Jodie Picoult - My Sister's Keeper

Three days later, during a routine CBC, the hematologist tells us that Kate is once again throwing promyelocytes, the first slide down a steep slope of relapse.

I have never eavesdropped, at least not intentionally, until the night that Kate comes back from her first date with Taylor, to see a movie. She tiptoes into her room and sits down on Anna's bed. "You awake?" she asks.

Anna rolls over, groans. "I am now." Sleep slips away from her, like a shawl falling to the floor. "How was it?"

"Wow," Kate says, and she laughs. "Wow."

"How wow? Like, tonsil hockey wow?"

"You are so disgusting," Kate whispers, although there's a smile behind it. "But he is a really good kisser." She dangles this like a fisherman.

"Get out!" Anna's voice shines. "So what was it like?"

"Flying," Kate answers. "I bet it feels just the same way."

"I don't get what that has in common with someone slobbering all over you."

"God, Anna, it's not like he spits on you."

"What does Taylor taste like?"

"Popcorn." She laughs. "And guy."

"How did you know what to do?"

"I didn't. It just kind of happened. Like the way you play hockey."

This, finally, makes sense to Anna. "Well," she says, "I do feel pretty good when I'm doing that."

"You have no idea," Kate sighs. There is some movement; I imagine her stripping off her clothes. I wonder if Taylor is imagining the same, somewhere.

Pillow is punched, cover yanked back, sheets rustle as Kate gets into bed and rolls onto her side. "Anna?"

"Hmm?"

"He has scars on his palms, from graft-versus-host," Kate murmurs. "I could feel them when we were holding hands."

"Was it gross?"

"No," she says. "It was like we matched."

At first, I can't get Kate to agree to undergo the peripheral blood stem cell transplant. She refuses because she doesn't want to be hospitalized for chemo, doesn't want to have to sit in reverse isolation for the next six weeks when she could be going out with Taylor Ambrose. "It's your life," I point out to her, and she looks at me as if I'm crazy.

"Exactly," she says.

In the end, we compromise. The oncology team agrees to let Kate begin her chemo as an outpatient, in preparation for a transplant from Anna. At home, she agrees to wear a mask. At the first indication of her counts dropping, she'll be hospitalized. They aren't happy; they worry it will affect the procedure, but like me they also understand that Kate has reached the age where she can bargain with her will.

As it turns out, this separation anxiety is all for naught, since Taylor shows up for Kate's first outpatient chemo appointment. "What are you doing here?"

"I can't seem to stay away," he jokes. "Hey, Mrs. Fitzgerald." He sits down beside Kate in the empty adjoining chair. "God, it feels good to be in one of these without an IV hookup."

"Rub it in," Kate mutters.

Taylor puts his hand on her arm. "How far into it are you?"

"Just started."

He gets up and sits on the wide arm of Kate's chair, picks the emesis basin up from Kate's lap. "A hundred bucks says you can't make it till three without tossing your cookies."

Kate glances at the clock. It is 2:50. "You're on."

"What did you have for lunch?" He grins, wicked. "Or should I guess based on the colors?"

"You're disgusting," Kate says, but her smile is as wide as the sea. Taylor puts his hand on her shoulder. She leans into the contact.

The first time Brian touched me, he saved my life. There had been cataclysmic downpours in Providence, a nor'easter that swelled the tides and put the parking lot at the courthouse entirely underwater. I was clerking then, when we were evacuated. Brian's department was in charge; I walked onto the stone steps of the building to see cars floating by, and abandoned purses, and even a terrified paddling dog. While I had been filing briefs, the world I knew had been submerged. "Need a hand?" Brian asked, dressed in his full turnout gear, and he held out his arms. As he swam me to higher ground, rain struck my face and pelted my back. I wondered how—in a deluge—I could feel like I was being burned alive.

"What's the longest you've ever gone before throwing up?" Kate asks Taylor.

"Two days."

"Get out ."

The nurse glances up from her paperwork. "True," she confirms. "I saw it with my own eyes."

Taylor grins at her. "I told you, I'm a master at this." He looks at the clock: 2:57.

"Don't you have anywhere else you'd rather be?" Kate says.

"Trying to weasel out of the bet?"

"Trying to spare you. Although—" Before she can finish, she goes green. Both the nurse and I rise from ours seats, but Taylor reaches Kate first. He holds the vomit basin beneath her chin and when she starts retching, he rubs his hand in slow circles on her upper back.

"It's okay," he soothes, close to her temple.

The nurse and I exchange glances. "Looks like she's in good hands," the nurse says, and she leaves to take care of another patient.

When Kate is finished, Taylor puts the basin aside and wipes her mouth with a tissue. She looks up at him, glow-eyed and flushed, her nose still running. "Sorry," she mutters.

"For what?" Taylor says. "Tomorrow, it could be me."

I wonder if all mothers feel like this the moment they realize their daughters are growing up—as if it is impossible to believe that the laundry I once folded for her was doll-sized; as if I can still see her dancing in lazy pirouettes along the lip of the sandbox. Wasn't it yesterday that her hand was only as big as the sand dollar she found on the beach? That same hand, the one that's holding a boy's; wasn't it just holding mine, tugging so that I might stop and see the spiderweb, the milkweed pod, any of a thousand moments she wanted me to freeze? Time is an optical illusion—never quite as solid or strong as we think it is. You would assume that, given everything, I saw this coming. But watching Kate watch this boy, I see I have a thousand things to learn.

"I'm some fun date," Kate murmurs.

Taylor smiles at her. "Fries," he says. "For lunch."

Kate smacks his shoulder. "You are disgusting."

He raises one brow. "You lost the bet, you know."

"I seem to have left my trust fund at home."

Taylor pretends to study her. "OK, I know what you can give me instead."

"Sexual favors?" Kate says, forgetting I am here.

"Gee, I don't know," Taylor laughs. "Should we ask your mom?"

She goes plum-red. "Oops."

"Keep this up," I warn, "and your next date will be during a bone marrow aspiration."

"You know the hospital has this dance, right?" Suddenly, Taylor is jittery; his knee bobs up and down. "It's for kids who are sick. There are doctors and nurses there, in case, and it's held in one of the conference rooms at the hospital, but for the most part it's just like a regular prom. You know, lame band, ugly tuxes, punch spiked with platelets." He swallows. "I'm just kidding about that last part. Well, I went last year, stag, and it was pretty dumb, but I figure since you're a patient and I'm a patient maybe this year we could, like, go together."

Kate, with an aplomb I never would have guessed she possesses, considers the offer. "When is it?"

"Saturday."

"As it turns out, I don't have plans to kick the bucket that day." She beams at him. "I'd love to."

"Cool," Taylor says, smiling. "Very cool." He reaches for a fresh basin, careful of Kate's IV line, which snakes down between them. I wonder if her heart is pumping faster, if it will affect the medication. If she'll be sicker, sooner rather than later.

Taylor settles Kate into the crook of his arm. Together, they wait for what comes next.

"It's too low," I say, as Kate holds a pale yellow dress up below her neck. From the spot on the boutique floor where she is sitting, Anna offers up her opinion, too: "You'd look like a banana."