My Sister's Keeper

by Jodie Picoult

  It is hard, all of a sudden, to pull an answer through the tunnel of my throat. "Exactly."

  Kate runs the tap and washes her face with a foam of soap. I hand her a towel, and as she rises from the cloud of it, she says, "Something bad's going to happen."

  On alert, I search her out for clues. "What's the matter?"

  "Nothing. But that's the way it works. If there's something as good as Taylor in my life, I'm going to pay for it."

  "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," I say out of habit, yet there is a truth to this. Anyone who believes that people have ultimate control of what life hands to them needs only to spend a day in the shoes of a child with leukemia. Or her mother. "Maybe you're finally getting a break," I say.

  Three days later, during a routine CBC, the hematologist tells us that Kate is once again throwing promyelocytes, the first slide down a steep slope of relapse.

  I have never eavesdropped, at least not intentionally, until the night that Kate comes back from her first date with Taylor, to see a movie. She tiptoes into her room and sits down on Anna's bed. "You awake?" she asks.

  Anna rolls over, groans. "I am now." Sleep slips away from her, like a shawl falling to the floor. "How was it?"

  "Wow," Kate says, and she laughs. "Wow."

  "How wow? Like, tonsil hockey wow?"

  "You are so disgusting," Kate whispers, although there's a smile behind it. "But he is a really good kisser." She dangles this like a fisherman.

  "Get out!" Anna's voice shines. "So what was it like?"

  "Flying," Kate answers. "I bet it feels just the same way."

  "I don't get what that has in common with someone slobbering all over you."

  "God, Anna, it's not like he spits on you."

  "What does Taylor taste like?"

  "Popcorn." She laughs. "And guy."

  "How did you know what to do?"

  "I didn't. It just kind of happened. Like the way you play hockey."

  This, finally, makes sense to Anna. "Well," she says, "I do feel pretty good when I'm doing that."

  "You have no idea," Kate sighs. There is some movement; I imagine her stripping off her clothes. I wonder if Taylor is imagining the same, somewhere.

  Pillow is punched, cover yanked back, sheets rustle as Kate gets into bed and rolls onto her side. "Anna?"

  "Hmm?"

  "He has scars on his palms, from graft-versus-host," Kate murmurs. "I could feel them when we were holding hands."

  "Was it gross?"

  "No," she says. "It was like we matched."

  At first, I can't get Kate to agree to undergo the peripheral blood stem cell transplant. She refuses because she doesn't want to be hospitalized for chemo, doesn't want to have to sit in reverse isolation for the next six weeks when she could be going out with Taylor Ambrose. "It's your life," I point out to her, and she looks at me as if I'm crazy.

  "Exactly," she says.

  In the end, we compromise. The oncology team agrees to let Kate begin her chemo as an outpatient, in preparation for a transplant from Anna. At home, she agrees to wear a mask. At the first indication of her counts dropping, she'll be hospitalized. They aren't happy; they worry it will affect the procedure, but like me they also understand that Kate has reached the age where she can bargain with her will.

  As it turns out, this separation anxiety is all for naught, since Taylor shows up for Kate's first outpatient chemo appointment. "What are you doing here?"

  "I can't seem to stay away," he jokes. "Hey, Mrs. Fitzgerald." He sits down beside Kate in the empty adjoining chair. "God, it feels good to be in one of these without an IV hookup."

  "Rub it in," Kate mutters.

  Taylor puts his hand on her arm. "How far into it are you?"

  "Just started."

  He gets up and sits on the wide arm of Kate's chair, picks the emesis basin up from Kate's lap. "A hundred bucks says you can't make it till three without tossing your cookies."

  Kate glances at the clock. It is 2:50. "You're on."

  "What did you have for lunch?" He grins, wicked. "Or should I guess based on the colors?"

  "You're disgusting," Kate says, but her smile is as wide as the sea. Taylor puts his hand on her shoulder. She leans into the contact.

  The first time Brian touched me, he saved my life. There had been cataclysmic downpours in Providence, a nor'easter that swelled the tides and put the parking lot at the courthouse entirely underwater. I was clerking then, when we were evacuated. Brian's department was in charge; I walked onto the stone steps of the building to see cars floating by, and abandoned purses, and even a terrified paddling dog. While I had been filing briefs, the world I knew had been submerged. "Need a hand?" Brian asked, dressed in his full turnout gear, and he held out his arms. As he swam me to higher ground, rain struck my face and pelted my back. I wondered how—in a deluge—I could feel like I was being burned alive.

  "What's the longest you've ever gone before throwing up?" Kate asks Taylor.

  "Two days."

  "Get out."

  The nurse glances up from her paperwork. "True," she confirms. "I saw it with my own eyes."

  Taylor grins at her. "I told you, I'm a master at this." He looks at the clock: 2:57.

  "Don't you have anywhere else you'd rather be?" Kate says.

  "Trying to weasel out of the bet?"

  "Trying to spare you. Although—" Before she can finish, she goes green. Both the nurse and I rise from ours seats, but Taylor reaches Kate first. He holds the vomit basin beneath her chin and when she starts retching, he rubs his hand in slow circles on her upper back.

  "It's okay," he soothes, close to her temple.

  The nurse and I exchange glances. "Looks like she's in good hands," the nurse says, and she leaves to take care of another patient.

  When Kate is finished, Taylor puts the basin aside and wipes her mouth with a tissue. She looks up at him, glow-eyed and flushed, her nose still running. "Sorry," she mutters.

  "For what?" Taylor says. "Tomorrow, it could be me."

  I wonder if all mothers feel like this the moment they realize their daughters are growing up—as if it is impossible to believe that the laundry I once folded for her was doll-sized; as if I can still see her dancing in lazy pirouettes along the lip of the sandbox. Wasn't it yesterday that her hand was only as big as the sand dollar she found on the beach? That same hand, the one that's holding a boy's; wasn't it just holding mine, tugging so that I might stop and see the spiderweb, the milkweed pod, any of a thousand moments she wanted me to freeze? Time is an optical illusion—never quite as solid or strong as we think it is. You would assume that, given everything, I saw this coming. But watching Kate watch this boy, I see I have a thousand things to learn.

  "I'm some fun date," Kate murmurs.

  Taylor smiles at her. "Fries," he says. "For lunch."

  Kate smacks his shoulder. "You are disgusting."

  He raises one brow. "You lost the bet, you know."

  "I seem to have left my trust fund at home."

  Taylor pretends to study her. "OK, I know what you can give me instead."

  "Sexual favors?" Kate says, forgetting I am here.

  "Gee, I don't know," Taylor laughs. "Should we ask your mom?"

  She goes plum-red. "Oops."

  "Keep this up," I warn, "and your next date will be during a bone marrow aspiration."

  "You know the hospital has this dance, right?" Suddenly, Taylor is jittery; his knee bobs up and down. "It's for kids who are sick. There are doctors and nurses there, in case, and it's held in one of the conference rooms at the hospital, but for the most part it's just like a regular prom. You know, lame band, ugly tuxes, punch spiked with platelets." He swallows. "I'm just kidding about that last part. Well, I went last year, stag, and it was pretty dumb, but I figure since you're a patient and I'm a patient maybe this year we could, like, go together."

  Kate, with an aplomb I never would have guessed she possesses, considers the offer. "When is
it?"

  "Saturday."

  "As it turns out, I don't have plans to kick the bucket that day." She beams at him. "I'd love to."

  "Cool," Taylor says, smiling. "Very cool." He reaches for a fresh basin, careful of Kate's IV line, which snakes down between them. I wonder if her heart is pumping faster, if it will affect the medication. If she'll be sicker, sooner rather than later.

  Taylor settles Kate into the crook of his arm. Together, they wait for what comes next.

  "It's too low," I say, as Kate holds a pale yellow dress up below her neck. From the spot on the boutique floor where she is sitting, Anna offers up her opinion, too: "You'd look like a banana."

  We have been shopping for a prom dress for hours. Kate has only two days to prepare for this dance, and it has become an obsession: what she will wear, how she will do her makeup, if the band is going to play anything remotely decent. Her hair, of course, is not an issue; after chemo she lost it all. She hates wigs—they feel like bugs on her scalp, she says—but she's too self-conscious to go commando. Today, she has wrapped a batik scarf around her head, like a proud, pale African queen.

  The reality of this outing hasn't matched Kate's dreams. Dresses that normal girls wear to proms bare the midriff or shoulders, where Kate's skin is riddled and thickened with scarring. They cling in all the wrong places. They are cut to showcase a healthy, hale body, not to hide the lack of it.

  The saleswoman who hovers like a hummingbird takes the dress from Kate. "It's actually quite modest," she pushes. "It really does cover up a fair amount of cleavage."

  "Will it cover this?" Kate snaps, popping open the buttons of her peasant blouse to reveal her recently replaced Hickman catheter, which sprouts from the center of her chest.

  The saleswoman gasps before she can remember to stop herself. "Oh," she says faintly.

  "Kate!" I scold.

  She shakes her head. "Let's just get out of here."

  As soon as we are on the street in front of the boutique I lace into her. "Just because you're angry, you don't have to take it out on the rest of the world."

  "Well, she's a bitch," Kate retorts. "Did you see her looking at my scarf?"

  "Maybe she just liked the pattern," I say dryly.

  "Yeah, and maybe I'm going to wake up tomorrow and not be sick." Her words fall like boulders between us, cracking the sidewalk. "I'm not going to find a stupid dress. I don't know why I even told Taylor I'd go in the first place."

  "Don't you think every other girl who's going to that dance is in the same boat? Trying to find gowns that cover up tubes and bruises and wires and colostomy bags and God knows what?"

  "I don't care about anyone else," Kate says. "I wanted to look good. Really good, you know, for one night."

  "Taylor already thinks you're beautiful."

  "Well I don't!" Kate cries. "I don't, Mom, and maybe I want to just once."

  It is a warm day, one where the ground beneath our feet seems to be breathing. The sun beats down on my head, on the back of my neck. What do I say to that? I have never been Kate. I have prayed and begged and wanted to be the one who's sick in lieu of her, some devil's Faustian bargain, but that is not the way it's happened.

  "We'll sew something," I suggest. "You can design it."

  "You don't know how to sew," Kate sighs.

  "I'll learn."

  "In a day?" She shakes her head. "You can't fix it every time, Mom. How come I know that, and you don't?"

  She leaves me on the sidewalk and storms off. Anna runs after her, loops her arm through Kate's elbow, and drags her into a storefront a few feet away from the boutique, while I hurry to catch up.

  It is a salon, filled with gum-cracking hairstylists. Kate is struggling to get away from Anna, but Anna, she can be strong when she wants to be. "Hey," Anna says, getting the attention of the receptionist. "Do you work here?"

  "When I'm forced to."

  "You guys do prom hairstyles?"

  "Sure," the stylist says. "Like an updo?"

  "Yeah. For my sister." Anna looks at Kate, who has stopped fighting. A smile glows slowly across her face, like a firefly caught in a jelly jar.

  "That's right. For me," Kate says mischievously, and she unwinds the scarf from her bald head.

  Everyone in the salon stops speaking. Kate stands regally straight. "We were thinking of French braids," Anna continues.

  "A perm," Kate adds.

  Anna giggles. "Maybe a nice chignon."

  The stylist swallows, caught between shock and sympathy and political correctness. "Well, um, we might be able to do something for you." She clears her throat. "There's always, you know, extensions."

  "Extensions," Anna repeats, and Kate bursts out laughing.

  The stylist begins to look behind the girls, toward the ceiling. "Is this like a Candid Camera thing?"

  At that, my daughters collapse into each other's arms, hysterical. They laugh until they cannot catch their breath. They laugh until they cry.

  As a chaperone at the Providence Hospital Prom, I am in charge of the punch. Like every other food item provided for the celebrants, it's neutropenic. The nurses—fairy godmothers for the night—have converted a conference room into a fantasy dance hall, complete with streamers and a disco ball and mood lighting.

  Kate is a vine twined around Taylor. They sway to completely different music than the song that is playing. Kate wears her obligatory blue mask. Taylor has given her a corsage made of silk flowers, because real ones can carry diseases that immunocompromised patients can't fight off. In the end, I did not wind up sewing a dress; I found one online at Bluefly.com: a gold sheath, cut in a V for Kate's catheter. But over this is a long-sleeved, sheer shirt, one that wraps at the waist and glimmers when she turns this way and that so when you notice the strange triple tubing coming out by her breastbone, you wonder if it was only a trick of the light.

  We took a thousand photos before leaving the house. When Kate and Taylor had escaped and were waiting for me in the car, I went to put the camera away and found Brian in the kitchen with his back to me. "Hey," I said. "You going to wave us off? Throw rice?"

  It was only when he turned around that I realized he'd come in here to cry. "I didn't expect to see this," he said. "I didn't think I'd get to have this memory."

  I fitted myself against him, working our bodies so tight it felt as if we'd been carved from the same smooth stone. "Wait up for us," I whispered, and then I left.

  Now, I hand a cup of punch to a boy whose hair is just starting to fall out in small tufts. It sheds on the black lapel of his tuxedo. "Thanks," he says, and I see he has the most beautiful eyes, dark and still as a panther's. I glance away and realize that Kate and Taylor are gone.

  What if she's sick? What if he's sick? I have promised myself I wouldn't be overprotective, but there are too many children here for the staff to really keep track of. I ask another parent to take over my punch station and then I search out the ladies' room. I check the supply closet. I walk through empty hallways and dark corridors and even the chapel.

  Finally I hear Kate's voice through a cracked doorway. She and Taylor stand under a spotlight moon, holding hands. The courtyard they've found is a favorite for the residents during the daytime; many doctors who wouldn't otherwise see the light of the sun take their lunches out here.

  I am about to ask if they're all right when Kate speaks. "Are you afraid of dying?"

  Taylor shakes his head. "Not really. Sometimes, though, I think about my funeral. If people will say good things, you know, about me. If anyone will cry." He hesitates. "If anyone will even come."

  "I will," Kate promises.

  Taylor dips his head toward Kate's, and she sways closer, and I realize that this is why I followed them. I knew this was what I would find, and like Brian, I wanted one more picture of my daughter, one that I might worry between my fingers like a piece of sea glass. Taylor lifts up the edges of her blue hygienic mask and I know I should stop him, I know I have to, but I don't. This m
uch I want her to have.

  When they kiss, it is beautiful: those alabaster heads bent together, smooth as statues—an optical illusion, a mirror image that's folding into itself.

  When Kate goes into the hospital for her stem cell transplant, she's an emotional wreck. She is far less concerned with the runny fluid being infused into her catheter than she is with the fact that Taylor hasn't called her in three days, and has in fact not returned her calls either. "Did you have a fight?" I ask, and she shakes her head. "Did he say he was going somewhere? Maybe it was an emergency," I say. "Maybe this has nothing to do with you at all."

  "Maybe it does," Kate argues.

  "Then the best revenge is getting healthy enough to give him a piece of your mind," I point out. "I'll be right back."

  In the hallway, I approach Steph, a nurse who has just come on duty and who's known Kate for years. The truth is, I am just as surprised about Taylor's lack of communication as Kate is. He knew she was coming in here.

  "Taylor Ambrose," I ask Steph. "Has he been in today?"

  She looks at me and blinks.

  "Big kid, sweet. Hung up on my daughter," I joke.

  "Oh, Sara… I thought for sure someone would have told you," Steph says. "He died this morning."

  I don't tell Kate, not for a month. Not until the day Dr. Chance says Kate is well enough to leave the hospital, until Kate has already convinced herself she was better off without him. I cannot begin to tell you the words I use; none of them are big enough to bear the weight behind them. I mention how I went to Taylor's house and spoke to his mother; how she broke down in my arms and said she'd wanted to call me, but there was a part of her that was so jealous it swallowed all her speech. She told me that Taylor, who'd come home from the prom walking on air, had walked into her bedroom in the middle of the night, with a 105 degree fever. How maybe it was viral and maybe it was fungal but he'd gone into respiratory distress and then cardiac arrest and after thirty minutes of trying the doctors had to let him go.

  I don't tell Kate something else Jenna Ambrose said—that afterward, she went inside and stared at her son, who wasn't her son anymore. That she sat for five whole hours, sure he was going to wake up. That even now she hears noise overhead and thinks Taylor is moving around his room, and that the half-second she is gifted before she remembers the truth is the only reason she gets up each morning.