My Sister's Keeper Read Online Free PDF Page B

runny, slippery, like the white
of an egg.
    Dr. Farquad nods. “Leukemia is a blood cancer.” Brian only stares
at her, his eyes fixed. “What does that mean?”
    “Think of bone marrow as a childcare center for developing cells.
Healthy bodies make blood cells that stay in the marrow until they're mature
enough to go out and fight disease or clot or carry oxygen or whatever it is
that they're supposed to do. In a person with leukemia, the childcare-center
doors are opened too early. Immature blood cells wind up circulating, unable to
do their job. It's not always odd to see promyelocytes in a CBC, but when we
checked Kate's under a microscope, we could see abnormalities.” She looks
in turn at each of us. “I'll need to do a bone marrow aspiration to
confirm this, but it seems that Kate has acute promyelocytic leukemia.”
    My tongue is pinned by the weight of the question that, a moment later,
Brian forces out of his own throat: “Is she… is she going to die?”
    I want to shake Dr. Farquad. I want to tell her I will draw the blood for
the coag panel myself from Kate's arms if it means she will take back what she
said. “APL is a very rare subgroup of myeloid leukemia. Only about twelve
hundred people a year are diagnosed with it. The rate of survival for APL
patients is twenty to thirty percent, if treatment starts immediately.”
    I push the numbers out of my head and instead sink my teeth into the rest of
her sentence. “There's a treatment,” I repeat.
    “Yes. With aggressive treatment, myeloid leukemias carry a survival
prognosis of nine months to three years.”
    Last week, I had stood in the doorway of Kate's bedroom, watching her clutch
a satin security blanket in her sleep, a shred of fabric she was rarely
without. You mark my words, I had whispered to Brian. She'll never
give that up. I'm going to have to sew it into the lining of her wedding dress.
    “We'll need to do that bone marrow aspiration. We'll sedate her with a
light general anesthetic. And we can draw the coag panel while she's
asleep.” The doctor leans forward, sympathetic. “You need to know
that kids beat the odds. Every single day.”
    “Okay,” Brian says. He claps his hands together, as if he is
gearing up for a football game. “Okay.”
    Kate pulls her head away from my shirt. Her cheeks are flushed, her
expression wary.
    This is a mistake. This is someone else's unfortunate vial of blood that the
doctor has analyzed. Look at my child, at the shine of her flyaway curls and
the butterfly flight of her smile—this is not the face of someone dying by
degrees.
    I have only known her for two years. But if you took every memory, every
moment, if you stretched them end to end—they'd reach forever.
    They roll up a sheet and tuck it under Kate's belly. They tape her down to
the examination table, two long strips. One nurse strokes Kate's hand, even
after the anesthesia has kicked in and she's asleep. Her lower back is bared
for the long needle that will go into her iliac crest to extract marrow.
    When they gently turn Kate's face to the other side, the tissue paper
beneath her cheek is damp. I learn from my own daughter that you don't have to
be awake to cry.
    Driving home, I am struck by the sudden thought that the world is
inflatable—trees and grass and houses ready to collapse with the single prick
of a pin. I have the sense that if I veer the car to the left, smash through
the picket fence and the Little Tykes playground, it will bounce us back like a
rubber bumper.
    We pass a truck. Batchelder Casket Company, it reads on the side. Drive
Safely. Isn't that a conflict of interest?
    Kate sits in her car seat, eating animal crackers. “Play,” she
commands.
    In the rearview mirror, her face is luminous. Objects are closer than
they appear. I watch her hold up the first cracker. “What does the
tiger say?” I manage.
    “Rrrroar.” She bites off its head, then waves another
cracker.
    “What does the elephant say?”
    Kate