Free My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

thrown so fast I cannot feel
them sting anymore. We are told: Do not think; just give your child up to
us, because otherwise she's going to die. For every answer they give us,
we have another question.
    Will her hair grow back?
    Will she ever go to school?
    Can she play with friends?
    Did this happen because of where we live?
    Did this happen because of who we are?
    “What will it be like,” I hear myself ask, “if she
dies?”
    Dr. Chance looks at me. “It depends on what she succumbs to,” he
explains. “If it's infection, she'll be in respiratory distress and on a
ventilator. If it's hemorrhage, she'll bleed out after losing consciousness. If
it's organ failure, the characteristics will vary depending on the system in
distress. Often there's a combination of all of these.”
    “Will she know what's happening,” I ask, when what I really mean
is, How will I survive this?
    “Mrs. Fitzgerald,” he says, as if he has heard my unspoken
question, “of the twenty children here today, ten will be dead in a few
years. I don't know which group Kate will be in.”
    To save Kate's life, part of her has to die. That's the purpose of
chemotherapy—to wipe out all the leukemic cells. To this end, a central line
has been placed beneath Kate's collarbone, a three-pronged port that will be
the entry point for multiple medication administrations, IV fluids, and blood
draws. I look at the tubes sprouting from her thin chest and think of science
fiction movies.
    She has already had a baseline EKG, to make sure her heart can withstand
chemo. She's had dexamethasone ophthalmic drops, because one of the drugs
causes conjunctivitis. She's had blood drawn from her central line, to test for
renal and liver function.
    The nurse hangs the infusion bags on the IV pole and smoothes Kate's hair.
“Will she feel it?” I ask.
    “Nope. Hey, Kate, look here.” She points to the bag of
Daunorubicin, covered with a dark bag to protect it from light. Spotting it are
brightly colored stickers she's helped Kate make while we were waiting. I saw
one teenager with a Post-it note on his: Jesus saves. Chemo scores.
    This is what starts coursing through her veins: the Daunorubicin, 50 mg in
25 ccs of D5W; Cytarabine, 46 mg in a D5W infusion, a continuous
twenty-four-hour IV; Allopurinol, 92 mg IV. Or in other words, poison.
I imagine a great battle going on inside her. I picture shining armies,
casualties that evaporate through her pores.
    They tell us Kate will most likely get sick within a few days, but it takes
only two hours before she starts throwing up. Brian pushes the call button, and
a nurse comes into the room. “We'll get her some Reglan,” she says,
and she disappears.
    When Kate isn't vomiting, she's crying. I sit on the edge of the bed,
holding her half on my lap. The nurses do not have time to nurse.
Short-staffed, they administer antiemetics in the IV; they stay for a few
moments to see how Kate responds—but inevitably they are called elsewhere to
another emergency and the rest falls to us. Brian, who has to leave the room if
one of our children gets a stomach virus, is a model of efficiency:
wiping her forehead, holding her thin shoulders, dabbing tissues around her
mouth. “You can get through this,” he murmurs to her each time she
spits up, but he may only be talking to himself.
    And I, too, am surprising myself. With grim resolve I make a ballet out of
rinsing the emesis basin and bringing it back. If you focus on sandbagging the
beachhead, you can ignore the tsunami that's approaching.
    Try it any other way, and you'll go crazy.
    Brian brings Jesse to the hospital for his blood test: a simple
finger stick. He needs to be restrained by Brian and two male residents; he
screams down the hospital. I stand back, and cross my arms, and inadvertently
think of Kate, who stopped crying over procedures two days ago.
    Some doctor will look at this sample of blood, and will be able to analyze
six proteins, floating invisibly. If these