sarah’s shoulders. Slowly, Sarah stepped forward to face the woman who had borne her, and who had given her up for adoption. Janelle’s arms slipped around her, and Sarah felt herself pulled closer. The scent of Janelle’s lovely perfume filled Sarah’s senses as she closed her eyes and slowly wound her arms around her mother. They stood motionless in the quiet of the room while Sarah searched inside herself for something to link them. She could not find one memory of this woman to whom she was bound by blood.

  Janelle released her, letting her hands slide along Sarah’s arms until she was holding Sarah’s hands. Tears glistened in her eyes as she studied Sarah’s face. “I haven’t held you since you were a tiny baby. Since the nurse brought you to me and laid you in my arms,” Janelle whispered. “Now, you’re all grown up.”

  She dropped Sarah’s hands. “I’ll leave you the photos, Sarah. They’re your birthright, you know. When I put you up for adoption, I was certain I’d never see you again. In the long run, I’m glad I was able to meet you, and I truly regret not being able to help you. You’re a lovely young woman, and I know your parents are very proud of you.”

  Sarah watched her open the door and, without a backward glance, slip silently into the hall and out of her life.

  Nineteen

  SARAH AND HER mom arrived home to a party arranged by Tina. Scott threw his arms around Sarah and talked excitedly. She listened to their chatter, but felt as if she weren’t a part of their world anymore.

  She was sitting on the steps of the front porch, moodily watching a sprinkler spew water on the front lawn, when Scott brought her a piece of Tina’s homemade chocolate cake. She thanked him for the cake and for the bracelet he’d sent. “I thought about you a lot this summer, and about what you were going through,” he said, lowering himself to the front stoop. “I guess things didn’t work out between you and your birth mother.”

  “Not really I’m glad I met her, even though, at first, she wasn’t too thrilled about my arrival on her doorstep.”

  Tina stole quietly up beside Sarah and sat on the porch step below Scott. There was a time when Sarah would have resented her intrusion, but now she didn’t care. She wanted Tina to hear, uncertain that she was up to telling the story more than once. She was feeling hot and achy all over, and a headache pounded behind her eyes.

  “What’s she like?” Tina asked.

  Sarah gave the highlights of her trip and of the conversations with her birth mother. “The big reunion wasn’t easy on any of us,” Sarah said.

  “I can’t believe she can’t be a bone marrow donor for you.”

  “That was the hardest part of all. I have to admit, I was really counting on her helping me out in that department.”

  “What happens now?” Tina asked, looking worried.

  “I don’t know.” Sarah felt defeated, as if time was running out on her. “I guess they have to keep trying that bone marrow registry.”

  “I wish I could help,” Tina said.

  “Me, too,” Scott said.

  The screen door flew open, and Richie bounded out onto the porch. He had chocolate frosting still smeared on his face. “Sarah,” he said with a beaming smile, “come and see what I made for you.”

  Sarah held him at arm’s length. “Slow down, buster. You didn’t tell me how you liked having Tina for a mommy while Mom and I were gone.”

  Richie sneaked a peek at Tina. “She was bossy. She made me pick up my toys every night.”

  “That doesn’t sound so terrible.”

  Richie shrugged. “She read me stories before bed and let me help her fix breakfast.”

  Sarah glanced at her sister, who grinned. Tina looked older to her, more mature, not so much the thirteen-year-old pain in the neck she’d been months before. Sarah wondered if it was Tina who’d changed, or she herself. She turned back to Richie. “What did you make for me?”

  “A necklace out of clay.” His small face broke into a giant grin.

  “Show me.” Sarah stood, but she felt woozy.

  Richie grabbed her hand, then dropped it. “You’re hot, Sarah.”

  Her mother was just coming out on the porch. Concern replaced the smile on her face. “Are you all right?” she asked, feeling Sarah’s forehead.

  Sarah swayed and grabbed the porch rail. She noticed how cool her mother’s hand felt on her skin. “Why, you’re burning up!” her mother exclaimed. “You get into bed right this minute. I’m calling the doctor.”

  Scott and Tina helped her up to her room. She heard Richie ask, “Is Sarah sick again?”

  The noises of the afternoon faded in and out as Sarah shivered under the covers. No matter how many blankets they put on her, she couldn’t get warm. By nightfall, her mother came into her room and began to pack a suitcase. “Dr. Hernandez wants us to bring you to Memphis right away.”

  “We haven’t even unpacked from California yet,” Sarah protested through chattering teeth.

  “You’re sick, honey, and she wants you in the hospital. Dad’s fixing the backseat of the car with pillows so that you’ll be more comfortable for the trip.”

  Sarah felt like crying. She didn’t want to go back to the lonely days and nights of the hospital. She wanted to stay home. She wanted to start school on the first day of classes. She wanted to be well. She thought about the money and JWC’s letter and the part that said JWC’s granted wish had brought purpose, faith, and courage. The fulfillment of Sarah’s wish had brought only a bittersweet reunion, frustration, and fear. She still had no bone marrow to save her. No amount of money could buy that.

  Scott poked his head through the doorway, concern written all over his face. “You going to be all right?”

  “Sure,” Sarah lied. “Can’t keep me down.”

  He crouched next to her bed and ran the back of his hand across her cheek. “You’d better be all right. Who’s going to be my personal trainer when school starts?”

  “Maybe you’d better start looking for someone else.”

  “No way. You’re my fiancée, remember?”

  She smiled, but the effort hurt. “I release you to choose another.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be released.”

  She reached up and touched his hair. “Don’t hold me to a promise I can’t keep.”

  Scott’s eyes clouded. He kissed her cheek and stood stiffly. “No deal,” he said. “A promise is a promise.”

  How wonderful it would have been to grow up and marry Scott Michaels. How wonderful—and now, how impossible.

  When Scott had gone, Tina came in to see her, looking scared.

  “Thanks for the party,” Sarah said.

  Tina’s eyes filled with tears. “It wasn’t supposed to end this way. It was supposed to be a happy homecoming.”

  Home. For Sarah, the word had a whole new meaning. Home was here, and now that she’d found it again, she didn’t want to leave it. “You keep my green sweater, okay?” she told Tina.

  Tina looked startled. “I don’t want—”

  “Wear it on the first day of school.”

  “What if you want to wear it?”

  Sarah knew she was going to miss the start of school this year. “Just wear it,” Sarah insisted, squeezing Tina’s hand with what little strength she had left.

  After Sarah had hugged a sobbing Richie, her mother helped her out of bed. As they started for the door, a sense of urgency came over Sarah. There were so many things left undone. She said, “Please, wait. Listen—I don’t want the One Last Wish money to go to waste. Make sure it goes t
o Tina and Richie … in case …”

  “We can discuss that later. Right now, I want to get you out of here,” her mother said, holding Sarah firmly around the waist.

  Sarah refused to be sidetracked. “The family can use the money. Mom.”

  “That’s thoughtful of you, but you’ll be back to spend the money with us.”

  “Will you just promise me?” Sarah pleaded.

  Her mother nodded. “I’ll take care of it as soon as possible. Don’t look so frantic—Dr. Hernandez will fix you up, and you can help me shop for whatever you want to buy.”

  “I’m scared,” Sarah confessed. “This time, it’s different.” Whenever she’d gone to the hospital before, it had been for treatments. This time, she was sick, and not from any chemo. She was flushed with fever and felt as if she were melting from the inside. She had been warned that her leukemia was active again. After five years of fighting it, Sarah was battle-weary.

  “Don’t be frightened. We’re family, and we’ll be with you all the way. We’re going to stop this thing somehow.”

  There was so much Sarah wanted to do, to say. “I forgot to tell you thank you,” she whispered to her mom.

  “For what?”

  “For putting up with me all summer. For letting me search for my birth mother, even though you didn’t want me to.”

  “Now that it’s over and done, I’m glad you did it. I’m glad I was able to meet her for myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it took the mystery out of her. It helped me see her as a flesh-and-blood person. I’m grateful to her for giving you up.”

  Sarah understood. Janelle Warren had done what she’d had to do at the time of Sarah’s birth, and Sarah no longer held it against her—or her parents for keeping it from her. “She has a nice life. We’re better off without each other,” Sarah said.

  Her mom squeezed her hand. “All I know, Sarah, is that while I may not have carried you beneath my heart for nine months, I’ve always carried you in my heart. That will never change. You’ll live in my heart forever. I love you, Sarah.”

  “I love you too. Mom.” They held one another, until Sarah, too weak to stand, glanced longingly around her room and said, “I’m ready.”

  Once her dad settled her in the car, Sarah asked, “Will you bring Tina and Richie to see me this weekend?”

  “I couldn’t keep them away.” He tucked the blanket under her chin, and Sarah saw that his eyes were misty.

  “You’ll take good care of them, won’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Mom, too?”

  “And Mom, too. You were my firstborn, Sarah. Don’t forget that. I’m so proud of you.”

  “Although I was grafted onto the McGreggor family tree?” she asked.

  “Grafts have a way of turning out an entirely different blossom—unique and special.”

  “I love you. Daddy.”

  “I love you, baby.”

  Numb and feverish, Sarah lay back on the seat while her mom and dad climbed into the front. Tina held Richie, and they gazed anxiously through the car window. Richie clung to Tina, tears smudging his face.

  “Hurry home,” Tina called as the car backed out of the driveway.

  Sarah didn’t answer, so certain she was that she’d never see her home again.

  Twenty

  IN THE HOSPITAL in Memphis, Sarah was immediately placed in an isolation unit. No one came into her room without donning sterile paper gowns, head coverings, and masks. “It’s a massive infection,” Dr. Hernandez told Sarah and her parents. “And you have no resistance to fight it off.”

  “What will you do?” Sarah heard her dad ask.

  “Keep her isolated, pump her full of antibiotics, and pray that we find a bone marrow donor for her,” Dr. Hernandez answered.

  For Sarah, time passed, but she couldn’t keep track of days and nights. All around her, people came and went dressed in masks and rubber gloves. An IV line was hooked to her arm, and a heart monitor to her chest. She knew her parents took turns staying with her, for she’d wake in the night and see one of them sitting by her bedside. It comforted her, knowing they were within arm’s reach.

  As some signs of improvement came. Dr. Hernandez warned that the antibiotic treatment was only a stopgap. Although they had stemmed the infection, her white blood count was alarmingly high—her leukemia was active and destructive.

  One evening, Dr. Hernandez came rushing into Sarah’s room. “You and your mother must see this,” she said, still tying on her mask.

  She turned on the TV monitor that hung from the wall in the corner of the room. The face of one of the network’s evening newscasters filled the screen. Midsentence, he was saying, “… final story from Ringgold, Georgia, where a young girl walked into our affiliate station to make this eloquent plea for her sister’s life.”

  Sarah almost choked as Tina’s face came onto the monitor. Staring straight into the camera, Tina said, “My sister has leukemia, and if she had a bone marrow transplant, she could probably be cured. But she can’t get one because her doctors can’t find a compatible donor. It’s not that there aren’t compatible donors, you see … it’s just that one hasn’t been discovered yet.

  “That’s because not enough people are willing to become donors. It’s real simple to be one. If you’re between eighteen and fifty-five and in good health, you can be a donor. And maybe you’ll be the one to help Sarah. She’s only fifteen. She’s too young to die.”

  The camera zoomed in on a very tight shot of Tina’s face. “All you have to do is have a little blood drawn, sign a consent form, and become a part of the National Marrow Donor Program. And someday, if you’re lucky, you’ll get a call telling you that you’re a preliminary match. The doctors do some more blood work on you, and then if you’re still a match, they take some of your healthy marrow and transplant it into the person who needs it—like my sister.”

  Slowly, a big smile spread across Tina’s face. “I know lots of people watch this news show every night, so I hope all of you will go to your doctor tomorrow and get your blood checked. Maybe you’ll be the person who saves Sarah.”

  The camera zoomed out, and a reporter recapped the story and added some details. Then she turned to the camera and said, “Thank you, Tina. And good-night, Sarah. God bless.”

  Dr. Hernandez flipped off the set and came over to Sarah’s bed. “That was a gutsy thing for your sister to do,” she said. “Totally amazing that she got on national news.”

  Sarah felt a surge of exhilaration that almost carried her off the bed. “Tina did it for me. Mom,” she said. “And millions of people saw it.”

  Her mother threaded her way through the maze of tubes and wires and hugged Sarah tightly.

  “There’s more,” Dr. Hernandez said. “One of the wire services picked up the story. It’s being carried in newspapers all over the country. Just think about it, Sarah, people will read about you, and hundreds will respond. I know they will.”

  “Maybe one of them will be a match,” her mother said.

  Dr. Hernandez smiled. “Maybe. The bigger the number of volunteers, the better the odds.”

  When Tina came that weekend, Sarah held her and wept, overcome with gratitude. “How did you come up with the idea?” she asked.

  “It was a brainstorm I had right after Mom and Dad took you to the hospital,” Tina admitted sheepishly. “I told Scott, and he helped me.”

  “How?”

  “He drove me to the TV station, and we talked our way into seeing one of those consumer advocate reporters. She was really nice, and once I told her what we wanted to do—tell people about the donor registry—she did an interview for the local evening news. She called later to say that the people at the network liked the interview so much, they would run it on the evening news for the whole country to see.” Tina adjusted her paper mask, and Sarah could tell that behind it, she was grinning. “I’ll bet everybody in the country saw me and knows about you by now.”
>
  Sarah wondered if her birth mother had seen it, then knew it didn’t matter. “Thank you, Tina.”

  “I hope it helps. The reporter said that it would be nice to run full-page ads in newspapers, or order up billboards in some of the bigger cities. That way, even more people could get the message.” She puckered her brow thoughtfully. “It’s a good idea, but I know those things cost a lot of money.”

  Sarah had a lot of money. Her eyes grew wide with revelation, and her gaze locked onto her father and mother. Her father read her thoughts instantly and, barely able to contain the excitement in his voice said, “I’ll get right on it.”

  The drama of the moment was lost on Tina, who continued talking. “I also wanted to do it for you because I was feeling kind of guilty about something.”

  “About what?” Sarah returned her attention to her sister.

  “I was glad when you found out you didn’t have any other sisters. Even though it meant you couldn’t have the bone marrow you needed. That was selfish of me, but I didn’t want you to like any sister better than you like me.” She peeked over the top of her mask. “Are you mad at me?”

  “There’s only one of you, Tina. No one could ever take your place.” Sarah knew that was true. She saw that even if she had a hundred sisters, Tina would be number one. Of course, they’d had their differences, but they were sisters, bound more tightly than ever. Sarah cleared her throat, afraid she’d break down and cry. “Where’s Richie?”

  “Still getting all that gear on,” Tina said.

  Richie came through the double doors in a burst with Dr. Hernandez. The long paper gown trailed behind him, and the mask almost covered his face. He crawled up on a chair beside Sarah’s bed and stared down into her face. “I feel like it’s Halloween,” he said.

  Everyone laughed. Looking around at them, Sarah felt so deeply moved, she choked back her emotions. Here, in a hospital ICU room, were the people whom she loved most in the world. Her family was with her—her real family. All the money in the world couldn’t buy what she already had—a family who cared for her, loved her, fought for her, worked for her. At that moment, she felt as if her heart would burst with love for them.