They Said I Was Adopted, but I Was Always the Real Daughter novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Relief
Told she has leukemia in front of her family, Inés feels relief; her mother refuses a test, and when her father offers, her mother goes white.
The hematologist said the word leukemia in front of my whole family, and the first thing I felt was relief.
I didn't cry.
I sat in a plastic chair in a room that smelled of hand gel and thought, good.
If I died, I wouldn't owe anyone anything.
I was six when I learned that.
My sister Paulina and I had fought over a teddy bear in the hallway, and my mother pulled me into the laundry room by the wrist.
"You are not our biological daughter," she told me. "Everything in this house is Paulina's first. Remember that."
I remembered it for eighteen years.
Now I was twenty-four, and the doctor was turning her screen toward us.
"Acute leukemia," she said again. "It's aggressive, but we caught it. We start chemotherapy this week, and you'll probably need a bone marrow transplant."
Paulina took my hand and squeezed it hard.
My mother, Graciela, sat on my other side with her leather handbag on her knees.
She had not let go of that bag since we walked in.
She had already taken out a notepad, a pen and a bottle of water for me.
"The best donor is usually family," the doctor said. "I'll need everyone's blood type, and then we'll do cheek swabs. Parents and siblings first."
"I brought everything I could find," my mother said, very helpful, and the doctor nodded gratefully.
She opened her wallet and pulled out a folded card, the kind the family clinic gives you.
Three names were written on it in her neat handwriting, with "O+" beside Paulina's.
My line was blank.
She folded the card away before I could read anything else.
"And you, Mrs. Cárdenas?" the doctor asked. "Your type?"
"Mine doesn't matter," my mother said. "Inés is adopted. We don't share blood, so testing me would waste your lab's time."
The doctor looked at me.
I looked at the wall.
"Then we start with the sister," the doctor said carefully, and wrote something on her pad.
"Test me," Paulina said. "Today, if you can. I'll do anything. I'm not letting her do this alone."
She turned and hugged me, her long hair falling over my shoulder, and I smelled the same vanilla perfume she'd worn since high school.
For a second I almost let myself cry.
"Don't bother Dad about it," she added, speaking over my head to the doctor. "His blood pressure is bad. I'll be enough."
"Of course you will, mija," my mother said, and stroked her hair.
The doctor slid a folder across the desk.
"This is the treatment plan and the insurance authorization. Mrs. Cárdenas, you hold the family policy, so I'll need your signature as the account holder."
My mother uncapped her pen.
"The policy covers the chemotherapy," she said to me, in the voice she used for suppliers. "The transplant is a different matter. That is family money, Inés, and I don't know what your father will want to do. You'll have to be grateful for whatever we decide."
Paulina flinched.
My mother signed on the line.
The doctor slid the second page toward me, the patient consent, and a line under it that read Responsible Family Member.
My mother had already written her name there.
I picked up the pen and crossed it out.
"What are you doing?" she said.
"I'm paying for my own treatment," I said. "I have savings, and I'll sell my car if I have to. I won't sign anything that says you are my family and I owe you for it."
"Don't be dramatic. You'll be dead in six months with that attitude."
"Then it will be on my own money," I said.
The doctor stopped moving.
Paulina whispered, "Inés, please."
My mother said, "Sit down."
I stood up instead.
I took the folder, the pen and my coat.
I didn't say goodbye to anyone.
So I stepped out.
The corridor was long and cold and full of people in paper slippers.
I walked as far as the water cooler before my legs gave out, and I leaned against the wall with the folder against my chest.
Behind me a door opened and shut.
"Inés."
It was my father.
Humberto had been stuck in traffic and had arrived in the middle of everything, still holding his car keys.
He had heard every word through the half-open door.
He didn't say sorry.
He didn't say anything about the bear, or the laundry room, or the years.
He put his hand on my shoulder and said, very low, "A parent is always a half match. The doctor will say so. I'll get tested."
"Dad," I said.
"Tomorrow at nine," he said. "At the lab on Constitución. Don't tell your mother."
"Humberto."
My mother had come out of the room behind him.
She wasn't angry anymore.
Her face had gone the color of the wall, and her hand was clamped around the handle of her bag so tightly that her knuckles showed.
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