Jodie Picoult: My Sister's Keeper

But I can't go yet. "Did you really sue God?" I take out all the newspaper clippings, smooth them on the bare desk.

A muscle tics in his cheek, and then he picks up the article lying on top. "I sued the Diocese of Providence, on behalf of a kid in one of their orphanages who needed an experimental treatment involving fetal tissue, which they felt violated Vatican II. However, it makes a much better headline to say that a nine-year-old is suing God for being stuck with the short end of the straw in life." I just stare at him. "Dylan Jerome," the lawyer admits, "wanted to sue God for not caring enough about him."

A rainbow might as well have cracked down the middle of that big mahogany desk. "Mr. Alexander," I say, "my sister has leukemia."

"I'm sorry to hear that. But even if I were willing to litigate against God again, which I'm not, you can't bring a lawsuit on someone else's behalf."

There is way too much to explain—my own blood seeping into my sister's veins; the nurses holding me down to stick me for white cells Kate might borrow; the doctor saying they didn't get enough the first time around. The bruises and the deep bone ache after I gave up my marrow; the shots that sparked more stem cells in me, so that there'd be extra for my sister. The fact that I'm not sick, but I might as well be. The fact that the only reason I was born was as a harvest crop for Kate. The fact that even now, a major decision about me is being made, and no one's bothered to ask the one person who most deserves it to speak her opinion.

There's way too much to explain, and so I do the best I can. "It's not God. Just my parents," I say. "I want to sue them for the rights to my own body."

WHEN YOU ONLY HAVE A HAMMER, everything looks like a nail.

This is something my father, the first Campbell Alexander, used to say; it is also in my opinion the cornerstone of the American civil justice system. Simply put, people who have been backed into a corner will do anything to fight their way to the center again. 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 you don't give your sister a kidney?"

"She'll die."

"And you're okay with that?"

Anna's mouth sets in a thin line. "I'm here, aren't I?"

"Yes, you are. I'm just trying to figure out what made you want to put your foot down, after all this time."

She looks over at the bookshelf. "Because," she says simply, "it never stops."

Suddenly, something seems to jog her memory. She reaches into her pocket and puts a wad of crumpled bills and change onto my desk. "You don't have to worry about getting paid, either. That's $136.87. I know it's not enough, but I'll figure out a way to get more."

"I charge two hundred an hour."

"Dollars?"

"Wampum doesn't fit in the ATM deposit slot," I say.

"Maybe I could walk your dog, or something."

"Service dogs get walked by their owners." I shrug. "We'll work something out."

"You can't be my lawyer for free," she insists.

"Fine, then. You can polish my doorknobs." It's not that I'm a particularly charitable man, but rather that legally, this case is a lock: she doesn't want to give a kidney; no court in its right mind would force her to give up a kidney; I don't have to do any legal research; the parents will cave in before we go to trial, and that will be that. Plus, the case will generate a ton of publicity for me, and will jack up my pro bono for the whole damn decade. "I'm going to file a petition for you in family court: legal emancipation for medical purposes," I say.