They Chose My Sister, Then Learned She Was Dying novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Blue Folder

The clinic doctor apologizes, says Maisie asked her to share nothing, and hands Shanna a donor packet. Shanna decides to be tested, and her mother calls to say the whole church will pray over her Sunday.

The doctor met me at the clinic's back door on Tuesday so I wouldn't have to sit in the waiting room.

She was fifty and tired, with reading glasses pushed into her gray hair.

Her hands were shaking a little when she shook mine.

"I owe you the biggest apology I've ever made," she said. "Please sit."

I sat in the chair across from her desk.

The corrected report was already on the blotter, with my name at the top and a column of normal numbers under it.

Next to it was a second page.

"That's your sister's," she said. "I can't hand it to you. I'm only showing you that it exists."

I didn't touch it.

"Did you reach her?"

"Yesterday morning." The doctor took off her glasses. "She listened, said thank you, and asked me not to share her case with anyone in her family. I told her I'd have to respect that."

"She said thank you?"

"She sounded calm."

"Maisie is never calm," I said. "She cries when a commercial has a dog in it."

The doctor looked at me for a moment and didn't answer.

I kept that next to the yellow in my sister's eyes.

"I need to ask you something," I said. "If I give her part of my liver, can my parents stop me?"

"No."

"Can they find out I was tested?"

"Only if you tell them. You're an adult, and so is she. Everything between you and the transplant center is private."

"And if I say yes and change my mind?"

"You can change it at any point, up to the morning of surgery. Nobody will be told why."

She slid a thick folder across the desk.

"The transplant center assigns every donor an advocate whose only job is to ask if you're sure and whether anyone is pressuring you. If you say no, the advocate gives a medical reason and walks you out. You never have to explain yourself to anyone."

I looked at the folder.

It was ordinary. Blue, with a paper clip.

"What's the surgery?"

"The right lobe of your liver goes to her. It grows back in two or three months. You'd be in the hospital about a week, and sore for a month. The risks are real, and I'll go through every one of them."

"What if I say yes and she doesn't want it?"

"Then that's between you."

I picked up the folder and held it on my knees.

My father's voice sat in my head, saying nobody is touching her.

I had spent my whole life being told what I could and couldn't offer.

"Where do I sign?" I said.

The doctor didn't smile.

"Read it first," she said. "Take it home. Ask me everything."

"I'll read it tonight."

"Shanna." She had never used my first name before. "People hear a story like yours and think the donor is the brave one. I want you to be the one who also decides what's good for you. Don't do it to win an argument."

I thought about that in the parking lot, and I decided she was right and that I was doing it anyway.

Not to win an argument.

Because Maisie was eleven the winter she followed me to the bus stop in her pajamas to give me her mittens.

She had never been the one who sent me upstairs.

I got to the building at four.

Cal was on the landing with a laundry basket.

His eyes went straight to the blue folder under my arm.

"Clinic," he said.

"Yes."

"Is that what I think it is?"

"What do you think it is?"

"A transplant packet." He said it quietly. "I'd know the color anywhere."

I held on to the folder with both hands.

"I'm not telling them yet," I said.

"I didn't ask."

"I'm saying it anyway."

He shifted the basket on his hip.

"Okay," he said. "Do you want company while you read the part about the risks? Because I can read it out loud so it sounds less like a lawsuit."

"That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me this week."

"It's Tuesday."

"It's been a long Tuesday."

He laughed, and for one second his whole face changed, and then he looked away and bent for a sock that had fallen.

I went in and sat at my table with the folder.

I got through nine pages.

At the bottom of the ninth, in small type, it said that a living donor must be free of coercion, and that the center would ask me directly whether anyone had tried to influence my decision.

My phone rang, and the screen said Mom.

I let it ring twice, then picked up and put it on speaker.

"Shanna, honey." My mother's voice was thick and sweet. "I'm calling about Sunday."

"What about Sunday?"

"Clifton spoke to the whole church board. Everybody is going to pray for you. The pastor wants to lay hands on you in front of the congregation."

I stared at the ninth page.

"I haven't told anyone I'm sick," I said.

"Oh, we have," my mother said, delighted to have helped. "Everyone's coming."

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