My Sister's Keeper: A Novel Read online

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” he says.

  “Does there have to be a trial?”

  “Well . . . your parents can just agree to medical emancipation, and that would be that,” the judge says.

  Like that would ever happen.

  “On the other hand, once someone files a petition—like you have—then the respondent—your parents—have to go to court. If your parents really believe you’re not ready to make these kinds of decisions by yourself, they have to present their reasons to me, or else risk having me find in your favor by default.”

  I nod. I have told myself that no matter what, I’m going to keep cool. If I fall apart at the seams, there’s no way this judge will think I’m capable of deciding anything. I have all these brilliant intentions, but I get sidetracked by the sight of the judge, lifting his can of apple juice.

  Not too long ago, when Kate was in the hospital to get her kidneys checked out, a new nurse handed her a cup and asked for a urine sample. “It better be ready when I come back for it,” she said. Kate—who isn’t a fan of snotty demands—decided the nurse needed to be taken down a peg. She sent me out on a mission to the vending machines, to get the very juice that the judge is drinking now. She poured this into the specimen cup, and when the nurse came back, held it up to the light. “Huh,” Kate said. “Looks a little cloudy. Better filter it through again.” And then she lifted it to her lips and drank it down.

  The nurse turned white and flew out of the room. Kate and I, we laughed until our stomachs cramped. For the rest of that day, all we had to do was catch each other’s eye and we’d dissolve.

  Like a tooth, and then there’s nothing left.

  “Anna?” Judge DeSalvo prompts, and then he sets that stupid can of Mott’s down on the table between us and I burst into tears.

  “I can’t give a kidney to my sister. I just can’t.”

  Without a word, Judge DeSalvo hands me a box of Kleenex. I wad some into a ball, wipe at my eyes and my nose. For a while, he’s quiet, letting me catch my breath. When I look up I find him waiting. “Anna, no hospital in this country will take an organ from an unwilling donor.”

  “Who do you think signs off on it?” I ask. “Not the little kid getting wheeled into the OR—her parents.”

  “You’re not a little kid; you could certainly make your objections known,” he says.

  “Oh, right,” I say, tearing up again. “When you complain because someone’s sticking a needle into you for the tenth time, it’s considered standard operating procedure. All the adults look around with fake smiles and tell each other that no one voluntarily asks for more needles.” I blow my nose into a Kleenex. “The kidney—that’s just today. Tomorrow it’ll be something else. It’s always something else.”

  “Your mother told me you want to drop the lawsuit,” he says. “Did she lie to me?”

  “No.” I swallow hard.

  “Then . . . why did you lie to her?”

  There are a thousand answers for that; I choose the easy one. “Because I love her,” I say, and the tears come all over again. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  He stares at me hard. “You know what, Anna? I’m going to appoint someone who’s going to help your lawyer tell me what’s best for you. How does that sound?”

  My hair’s fallen all over the place; I tuck it behind my ear. My face is so red it feels swollen. “Okay,” I answer.

  “Okay.” He presses an intercom button, and asks to have everyone else sent back.

  My mother comes into the room first and starts to make her way over to me, until Campbell and his dog cut her off. He raises his brows and gives me a thumbs-up sign, but it’s a question. “I’m not sure what’s going on,” Judge DeSalvo says, “so I’m appointing a guardian ad litem to spend two weeks with her. Needless to say, I expect full cooperation on both of your parts. I want the guardian ad litem’s report back, and then we’ll have a hearing. If there’s anything more I need to know at that time, bring it with you.”

  “Two weeks . . .” my mother says. I know what she’s thinking. “Your Honor, with all due respect, two weeks is a very long time, given the severity of my other daughter’s illness.”

  She looks like someone I do not recognize. I have seen her before be a tiger, fighting a medical system that isn’t moving fast enough for her. I have seen her be a rock, giving the rest of us something to cling to. I have seen her be a boxer, coming up swinging before the next punch can be thrown by Fate. But I have never seen her be a lawyer before.

  Judge DeSalvo nods. “All right. We’ll have a hearing next Monday, then. In the meantime I want Kate’s medical records brought to—”

  “Your Honor,” Campbell Alexander interrupts. “As you’re well aware, due to the strange circumstances of this case, my client is living with opposing counsel. That’s a flagrant breach of justice.”

  My mother sucks in her breath. “You are not suggesting my child be taken away from me.”

  Taken away? Where would I go?

  “I can’t be sure that opposing counsel won’t try to use her living arrangements to her best advantage, Your Honor, and possibly pressure my client.” Campbell stares right at the judge, unblinking.

  “Mr. Alexander, there is no way I am pulling this child out of her home,” Judge DeSalvo says, but then he turns to my mother. “However, Mrs. Fitzgerald, you cannot talk about this case with your daughter unless her attorney is present. If you can’t agree to that, or if I hear of any breach in that domestic Chinese wall, I may have to take more drastic action.”

  “Understood, Your Honor,” my mother says.

  “Well.” Judge DeSalvo stands up. “I’ll see you all next week.” He walks out of the room, his flip-flops making small sucking slaps on the tile floor.

  The minute he is gone, I turn to my mother. I can explain, I want to say, but it never makes its way out loud. Suddenly a wet nose pokes into my hand. Judge. It makes my heart, that runaway train, slow down.

  “I need to speak to my client,” Campbell says.

  “Right now she’s my daughter,” my mother says, and she takes my hand and yanks me out of my chair. At the threshold of the door, I manage to look back. Campbell’s fuming. I could have told him it would wind up like this. Daughter trumps everything, no matter what the game.

  • • •

  World War III begins immediately, not with an assassinated archduke or a crazy dictator but with a missed left turn. “Brian,” my mother says, craning her neck. “That was North Park Street.”

  My father blinks out of his fog. “You could have told me before I passed it.”

  “I did.”

  Before I can even weigh the costs and benefits of entering someone else’s battle again, I say, “I didn’t hear you.”

  My mother’s head whips around. “Anna, right now, you are the last person whose input I need or want.”

  “I just—”

  She holds up her hand like the privacy partition in a cab. She shakes her head.

  On the backseat, I slide sideways and curl my feet up, facing to the rear, so that all I see is black.

  “Brian,” my mother says. “You missed it again.”

  • • •

  When we walk in, my mother steams past Kate, who opened the door for us, and past Jesse, who is watching what looks like the scrambled Playboy channel on TV. In the kitchen, she opens cabinets and bangs them shut. She takes food from the refrigerator and smacks it onto the table.

  “Hey,” my father says to Kate. “How’re you feeling?”

  She ignores him, pushing into the kitchen. “What happened?”

  “What happened. Well.” My mother pins me with a gaze. “Why don’t you ask your sister what happened?”

  Kate turns to me, all eyes.

  “Amazing how quiet you are now, when a judge isn’t listening,” my mother says.

  Jesse turns off the television. “She made you talk to a judge? Damn, Anna.”

  M