Free My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult Page A

six proteins are the same as Kate's,
then Jesse will be an HLA match—a potential donor for bone marrow for his
sister. How bad can the odds be, I think, to match six times over?
    As bad as getting leukemia in the first place.
    The phlebotomist goes off with her blood sample, and Brian and the doctors
release Jesse. He bolts off the table into my arms. “Mommy, they stuck
me.” He holds up his finger, festooned with a Rugrats Band-Aid. His damp,
bright face is hot against my skin.
    I hold him close. I say all the right things. But it is so, so hard to make
myself feel sorry for him.
    “Unfortunately,” Dr. Chance says, “your son isn't a
match.”
    My eyes focus on the houseplant, which still sits withered and brown on the
sill. Someone ought to get rid of that thing. Someone ought to replace it with
orchids, with birds-of-paradise, and other unlikely blooms.
    “It's possible that an unrelated donor will crop up on the national
marrow registry.”
    Brian leans forward, stiff and tense. “But you said a transplant from
an unrelated donor was dangerous.”
    “Yes, I did,” Dr. Chance says. “But sometimes it's all we've
got.”
    I glance up. “What if you can't find a match in the registry?”
    “Well.” The oncologist rubs his forehead. “Then we try to keep
her going until research catches up to her.”
    He is talking about my little girl as if she were some kind of machine: a
car with a faulty carburetor, a plane whose landing gear is stuck. Rather than
face this, I turn away just in time to see one of the misbegotten leaves on the
plant make its suicide plunge to the carpet. Without an explanation I get to my
feet and pick up the planter. I walk out of Dr. Chance's office, past the
receptionist and the other shell-shocked parents waiting with their sick children.
At the first trash receptacle I find, I dump the plant and all its desiccated
soil. I stare at the terra-cotta pot in my hand, and I am just thinking about
smashing it down on the tile floor when I hear a voice behind me.
    “Sara,” Dr. Chance says. “You all right?”
    I turn around slowly, tears springing to my eyes. “I'm fine. I'm
healthy. I'm going to live a long, long life.”
    Handing him the planter, I apologize. He nods, and offers me a handkerchief
from his own pocket.
    “I thought it might be Jesse who could save her. I wanted it to be
Jesse.”
    “We all did,” Dr. Chance answers. “Listen. Twenty years ago,
the survival rate was even smaller. And I've known lots of families where one
sibling isn't a match, but another sibling turns out to be just right.”

My Sister's Keeper
    We only have those two, I start to say, and then I realize that Dr.
Chance is talking about a family I haven't yet had, of children I never
intended. I turn to him, a question on my lips.
    “Brian will wonder where we've gone.” He starts to walk toward his
office, holding up the pot. “What plants,” he asks conversationally,
“would I be least likely to kill?”
    It is so easy to presume that while your own world has ground to an absolute
halt, so has everyone else's. But the trash collector has taken our garbage and
left the cans in the road, just like always. There is a bill from the oil truck
tucked into the front door. Neatly stacked on the counter is a week's worth of
mail. Amazingly, life has gone on.
    Kate is released from the hospital a full week after her admission for
induction chemotherapy. The central line still snaking from her chest bells out
her blouse. The nurses give me a pep talk for encouragement, and a long list of
instructions to follow: when to and when not to call the emergency room, when
we are expected back for more chemotherapy, how to be careful during Kate's
period of immunosuppression.
    At six the next morning, the door to our bedroom opens. Kate tiptoes toward
the bed, although Brian and I have come awake in an instant. “What is it,
honey?” Brian asks.
    She doesn't speak, just lifts her hand to her head and threads