My Sister's Keeper Read Online Free PDF Page A

children are a natural alarm clock; the thought of Kate sleeping so late
makes me remember that she's been sniffling lately, and then wonder if that's
why she was so tired last night. I walk upstairs, calling her name loud. In her
bedroom, she rolls toward me, swimming up from the dark to focus on my face.
    “Rise and shine.” I pull up her shades, let the sun spill over her
blankets. I sit her up and rub her back. “Let's get you dressed,” I
say, and I peel her pajama top over her head.
    Trailing her spine, like a line of small blue jewels, are a string of
bruises.
    “Anemia, right?” I ask the pediatrician. “Kids her age don't
get mono, do they?”
    Dr. Wayne pulls his stethoscope away from Kate's narrow chest and tugs down
her pink shirt. “It could be a virus. I'd like to draw some blood and run
a few tests.”
    Jesse, who has been patiently playing with a GI Joe that has no head, perks
up at this news. “You know how they draw blood, Kate?”
    “Crayons?”
    “With needles. Great big long ones that they stick in like a
shot—”
    “Jesse,” I warn.
    “Shot?” Kate shrieks. “Ouch?”
    My daughter, who trusts me to tell her when it's safe to cross the street,
to cut her meat into tiny pieces, and to protect her from all sorts of horrible
things like large dogs and darkness and loud firecrackers, stares at me with
great expectation. “Only a small one,” I promise.
    When the pediatric nurse comes in with her tray, her syringe, her vials, and
her rubber tourniquet, Kate starts to scream. I take a deep breath. “Kate,
look at me.” Her cries bubble down to small hiccups. “It's just going
to be a tiny pinch.”
    “Liar,” Jesse whispers under his breath.
    Kate relaxes, just the slightest bit. The nurse lays her down on the
examination table and asks me to hold down her shoulders. I watch the needle
break the white skin of her arm; I hear the sudden scream—but there isn't any
blood flowing. “Sorry, sugar,” the nurse says. “I'm going to
have to try again.” She removes the needle, and sticks Kate again, who
howls even louder.
    Kate struggles in earnest through the first and second vials. By the third,
she has gone completely limp. I don't know which is worse.
    We wait for the results of the blood test. Jesse lies on his belly on the
waiting room rug, picking up God knows what sorts of germs from all the sick
children who pass through this office. What I want is for the pediatrician to
come out, tell me to get Kate home and make her drink lots of orange juice, and
wave a prescription for Ceclor in front of us like a magic wand.
    It is an hour before Dr. Wayne summons us to his office again. “Kate's
tests were a little problematic,” he says. “Specifically, her white
cell count. It's much lower than normal.”
    “What does that mean?” In that moment, I curse myself for going to
law school, and not med school. I try to remember what white cells even do.
    “She may have some sort of autoimmune deficiency. Or it might just be a
lab error.” He touches Kate's hair. “I think, just to be safe, I'm
going to send you up to a hematologist at the hospital, to repeat the
test.”
    I am thinking: You must be kidding. But instead, I watch my hand
move of its own accord to take the piece of paper Dr. Wayne offers. Not a
prescription, as I'd hoped, but a name. Ileana Farquad, Providence
Hospital, HematologyI Oncology.
    “Oncology.” I shake my head. “But that's cancer.” I wait
for Dr. Wayne to assure me it's only part of the physician's title, to explain
that the blood lab and the cancer ward simply share a physical location, and
nothing more.
    He doesn't.
    The dispatcher at the fire station tells me that Brian is on a medical call.
He left with the rescue truck twenty minutes ago. I hesitate, and look down at
Kate, who's slumped in one of the plastic seats in the hospital waiting room. A
medical call.
    I think there are crossroads in our lives when we make grand, sweeping
decisions without