My Sister's Keeper: A Novel Read online

  “Dr. Neaux,” the judge interrupts, “what would you recommend, in this case?”

  “Anna needs the guidance of someone with more life experience . . . someone who has her best interests in mind. I’m happy to work with the family, but the parents need to be the parents, here—because the children can’t be.”

  When Sara turns the witness over to me, I go in for the kill. “You’re asking us to believe that donating a kidney will net Anna all these fabulous psychological perks.”

  “That’s correct,” Dr. Neaux says.

  “Doesn’t it stand to reason, then, that if she donates that same kidney—and her sister dies as a result of the operation—then Anna will suffer significant psychological trauma?”

  “I believe her parents will help her reason through that.”

  “What about the fact that Anna’s saying she doesn’t want to be a donor anymore,” I point out. “Isn’t that important?”

  “Absolutely. But like I said, Anna’s current state of mind is driven by the short-term consequences. She doesn’t understand how this decision is really going to play out.”

  “Who does?” I ask. “Mrs. Fitzgerald may not be thirteen, but she lives each day waiting for the other shoe to drop in terms of Kate’s health, don’t you think?”

  Grudgingly, the psychiatrist nods.

  “You might say she defines her own ability to be a good mother by keeping Kate healthy. In fact, if her actions keep Kate alive, she herself benefits psychologically.”

  “Of course.”

  “Mrs. Fitzgerald would be much better off in a family that included Kate. Why, I’d even go as far as to say that the choices she makes in her life are not at all independent, but rather colored by issues concerning Kate’s health care.”

  “Probably.”

  “Then by your own reasoning,” I finish, “isn’t it true that Sara Fitzgerald looks, feels, and acts like a donor for Kate?”

  “Well—”

  “Except she’s not offering her own bone marrow and blood. Just Anna’s.”

  “Mr. Alexander,” the judge warns.

  “And if Sara fits the psychological profile of a closely related donor personality who can’t make independent decisions, then why is she any more capable of making this choice than Anna?”

  From the corner of my eye, I can see Sara’s stunned face. I can hear the judge banging his gavel. “You’re right, Dr. Neaux—parents need to be parents,” I say. “But sometimes that isn’t good enough.”

  JULIA

  JUDGE DESALVO CALLS for a ten-minute break. I put down my knapsack, a Guatemalan weave, and start washing my hands when the door to one of the bathroom stalls opens. Anna comes out, hesitating for just a moment. Then she turns on the tap beside me.

  “Hey,” I say.

  Anna goes to dry her hands under the blower. The air doesn’t feed out, not reading the sensor of her palm for some reason. She waves her fingers beneath the machine again, then stares at them, as if trying to make sure that she’s not invisible. She bangs on the metal.

  When I lean over and wave a hand beneath it, hot air breathes into my palm. We share this small warmth, hobos around a kettle-bellied fire. “Campbell tells me you don’t want to testify.”

  “I don’t really want to talk about it,” Anna says.

  “Well, sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.”

  She leans against the bathroom wall and crosses her arms. “Who died and made you Confucius?” Anna turns away, then reaches down to pick up my knapsack for me. “I like this. All the colors.”

  I take it and slip it over my shoulder. “I saw old women weaving them, when I was in South America. It takes twenty spools of thread to make this pattern.”

  “Truth’s like that,” Anna says, or it’s what I think she says, but by then she has left the room.

  • • •

  I am watching Campbell’s hands. They move around a lot while he is talking; he almost seems to use them to punctuate whatever he’s saying. But they’re trembling a little, too, and I attribute this to the fact that he doesn’t know what I’m going to say. “As the guardian ad litem,” he asks, “what are your recommendations in this case?”

  I take a deep breath and look at Anna. “What I see here is a young woman who has spent her life feeling an enormous responsibility for her sister’s well-being. In fact, she knows she was brought into this world to carry that responsibility.” I glance at Sara, sitting at her table. “I think that this family, when they conceived Anna, had the best of intentions. They wanted to save their older daughter; they believed Anna would be a welcome addition to the family—not just because of what she would provide genetically, but also because they wanted to love her and watch her grow up well.”

  Then I turn to Campbell. “I also understand completely how, in this family, it became critical to do anything that was humanly possible to save Kate. When you love someone, you’ll do anything you can to keep them with you.”

  As a little girl, I used to wake up in the middle of the night remembering my wildest dreams—I was flying; I was locked in a chocolate factory; I was queen of a Caribbean isle. I would wake with the smell of frangipani in my hair or clouds caught in the hem of my nightgown until I realized that I was somewhere different. And no matter how hard I tried, I might fall asleep again but I could not will myself back into the fabric of that dream I’d been having.

  Once, during the night Campbell and I spent together, I woke up in his arms to find him still sleeping. I traced the geography of his face: from the cliff of his cheekbone to the whirlpool of his ear to the laugh lines ravined beside his mouth. Then I closed my eyes and for the first time in my life fell right back into the dream, in the very spot where I’d left it.

  “Unfortunately,” I say to the Court, “there is also a point when you have to step back and say that it’s time to let go.”

  • • •

  For a month after Campbell dumped me, I did not get out of bed except when forced to go to Mass or to sit at the dinner table. I stopped washing my hair. Under my eyes were dark circles. Izzy and I, at very first glance, looked completely different.

  On the day that I mustered the courage to get out of bed of my own volition, I went to Wheeler and trolled around the boathouse, carefully staying hidden until I found a boy on the sailing team—a summer session student—who was taking out one of the school’s skiffs. He had blond hair, instead of Campbell’s black. He was stocky, not tall and lean. I pretended I needed a ride home.

  Within an hour I had fucked him in the backseat of his Honda.

  I did it because if there was someone else, then I wouldn’t smell Campbell on my skin and taste him on the inside of my lips. I did it because I had been feeling so hollow inside that I feared floating away, like a helium balloon that rose so high you couldn’t even see the faintest splash of color.

  I felt this boy whose name I couldn’t be bothered to remember grunting and heaving inside me; I was that empty and that far away. And suddenly I knew what became of all those lost balloons: they were the loves that slipped out of our fists; the blank eyes that rose in every night sky.

  • • •

  “When I first was given this assignment two weeks ago,” I tell the judge, “and I started to look at the dynamics of this family, it seemed to me that medical emancipation was in Anna’s best interests. But then I realized I was guilty of making judgments the way everyone else in this family does—based solely on physiological effects, instead of psychological ones. The easy part of this decision is to figure out what’s medically right for Anna. Bottom line: it is not in her best interests to donate organs and blood that has no medical benefit for Anna herself but prolongs her sister’s life.”

  I see Campbell’s eyes spark; this endorsement has surprised him. “It’s harder to come up with a solution, though—because although it may not be in Anna’s best interests to be a donor for her sister, her own family is incapable of making