by Jodi Picoult
MONDAY
How great a matter a little fire kindleth!
--THE NEW TESTAMENT, James 3:5
CAMPBELL
WE SLEEP IN THE TINY CABIN, moored to its slip. Tight quarters, but that hardly seems to matter: all night long, she fits herself around me. She snores, just a little. Her front tooth is crooked. Her eyelashes are as long as the nail of my thumb.
These are the minutiae that prove, more than anything else, the difference between us now that fifteen years have passed. When you're seventeen, you don't think about whose apartment you want to sleep in. When you're seventeen, you don't even see the pearl-pink of her bra, the lace that arrows between her legs. When you're seventeen it's all about the now, not the after.
What I had loved about Julia--there, I've said it now--was that she didn't need anyone. At Wheeler, even when she stood out with her pink hair and quilted army-surplus jacket and combat boots, she did this without apology. It was a great irony that the very fact of a relationship with her would diminish her appeal, that the moment she came to love me back and depend on me as much as I depended on her, she would no longer be a truly independent spirit.
No way in hell was I going to be the one to take that quality away from her.
After Julia, there weren't all that many women. None whose names I took the time to remember, anyway. It was far too complicated to maintain the facade; instead, I chose the coward's rocky route of one-night stands. Out of necessity--medical and emotional--I have gotten rather skilled at being an escape artist.
But there are a half-dozen times this past night when I had the opportunity to leave. While Julia was sleeping, I even considered how to do it: a note pinned to the pillow, a message scrawled on the deck with her cherry lipstick. And yet the urge to do this was nowhere near as strong as the need to wait just one more minute, one more hour.
From the spot where he's curled up on the galley table tight as a cinnamon bun, Judge raises his head. He whines a little, and I completely understand. Detangling myself from Julia's rich forest of hair, I slip out of the bed. She inches into the warm spot I've left behind.
I swear, it makes me hard again.
But instead of doing what comes naturally--that is, calling in sick with some latent strain of smallpox and making the clerk of the court reschedule the hearing so that I can spend the day getting laid--I pull on my pants and go above-deck. I want to make sure I'm at the courthouse before Anna, and need to shower and change. I leave Julia the keys to my car--it's a short walk to my place. It's only when Judge and I are on our way home that I realize unlike every other bloodshot morning that I have left a woman, I haven't fashioned some charming symbol of my exit for Julia, something to lessen the blow of abandonment upon waking.
I wonder if this was an oversight. Or if I have been waiting all this time for her to come back, so that I can grow up.
*
When Judge and I arrive at the Garrahy building for the hearing, we have to fight our way through the reporters who have lined up for the Main Event. They thrust microphones in my face, and inadvertently step on Judge's paws. Anna will take one look at walking this gauntlet, and bolt.
Inside the front door, I flag down Vern. "Get us some security out here, will you?" I tell him. "They're going to eat the witnesses alive."
Then I see Sara Fitzgerald, already waiting. She is wearing a suit that most likely hasn't seen the outside of the plastic dry cleaner's bag for a decade, and her hair is pulled back severely into a barrette. She doesn't carry a briefcase, but a knapsack instead. "Good morning," I say evenly.
The door blows open and Brian enters, looking from Sara to me. "Where's Anna?"
Sara takes a step forward. "Didn't she come here with you?"
"She was already gone when I got back from a call at five A.M. She left a note and said she'd meet me here." He glances at the door, at the jackals on the other side. "I bet she took off."
Again, there is the sound of a seal being breached, and then Julia surfs into the courthouse on a crest of shouts and questions. She smooths back her hair, gets her bearings, then looks at me and loses them again.
"I'll find her," I say.
Sara bristles. "No, I will."
Julia looks at each of us. "Find who?"
"Anna is temporarily absent," I explain.
"Absent?" Julia says. "As in disappeared?"
"Not at all." This isn't a lie, either. For Anna to have disappeared, she would have had to appear in the first place.
I realize that I even know where I am headed--at the same moment that Sara understands it, too. In that moment she lets me take the lead. Julia grabs my arm as I am walking toward the door. She shoves my car keys into my hand. "Now you do understand why this isn't going to work?"
I turn to her. "Julia, listen. I want to talk about what's going on between us, too. But this isn't the right time."
"I was talking about Anna. Campbell, she's waffling. She couldn't even show up for her own court date. What does that say to you?"
"That everyone gets scared," I answer finally, fair warning for all of us.
*
The shades to the hospital room are drawn, but that doesn't keep me from seeing the angel pallor of Kate Fitzgerald's face, the web of blue veins mapping out the last-chance path of medication running under her skin. Curled up on the foot of the bed is Anna.
At my command, Judge waits by the door. I crouch down. "Anna, it's time to go."
When the door to the hospital room opens, I'm expecting either Sara Fitzgerald or a doctor with a crash cart. Instead, to my shock, Jesse stands on the threshold. "Hey," he says, as if we are old friends.
How did you get here? I almost ask, but realize I don't want to hear the answer. "We're on our way to the courthouse. Need a lift?" I ask dryly.
"No thanks. I thought since everyone was going to be there, I'd stay here." His eyes do not waver from Kate. "She looks like shit."
"What do you expect," Anna answers, awake now. "She's dying."
Again, I find myself staring at my client. I should know better than most that motivations are never what they seem to be, but I still cannot figure her out. "We need to go."
In the car, Anna rides shotgun while Judge takes a seat in the back. She starts telling me about some crazy precedent she found on the internet, where a guy in Montana in 1876 was legally prohibited from using the water from a river that originated on his brother's land, even though it meant all his crops would dry up. "What are you doing?" she asks, when I deliberately miss the turn to the courthouse.
Instead I pull over next to a park. A girl with a great ass jogs by, holding on to the leash of one of those froufrou dogs that looks more like a cat. "We're gonna be late," Anna says after a moment.
"We already are. Look, Anna. What's going on here?"
She gives me one of those patented teenage looks, as if to say that there's no way she and I descended from the same evolutionary chain. "We're going to court."
"That's not what I'm asking. I want to know why we're going to court."
"Well, Campbell, I guess you cut the first day of law school, but that's pretty much what happens when someone files a lawsuit."
I level my gaze on her, refusing to be bested. "Anna, why are we going to court?"
She doesn't blink. "Why do you have a service dog?"
I rap my fingers on the steering wheel and look out over the park. A mother pushes a stroller now, across the same spot where the jogger was, oblivious to the kid who's trying his best to crawl out. A titter of birds explodes from a tree. "I don't talk about this with anyone," I say.
"I'm not just anyone."
I take a deep breath. "A long time ago I got sick and wound up with an ear infection. But for whatever reason, the medicine didn't work and I got nerve damage. I'm totally deaf in my left ear. Which isn't such a big deal, in the long run, but there are certain lifestyle issues I couldn't handle. Like hearing a car approach, you know, but not being able to tell what direction it's
coming from. Or having someone behind me at the grocery store who wants to pass by me in the aisle, but I don't hear her ask. I got trained with Judge so that in those circumstances, he could be my ears." I hesitate. "I don't like people feeling sorry for me. Hence, the big secret."
Anna stares at me carefully. "I came to your office because just for once, I wanted it to be about me instead of Kate."
But this selfish confession saws out of her sideways; it just doesn't fit. This lawsuit has never been about Anna wanting her sister to die, but simply that she wants a chance to live. "You're lying."
Anna crosses her arms. "Well, you lied first. You hear perfectly fine."
"And you're a brat." I start to laugh. "You remind me of me."
"Is that supposed to be a good thing?" Anna says, but she's smiling.
The park is starting to get more crowded. An entire school group walks the path, toddlers tethered together like sled-dog huskies, pulling two teachers in their wake. Someone zooms past on a racing bike, wearing the colors of the U.S. Postal Service. "C'mon. I'll treat you to breakfast."
"But we're late."
I shrug. "Who's counting?"
*
Judge DeSalvo is not a happy man; Anna's little field trip this morning has cost us an hour and a half. He glares at me when Judge and I hurry into his chambers for the pretrial conference. "Your Honor, I apologize. We had a veterinary emergency."
I feel, rather than see, Sara's mouth drop open. "That's not what opposing counsel indicated," the judge says.
I look DeSalvo right in the eye. "Well, it's what happened. Anna was kind enough to help me by keeping the dog calm while the sliver of glass was removed from his paw."
The judge is dubious. But there are laws against handicapped discrimination, and I'm playing them to the hilt; the last thing I want is for him to blame Anna for this delay. "Is there any way of resolving this petition without a hearing?" he asks.
"I'm afraid not." Anna may not be willing to share her secrets, which I can only respect, but she knows that she wants to go through with this.
The judge accepts my answer. "Mrs. Fitzgerald, I take it you're still representing yourself?"
"Yes, Your Honor," she says.
"All right then." Judge DeSalvo glances at each of us. "This is family court, Counselors. In family court, and especially in hearings like these, I tend to personally relax the rules of evidence because I don't want a contentious hearing. I'm able to filter out what is admissible and what is not, and if there's something truly objectionable, I'll listen to the objection, but I would prefer that we get through this hearing quickly, without worrying about form." He looks directly at me. "I want this to be as painless as possible for everyone involved."
We move into the courtroom--one that's smaller than the criminal courts, but intimidating all the same. I swing into the lobby to pick Anna up along the way. As we cross through the doorway, she stops dead. She glances at the vast paneled walls, the rows of chairs, the imposing bench. "Campbell," she whispers, "I won't have to stand up there and talk, right?"
The fact is, the judge will most likely want to hear what she has to say. Even if Julia comes out in support of her petition, even if Brian says he will help Anna, Judge DeSalvo may want her to take the stand. But telling her this right now is only going to get her all worked up--and that's not any way to start a hearing.
I think about the conversation in the car, when Anna called me a liar. There are two reasons to not tell the truth--because lying will get you what you want, and because lying will keep someone from getting hurt. It's for both of these reasons that I give Anna this answer. "Well," I say, "I doubt it."
*
"Judge," I begin, "I know it's not traditional practice, but there's something I'd like to say before we start calling witnesses."
Judge DeSalvo sighs. "Isn't this sort of standing on ceremony exactly what I asked you not to do?"
"Your Honor, I wouldn't ask if I didn't think it was important."
"Make it quick," the judge says.
I stand up and approach the bench. "Your Honor, all of Anna Fitzgerald's life she has been medically treated for her sister's good, not her own. No one doubts Sara Fitzgerald's love for all her children, or the decisions she's made that have prolonged Kate's life. But today we have to doubt the decisions she's made for this child."
I turn, and see Julia watching me carefully. And suddenly I remember that old ethics assignment, and know what I have to say. "You might remember the recent case of the firefighters in Worcester, Massachusetts, who were killed in a blaze started by a homeless woman. She knew the fire had started and she left the building, but she never called 911 because she thought she might get into trouble. Six men died that night, and yet the State couldn't hold this woman responsible, because in America--even if the consequences are tragic--you are not responsible for someone else's safety. You aren't obligated to help anyone in distress. Not if you're the one who started the fire, not if you're a passerby to a car wreck, not if you're a perfectly matched donor."
I look at Julia again. "We're here today because there's a difference in our system of justice between what's legal and what's moral. Sometimes it's easy to tell them apart. But every now and then, especially when they rub up against each other, right sometimes looks wrong, and wrong sometimes looks right." I walk back to my seat, and stand in front of it. "We're here today," I finish, "so that this Court can help us all see a little more clearly."
*
My first witness is opposing counsel. I watch Sara walk to the stand unsteadily, a sailor getting her sea legs again. She manages to get herself into the seat and be sworn in without ever breaking her gaze away from Anna.
"Judge, I'd like permission to treat Mrs. Fitzgerald as a hostile witness."
The judge frowns. "Mr. Alexander, I truly would hope that both you and Mrs. Fitzgerald can stand to be civilized, here."
"Understood, Your Honor." I walk toward Sara. "Can you state your name?"
She lifts her chin a fraction. "Sara Crofton Fitzgerald."
"You are the mother of the minor child Anna Fitzgerald?"
"Yes. And also of Kate and Jesse."
"Isn't it true that your daughter Kate was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia at age two?"
"That's right."
"At that time did you and your husband decide to conceive a child who would be genetically programmed to be an organ donor for Kate, so that she could be cured?"
Sara's face hardens. "Not the words I would choose, but that was the story behind Anna's conception, yes. We were planning to use Anna's umbilical cord blood for a transplant."
"Why didn't you try to find an unrelated donor?"
"It's much more dangerous. The risk of mortality would have been far higher with someone who wasn't related to Kate."
"So how old was Anna when she first donated an organ or tissue to her sister?"
"Kate had the transplant a month after Anna was born."
I shake my head. "I didn't ask when Kate received it; I asked when Anna donated it. The cord blood was taken from Anna moments after birth, isn't that right?"
"Yes," Sara says, "but Anna wasn't even aware of it."
"How old was Anna the next time she donated some body part to Kate?"
Sara winces, just as I have expected. "She was five when she gave donor lymphocytes."
"What does that involve?"
"Drawing blood from the crooks of her arms."
"Did Anna agree to let you put a needle in her arm?"
"She was five years old," Sara answers.
"Did you ask her if you could put a needle in her arm?"
"I asked her to help her sister."
"Isn't it true that someone had to physically hold Anna down to get the needle in her arm?"
Sara looks at Anna, closes her eyes. "Yes."
"Do you call that voluntary participation, Mrs. Fitzgerald?" From the corner of my eye I can see Judge DeSalvo's brows draw together. "The first t
ime you took lymphocytes from Anna, were there any side effects?"
"She had some bruising. Some tenderness."
"How long was it before you took blood again?"
"A month."
"Did she have to be held down that time, too?"
"Yes, but--"
"What were her side effects then?"
"The same." Sara shakes her head. "You don't understand. It wasn't like I didn't see what was happening to Anna, every time she underwent a procedure. It doesn't matter which of your children you see in that situation--every single time, it breaks you apart."
"And yet, Mrs. Fitzgerald, you managed to get past that sentiment," I say, "because you took blood from Anna a third time."
"It took that long to get all the lymphocytes," Sara says. "It's not an exact procedure."
"How old was Anna the next time she had to undergo medical treatment for her sister's well-being?"
"When Kate was nine she got a raging infection and--"
"Again, that's not what I asked. I want to know what happened to Anna when she was six."
"She donated granulocytes to fight Kate's infection. It's a process a lot like a lymphocyte donation."
"Another needle stick?"
"That's right."
"Did you ask her if she was willing to donate the granulocytes?"
Sara doesn't answer. "Mrs. Fitzgerald," the judge prompts.
She turns toward her daughter, pleading. "Anna, you know we never did any of these things to hurt you. It hurt all of us. If you got the bruises on the outside, then we got them on the inside."
"Mrs. Fitzgerald," I step between her and Anna. "Did you ask her?"
"Please don't do this," Sara says. "We all know the history. I'll stipulate to whatever it is you're trying to do in the process of crucifying me. I'd rather just get this part over with."
"Because it's hard to hear it hashed out again, isn't it?" I know I'm walking a fine line, but behind me there is Anna, and I want her to know that someone here is willing to go the distance for her. "Added up like this, it doesn't seem quite so innocuous, does it?"
"Mr. Alexander, what is the point of this?" Judge DeSalvo says. "I am well aware of the number of procedures Anna's undergone."
"Because we have Kate's medical history, Your Honor, not Anna's."
Judge DeSalvo looks between us. "Be brief, Counselor."
I turn to Sara. "Bone marrow," she says woodenly, before I can ask the question. "She was put under general anesthesia because she was so young, and needles were put into the crests of her hips to draw out the marrow."