My Sisters Keeper | Page 6

For some, this means throwing
punches. For others, it means instigating a lawsuit. And for that, I'm especially grateful.
On the periphery of my desk Kerri has arranged my messages the way I prefer--urgent ones written
on green Post-its, less pressing matters on yellow ones, lined up in neat columns like a double game
of solitaire. One phone number catches my eye, and I frown, moving the green Post-it to the yellow
side instead. Your mother called four times!!! Kerri has written. On second thought, I rip the Post-it
in half and send it sailing into the trash.
The girl sitting across from me waits for an answer, one I'm deliberately withholding. She says she
wants to sue her parents, like every other teenager on the planet. But she wants to sue for the rights
to her own body. It is exactly the kind of case I avoid like the Black Plague--one which requires far
too much effort and client baby-sitting. With a sigh, I get up. "What did you say your name was?"
"I didn't." She sits a little straighter. "It's Anna Fitzgerald."
I open the door and bellow for my secretary. "Kerri! Can you get the Planned Parenthood number
for Ms. Fitzgerald?"
"What?" When I turn around, the kid is standing. "Planned Parenthood?"
"Look, Anna, here's a little advice. Instigating a lawsuit because your parents won't let you get birth
control pills or go to an abortion clinic is like using a sledgehammer to kill a mosquito. You can save
your allowance money and go to Planned Parenthood; they're far better equipped to deal with your
problem."
For the first time since I've entered my office, I really, truly look at her. Anger glows around this kid
like electricity. "My sister is dying, and my mother wants me to donate one of my kidneys to her,"
she says hotly. "Somehow I don't think a handful of free condoms is going to take care of that."
You know how every now and then, you have a moment where your whole life stretches out ahead
of you like a forked road, and even as you choose one gritty path you've got your eyes on the other
the whole time, certain that you're making a mistake? Kerri approaches, holding out a strip of paper
with the number I've asked for, but I close the door without taking it and walk back to my desk. "No
one can make you donate an organ if you don't want to."
"Oh, really?" She leans forward, counting off on her fingers. "The first time I gave something to my
sister, it was cord blood, and I was a newborn. She has leukemia--APL--and my cells put her into
remission. The next time she relapsed, I was five and I had lymphocytes drawn from me, three
times over, because the doctors never seemed to get enough of them the first time around. When

that stopped working, they took bone marrow for a transplant. When Kate got infections, I had to
donate granulocytes. When she relapsed again, I had to donate peripheral blood stem cells."
This girl's medical vocabulary would put some of my paid experts to shame. I pull a legal pad out of
a drawer. "Obviously, you've agreed to be a donor for your sister before."

She hesitates, then shakes her head. "Nobody ever asked."
"Did you tell your parents you don't want to donate a kidney?"
"They don't listen to me."
"They might, if you mentioned this."
She looks down, so that her hair covers her face. "They don't really pay attention to me, except
when they need my blood or something. I wouldn't even be alive, if it wasn't for Kate being sick."
An heir and a spare: this was a custom that went back to my ancestors in England. It sounded
callous--having a subsequent child just in case the first one happens to die--yet it had been
eminently practical once. Being an afterthought might not sit well with this kid, but the truth is that
children are conceived for less than admirable reasons every single day: to glue a bad marriage
together; to keep the family name alive; to mold in a parent's own image. "They had me so that I
could save Kate," the girl explains. "They went to special doctors and everything, and picked the
embryo that would be a perfect genetic match."
There had been ethics courses in law school, but they were generally regarded as either a gut or an
oxymoron, and I usually skipped them. Still, anyone who tuned in periodically to CNN would know
about the controversies of stem cell research. Spare-parts babies, designer infants, the science of
tomorrow to save the children of today.
I tap my pen on the desk, and Judge--my dog--sidles closer. "What happens if