My Sister's Keeper Read Online Free PDF

even realizing it. Like scanning the newspaper headline at a
red light, and therefore missing the rogue van that jumps the line of traffic
and causes an accident. Entering a coffee shop on a whim and meeting the man
you will marry one day, while he's digging for change at the counter. Or this
one: instructing your husband to meet you, when for hours you have been
convincing yourself this is nothing important at all. “Radio him,” I
say. “Tell him we're at the hospital.”
    There is a comfort to having Brian beside me, as if we are now a pair of
sentries, a double line of defense. We have been at Providence Hospital for
three hours, and with every passing minute it gets more difficult to deceive
myself into believing that Dr. Wayne made a mistake. Jesse is asleep in a
plastic chair. Kate has undergone another traumatic blood draw, and a chest X
ray, because I mentioned that she has a cold.
    “Five months,” Brian says carefully to the resident sitting in
front of him with a clipboard. Then he looks at me. “Isn't that when she
rolled over?”
    “I think so.” By now the doctor has asked us everything from what
we were wearing the night Kate was conceived to when she first mastered holding
a spoon. “Her first word?” he asks. Brian smiles. “Dada.”
    “I meant when.”
    “Oh.” He frowns. “I think she was just shy of one.”
    “Excuse me,” I say. “Can you tell me why any of this is
important?”
    “It's just a medical history, Mrs. Fitzgerald. We want to know
everything we can about your daughter, so that we can understand what's wrong
with her.”
    “Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald?” A young woman approaches, wearing a lab
coat. “I'm a phlebotomist. Dr. Farquad wants me to do a coag panel on
Kate.”
    At the sound of her name, Kate blinks up from my lap. She takes one look at
the white coat and slides her arms inside the sleeves of her own shirt.
    “Can't you do a finger stick?”
    “No, this is really the easiest way.”
    Suddenly I remember how, when I was pregnant with Kate, she would get the
hiccups. For hours at a time, my stomach would twitch. Every move she made,
even ones that small, forced me to do something I could not control.
    “Do you think,” I say quietly, “that's what I want to hear?
When you go down to the cafeteria and ask for coffee, would you like it if
someone gave you Coke, because it's easier to reach? When you go to pay by
credit card, would you like it if you were told that's too much hassle, so
you'd better break out your cash?”
    “Sara.” Brian's voice is a distant wind.
    “Do you think that it's easy for me to be sitting here with my child
and not have any idea what's going on or why you're doing all these tests? Do
you think it's easy for her? Since when does anyone get the option to
do what's easiest?”
    “Sara.” It is only when Brian's hand falls onto my
shoulder that I realize how hard I am shaking.
    One more moment, and then the woman storms away, her clogs striking the tile
floor. The minute she is out of sight I wilt. “Sara,” Brian says.
“What's the matter with you?”
    “What's the matter with me? I don't know, Brian, because no
one is coming to tell us what's wrong with—”
    He wraps me in his arms, Kate caught between us like a gasp.
“Ssh,” he says. He tells me it's going to be all right, and for the
first time in my life I don't believe him.
    Suddenly Dr. Farquad, whom we have not seen for hours, comes into the room.
“I hear there was a little problem with the coagulopathy panel.” She
pulls up a chair in front of us. "Kate's complete blood count had some
abnormal results. Her white blood count is very low—1.3. Her hemoglobin is 7.5,
her hematocrit is 18.4, her platelets are 81,000, and her neutrophils are 0.6.
    Numbers like that sometimes indicate an autoimmune disease. But Kate's also
presenting with twelve percent promyelocytes, and five percent blasts, and that
suggests a leukemic syndrome."
    “Leukemic,” I repeat. The word is