My Sisters Keeper | Page 9

all over the kitchen table, and a frighteningly precarious chair
poised beneath the cabinet that holds the corn flakes. A trail of milk leads from the refrigerator to
the bowl. "Where's Kate?"
"Sleeping," Jesse says. "I tried poking her and everything."
My children are a natural alarm clock; the thought of Kate sleeping so late makes me remember that
she's been sniffling lately, and then wonder if that's why she was so tired last night. I walk upstairs,
calling her name loud. In her bedroom, she rolls toward me, swimming up from the dark to focus on
my face.
"Rise and shine." I pull up her shades, let the sun spill over her blankets. I sit her up and rub her
back. "Let's get you dressed," I say, and I peel her pajama top over her head.
Trailing her spine, like a line of small blue jewels, are a string of bruises.
"Anemia, right?" I ask the pediatrician. "Kids her age don't get mono, do they?"
Dr. Wayne pulls his stethoscope away from Kate's narrow
chest and tugs down her pink shirt. "It could be a virus. I'd like to draw some blood and run a few
tests."
Jesse, who has been patiently playing with a GI Joe that has no head, perks up at this news. "You
know how they draw blood, Kate?"
"Crayons?"
"With needles. Great big long ones that they stick in like a shot--"
"Jesse," I warn.
"Shot?" Kate shrieks. "Ouch?"
My daughter, who trusts me to tell her when it's safe to cross the street, to cut her meat into tiny
pieces, and to protect her from all sorts of horrible things like large dogs and darkness and loud
firecrackers, stares at me with great expectation. "Only a small one," I promise.

When the pediatric nurse comes in with her tray, her syringe, her vials, and her rubber tourniquet,
Kate starts to scream. I take a deep breath. "Kate, look at me." Her cries bubble down to small
hiccups. "It's just going to be a tiny pinch."
"Liar," Jesse whispers under his breath.
Kate relaxes, just the slightest bit. The nurse lays her down on the examination table and asks me to
hold down her shoulders. I watch the needle break the white skin of her arm; I hear the sudden
scream--but there isn't any blood flowing. "Sorry, sugar," the nurse says. "I'm going to have to try
again." She removes the needle, and sticks Kate again, who howls even louder.
Kate struggles in earnest through the first and second vials. By the third, she has gone completely
limp. I don't know which is worse.
We wait for the results of the blood test. Jesse lies on his belly on the waiting room rug, picking up
God knows what sorts of germs from all the sick children who pass through this office. What I want
is for the pediatrician to come out, tell me to get Kate home and

make her drink lots of orange juice, and wave a prescription for Ceclor in front of us like a magic
wand.
It is an hour before Dr. Wayne summons us to his office again. "Kate's tests were a little
problematic.' he says. "Specifically, her white cell count. It's much lower than normal."
"What does that mean?" In that moment, I curse myself for going to law school, and not med school.
I try to remember what white cells even do.
"She may have some sort of autoimmune deficiency. Or it might just be a lab error." He touches
Kate's hair. "I think, just to be safe, I'm going to send you up to a hematologist at the hospital, to
repeat the test."
I am thinking: You must be kidding. But instead, I watch my hand move of its own accord to take the
piece of paper Dr. Wayne offers. Not a prescription, as I'd hoped, but a name. Ileana Farquad,
Providence Hospital, Hematology/Oncology.
"Oncology." I shake my head. "But that's cancer." I wait for Dr. Wayne to assure me it's only part of
the physician's title, to explain that the blood lab and the cancer ward simply share a physical
location, and nothing more.
He doesn't.
The dispatcher at the fire station tells me that Brian is on a medical call. He left with the rescue
truck twenty minutes ago. I hesitate, and look down at Kate, who's slumped in one of the plastic
seats in the hospital waiting room. A medical call.
I think there are crossroads in our lives when we make grand, sweeping decisions without even
realizing it. Like scanning the newspaper headline at a red light, and therefore missing the rogue
van that jumps the line of traffic and causes an accident. Entering a coffee shop on a whim and
meeting the man you