Sara
1997
NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES you drive to the emergency room, it never becomes routine. Brian carries ourdaughter in his arms, blood running down her face. The triage nurse waves us inside, shepherds the other kidsto the bank of plastic chairs where they can wait. A resident comes into the cubicle, all business. “Whathappened?”
“She went over the handlebars of her bike,” I said. “She landed on concrete. There doesn’t seem to be anyevidence of concussion, but there’s a scalp lac at the hairline of about an inch and a half.”
The doctor lays her down gently on the table, snaps on gloves, and peers at her forehead. “Are you a doctoror a nurse?”
I try to smile. “Just used to this.”
It takes eighty-two stitches to sew up the gash. Afterward, with a bright white patch of gauze taped to herhead, and a hefty dose of pediatric Tylenol swimming through her veins, we walk out to the waiting area,hand in hand.
Jesse asks her how many stitches she needed. Brian tells her she was just as brave as a firefighter. Kateglances at Anna’s fresh bandage. “I like it better when I get to sit out here,” she says.
spaceIt starts when Kate screams in the bathroom. I race upstairs and jimmy the lock to find my nine-year-oldstanding in front of a toilet spattered with blood. Blood runs down her legs, too, and has soaked through herunderpants. This is the calling card for APL—hemorrhage in all sorts of masks and disguises. Kate’s hadrectal bleeding before, but she was a toddler; she would not remember. “It’s all right,” I say calmly.
I get a warm washcloth to clean her up, and find a sanitary napkin for her underwear. I watch her try toposition the bulk of the pad between her legs. This is the moment I would have had with her when she got herperiod; will she live long enough for that?
“Mom,” Kate says. “It’s back.”
“Clinical relapse.” Dr. Chance takes off his glasses and presses his thumbs to the corners of his eyes. “I thinka bone marrow transplant’s the way to go.”
My mind jumps to a memory of an inflatable Bozo punching bag I had when I was Anna’s age; filled withsand at the bottom, I’d whack it only to have it pop back up.
“But a few months ago,” Brian says, “you told us they were dangerous.”
“They are. Fifty percent of patients who receive BMTs are cured. The other half don’t survive the chemo andthe radiation leading up to the transplant. Some are killed by the complications they develop after thetransplant’s done.”
Brian looks at me, and then speaks the fear that ripples between us. “Then why would we even put Kate atrisk?”
“Because if you don’t,” Dr. Chance explains, “she will die.”
spaceThe first time I call the insurance company, they hang up on me by mistake. The second time, I wait throughMuzak for twenty-two minutes before reaching a customer service representative. “Can I have your policynumber?”
I give her the one all municipal employees get, and Brian’s Social Security number. “How can I help you?”
“I spoke to someone there a week ago,” I explain. “My daughter has leukemia, and needs a bone marrowtransplant. The hospital explained that our insurance company needs to sign off on coverage.”
A bone marrow transplant costs from $100,000 upward. Needless to say, we don’t have that kind of cashlying around. But just because a doctor has recommended the transplant doesn’t mean that our insurancecompany will agree.
“That sort of procedure needs a special review—”
“Yes, I know. That’s where we were a week ago. I’m calling because I haven’t heard back from you yet.”
She puts me on hold, so that she can look up my file. I hear a subtle click, and then the tinny voice of arecorded operator. If you’d like to make a call…“Shit!” I slam down the phone.
Anna, vigilant, pokes her head around the doorway. “You said a bad word.”
“I know.” I pick up the receiver and hit the redial button. I wind my way through the touch-tone menu.
Finally, I reach a living person. “I was just disconnected. Again.”
It takes this rep five more minutes to take down all the same numbers and names and history I have alreadygiven her predecessors. “We actually have reviewed your daughter’s case,” the woman says. “Unfortunately,at this time, we don’t think that procedure is in her best interests.”
I feel heat rush to my face. “Is dying?”
spaceIn preparation for the bone marrow harvest, I have to give Anna ongoing growth factor shots, just like I oncegave Kate after her initial cord blood transplant. The intent is to hyper-pack Anna’s marrow, so that when it istime to withdraw the cells, there will be plenty for Kate.
Anna has been told this, too, but all she knows is that twice a day, her mother has to give her a shot.
We use EMLA cream, a topical anesthetic. The cream is supposed to keep her from feeling the prick of theneedle, but she still yells. I wonder if it hurts as much as having your six-year-old stare you in the eye and sayshe hates you.
“Mrs. Fitzgerald,” the insurance company’s customer service supervisor says, “we appreciate where you’recoming from. Truly.”
“Somehow, I find that very hard to believe,” I say. “Somehow I doubt that you have a daughter in a life-or-death situation, and that your advisory board isn’t looking solely at the bottom line cost of a transplant.” Ihave told myself that I will not lose my temper, and already thirty seconds into this phone call with theinsurance company, I have ceded the battle.
“AmeriLife will pay ninety percent of what’s considered reasonable and customary for a donor lymphocyteinfusion. However, should you still choose to do a bone marrow transplant, we are willing to cover tenpercent of the costs.”
I take a deep breath. “The doctors on your board who recommended this—what’s their specialty?”
“I don’t—”
“It’s not acute promyelocytic leukemia, though, is it? Because even an oncologist who graduated last in hisclass from some hack medical school in Guam could probably tell you that a DLI isn’t going to work as acure. That three months from now, we’ll be having this same discussion again. Plus, if you’d asked a doctorwho had any familiarity with my daughter’s particular disease burden, he’d tell you that repeating a treatmentthat’s already been tried is highly unlikely to produce results in an APL patient, because they develop aresistance. Which means that AmeriLife is basically agreeing to throw money down a toilet, but not to spendit on the one thing that might actually have a chance of saving my child’s life.”
There is a pregnant bubble of silence on the other end of the phone. “Mrs. Fitzgerald,” the supervisorsuggests, “it is my understanding that if you follow this protocol, the insurance company would have noproblems then paying for the transplant.”
“Except that my daughter might not be alive by then to get it. We aren’t talking about a car, where we can trya used part first and if it doesn’t work, get a new one shipped in. We’re talking about a human being. Ahuman being. Do you automatons there even know what the hell that is?”
This time, I’m expecting the click when I am disconnected.
Zanne shows up the night before we are due to go to the hospital to begin Kate’s preparatory transplantregimen. She lets Jesse help her set up her portable office, takes a phone call from Australia, and then comesinto the kitchen so that Brian and I can catch her up on daily routines. “Anna’s got gymnastics on Tuesday,” Itell her. “Three o’clock. And I expect the oil truck to come sometime this week.”
“The trash goes out on Wednesday,” Brian adds.
“Don’t walk Jesse into school. Apparently, that’s anathema for sixth-graders.”
She nods and listens and even takes notes, and then says she has a couple of questions. “The fish…”
“Gets fed twice a day. Jesse can do it, if you remind him.”
“Is there an official bedtime?” Zanne asks.
“Yeah,” I reply. “Do you want me to give you the real one, or the one you can use if you’re going to tack onan extra hour as a special treat?”
“Anna’s eight o’clock,” Brian says. “Jesse’s ten. Anything else?”
“Yes.” Zanne reaches into her pocket and takes out a check made out to us, for $100,000.
“Suzanne,” I say, stunned. “We can’t take that.”
“I know how much it costs. You can’t cover it. I can. Let me.”
Brian picks up the check and hands it back to her. “Thank you,” he says. “But actually, we’ve got thetransplant covered.”
This is news to me. “We do?”
“The guys at the station sent out a call to arms, nationwide, and got a bunch of donations from otherfirefighters.” Brian looks at me. “I just found out today.”
“Really?” Inside me a weight lifts.
He shrugs. “They’re my brothers,” he explains.
I turn to Zanne and hug her. “Thank you. For even offering.”
“It’s here if you need it,” she answers.
But we don’t. We are able to do this, at least.
“Kate!” I call the next morning. “It’s time to go!”
Anna is curled on Zanne’s lap on the couch. She pulls her thumb out of her mouth but she doesn’t say good-bye.
“Kate!” I yell again. “We’re leaving!”
Jesse smirks over his Nintendo controls. “Like you’d really take off without her.”
“She doesn’t know that. Kate!” Sighing, I swing up the stairs toward her bedroom.
The door is closed. With a soft knock, I push it open, and find Kate in the final throes of making her bed. Thequilt is pulled tight enough to bounce a dime off its middle; the pillows have been fluffed and centered. Herstuffed animals, relics at this point, sit on the window seat in gradated succession, tallest to smallest. Evenher shoes have been neatly arranged in her closet, and the mess on her desk has vanished.
“Okay.” I haven’t even asked her to clean up. “Clearly, I’m in the wrong bedroom.”
She turns. “It’s in case I don’t come back,” she says.
When I first became a parent I used to lie in bed at night and imagine the most horrible succession ofmaladies: the bite of a jellyfish, the taste of a poisonous berry, the smile of a dangerous stranger, the dive intoa shallow pool. There are so many ways a child can be harmed that it seems nearly impossible one personalone could succeed at keeping him safe. As my children got older, the hazards only changed: inhaling glue,playing with matches, small pink pills sold behind the bleachers of the middle school. You can stay up allnight and still not count all the ways to lose the people you love.
It seems to me, now that this is more than just a hypothetical, that a parent falls one of two ways when told achild has a fatal disease. Either you dissolve into a puddle, or you take the blow on the cheek and forceyourself to lift your face again for more. In this, we probably look a lot like the patients.
Kate is semi-conscious on her bed, her central line tubes blooming like a fountain from her chest. The chemohas made her throw up thirty-two times, and has given her mouth sores and such bad mucositis that shesounds like a cystic fibrosis patient.
She turns to me and tries to speak, but coughs up phlegm instead. “Drown,” she chokes out.
Raising the suction tube she’s clutching in her hands, I clear out her mouth and throat. “I’ll do it while yourest,” I promise, and that is how I come to breathe for her.
An oncology ward is a battlefield, and there are definite hierarchies of command. The patients, they’re theones doing the tour of duty. The doctors breeze in and out like conquering heroes, but they need to read yourchild’s chart to remember where they’ve left off from the previous visit. It is the nurses who are the seasonedsergeants—the ones who are there when your baby is shaking with such a high fever she needs to be bathedin ice, the ones who can teach you how to flush a central venous catheter, or suggest which patient floorkitchens might still have Popsicles left to be stolen, or tell you which dry cleaners know how to remove thestains of blood and chemotherapies from clothing. The nurses know the name of your daughter’s stuffedwalrus and show her how to make tissue paper flowers to twine around her IV stand. The doctors may bemapping out the war games, but it is the nurses who make the conflict bearable.
You get to know them as they know you, because they take the place of friends you once had in a previouslife, the one before diagnosis. Donna’s daughter, for example, is studying to be a vet. Ludmilla, on thegraveyard shift, wears laminated pictures of Sanibel Island clipped like charms to her stethoscope, becauseit’s where she wants to retire. Willie, the male nurse, has a weakness for chocolate and a wife expectingtriplets.
One night during Kate’s induction, when I have been awake for so long that my body has forgotten how tosegue into sleep, I turn on the TV while she sleeps. I mute it, so that the volume won’t disturb her. RobinLeach is walking through the palatial home of someone Rich and Famous. There are gold-plated bidets andhand-carved teak beds, a pool in the shape of a butterfly. There are ten-car garages and red clay tennis courtsand eleven roaming peacocks. It’s a world I can’t even wrap my head around—a life I would never imaginefor myself.
Sort of like this one used to be.
I can’t even really remember what it was like to hear a story about a mother with breast cancer or a baby bornwith congenital heart problems or any other medical burden, and to feel myself crack down the middle: halfsympathetic, half grateful that my own family was safe. We have become that story, for everyone else.
I don’t realize I’m crying until Donna kneels down in front of me and takes the TV remote out of my hand.
“Sara,” the nurse says, “can I get you something?”
I shake my head, embarrasseed to have broken down, even more ashamed to be caught. “I’m fine,” I insist.
“Yeah, and I’m Hillary Clinton,” she says. She reaches for my hand and tugs me upright, drags me towardthe door.
“Kate—”
“—will not even miss you,” Donna finishes.
In the small kitchenette where there is coffee brewing twenty-four hours a day, she fixes a cup for each of us.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“For what? Not being made of granite?”
I shake my head. “It just doesn’t end.” Donna nods, and because she completely understands, I find myselftalking. And talking. And when I have spilled all my secrets, I take a deep breath and realize that I have beentalking for an hour straight. “Oh my God,” I say. “I can’t believe I’ve wasted so much of your time.”
“It wasn’t a waste,” Donna replies. “And besides, my shift ended a half hour ago.”
My cheeks flame. “You ought to go. I’m sure you have somewhere else you’d much rather be.”
But instead of leaving, Donna folds me into her ample arms. “Honey,” she says, “don’t we all?”
The door to the ambulatory operating suite yawns open into a small room packed with gleaming silverinstruments—a mouth gilded with braces. The doctors and nurses she has met are masked and gowned, onlyrecognizable by their eyes. Anna tugs at me until I kneel down beside her. “What if I changed my mind?” shesays.
I put my hands on her shoulders. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, but I know that Kate iscounting on you. And Daddy and me.”
She nods once, then slips her hand into mine. “Don’t let go,” she tells me.
A nurse shepherds her in the right direction, onto the table. “Wait’ll you see what we’ve got for you, Anna.”
She draws a heated blanket over her.
The anesthesiologist wipes a red-tinged gauze pad around an oxygen mask. “Have you ever gone to sleep in astrawberry field?”
They work their way down Anna’s body, applying gelled pads that will be hooked to monitors to track herheart and her breathing. They administer to her while she’s lying on her back, although I know they will flipher over to draw marrow from her hipbones.
The anesthesiologist shows Anna the accordion mechanism on his equipment. “Can you blow up thatballoon?” he asks, and places the mask over Anna’s face.
All this time, she doesn’t let go of my hand. Finally, her grip slackens. She fights at the last minute, her bodyalready asleep but straining forward at the shoulders. One nurse holds Anna down; the other restrains me.
“It’s just the way the medicine affects the body,” she explains. “You can give her a kiss now.”
So I do, through my mask. I whisper a thank-you, too. I walk out of the swinging door and peel off my paperhat and booties. I watch through the postage-stamp window as Anna is rolled to her side and an impossiblylong needle is lifted from a sterile tray.
Then I go upstairs to wait with Kate.
Brian sticks his head into Kate’s room. “Sara,” he says, exhausted, “Anna’s asking for you.”
But I cannot be in two places at one time. I hold the pink emesis basin up to Kate’s mouth as she vomitsagain. Beside me, Donna helps lower Kate back onto her pillow. “I’m a little busy right now,” I say.
“Anna’s asking for you,” Brian repeats, that’s all.
Donna looks from him to me. “We’ll be fine till you get back,” she promises, and after a moment, I nod.
Anna is on the pediatric floor, one that doesn’t have the hermetically sealed rooms necessary for protectiveisolation. I hear her crying before I even enter the room. “Mommy,” she sobs. “It hurts.”
I sit down on the side of the bed and fold her into my arms. “I know, sweetie.”
“Can you stay here?”
I shake my head. “Kate’s sick. I’m going to have to go back.”
Anna pulls away. “But I’m in the hospital,” she says. “I’m in the hospital!”
Over her head, I glance at Brian. “What are they giving her for pain?”
“Very little. The nurse said they don’t like to overmedicate kids.”
“That’s ridiculous.” When I stand, Anna whimpers and grabs for me. “Be right back, honey.”
I accost the first nurse I can find. Unlike the staff in oncology, these RNs are unfamiliar. “She was givenTylenol an hour ago,” the woman explains. “I know she’s a little uncomfortable—”
“Roxicet. Tylenol with codeine. Naproxen. And if it’s not on the doctor’s orders call and ask whether it canbe put on there.”
The nurse bristles. “With all due respect, Mrs. Fitzgerald, I do this every day, and—”
“So do I.”
When I go back to Anna’s room, I am carrying a pediatric dose of Roxicet, which will either relieve her achesor knock her out so that she no longer feels them. I walk in to find Brian’s big hands fumbling a Lilliputianclasp on the back of a necklace, as he hangs a locket around Anna’s neck. “I thought you deserved your owngift, since you were giving one to your sister,” he says.
Of course Anna should be honored for donating her bone marrow. Of course she deserves recognition. Butthe thought of rewarding someone for their suffering, frankly, never entered my mind. We’ve all been doingit for so long.
They both glance up when I come through the doorway. “Look at what Daddy got me!” Anna says.
I hold out the plastic dosage cup, a poor second-best.
Shortly after ten o’clock, Brian brings Anna to Kate’s room. She moves slowly, like an old woman, leaningon Brian for support. The nurses help her into a mask and gown and gloves and booties so that she can beallowed in—a compassionate breach of protocol, as children are not usually allowed to visit protectiveisolation.
Dr. Chance stands beside the IV pole, holding up the bag of marrow. I turn Anna so that she can see it.
“That,” I tell her, “is what you gave us.”
Anna makes a face. “It’s gross. You can have it.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Dr. Chance says, and the rich ruby marrow begins to feed into Kate’s central line.
I place Anna on the bed. There is room for both of them, shoulder to shoulder. “Did it hurt?” Kate asks.
“Kind of.” Anna points to the blood running through the plastic tubes into the slit in Kate’s chest. “Doesthat?”
“Not really.” She sits up a little. “Hey, Anna?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad it came from you.” Kate reaches for Anna’s hand and places it just below the central line’s catheter,a spot that falls precariously near her heart.
Twenty-one days after the bone marrow transplant, Kate’s white cell counts begin to rise, proof ofengraftment. To celebrate, Brian insists that he is taking me out to dinner. He arranges for a private-dutynurse for Kate, makes reservations at XO Café, and even brings me a black dress from my closet. He forgetspumps, so I wind up wearing my scruffy hiking clogs with it.
The restaurant is nearly full. Almost immediately after we are seated, the sommelier comes to ask if we wantwine. Brian orders a Cabernet Sauvignon.
“Do you even know whether that’s red or white?” I do not think, in all these years, I have seen Brian drinkanything but beer.
“I know it’s got alcohol in it, and I know we’re celebrating.” He lifts his glass after the sommelier pours it.
“To our family,” he toasts.
We click glasses and take sips. “What are you getting?” I ask.
“What do you want me to get?”
“The filet. That way I can taste it if I get the sole.” I fold my menu. “Did you hear the results of the lastCBC?”
Brian looks down at the table. “I was sort of hoping that we could come here to get away from all that. Youknow. Just talk.”
“I’d like to talk,” I admit. But when I look at Brian, the information that leaps to my lips is about Kate, notus. I have no call to ask him about his day—he has taken three weeks off from the station. We are connectedby and through sickness.
We fall back into silence. I look around XO Café and notice that chatter happens mostly at tables where thediners are young and hip. The older couples, the ones sporting wedding bands that wink with theirsilverware, eat without the pepper of conversation. Is it because they are so comfortable, they already knowwhat the other is thinking? Or is it because after a certain point, there is simply nothing left to say?
When the waiter arrives to take our order, we both turn eagerly, grateful for someone who keeps us fromhaving to recognize the strangers we have become.
spaceWe leave the hospital with a child who is different from the one we brought in. Kate moves cautiously,checking the drawers of the nightstand for anything she might have left behind. She has lost so much weightthat the jeans I brought do not fit; we have to use two bandannas knotted together as a makeshift belt.
Brian has gone down ahead of us to bring the car around. I zip the last Tiger Beat and CD into Kate’s duffelbag. She pulls a fleece cap on over her smooth, bare scalp and winds a scarf tight around her neck. She putson a mask and gloves; now that we are venturing out of the hospital, she is the one who will need protection.
We walk out the door to the applause of the nurses we have come to know so well. “Whatever you do, don’tcome back and see us, all right?” Willie jokes.
One by one, they walk up to say their good-byes. When they have all dispersed, I smile at Kate. “Ready?”
Kate nods, but she doesn’t step forward. She stands rigid, fully aware that once she sets foot outside thisdoorway, everything changes. “Mom?”
I fold her hand into mine. “We’ll do it together,” I promise, and side by side, we take the first step.
The mail is full of hospital bills. We have learned that the insurance company will not talk to the hospitalbilling department, and vice versa, but neither one thinks that the charges are accurate—which leads them tocharge us for procedures we shouldn’t have to cover, in the hopes that we are stupid enough to pay them.
Managing the monetary aspect of Kate’s care is a full-time job that neither Brian nor I can do.
I leaf through a grocery store flyer, an AAA magazine, and a long-distance rate announcement before I openthe letter from the mutual fund. It’s not something I really pay attention to; Brian usually manages financesthat require more than basic checkbook balancing. Besides, the three funds we have are all earmarked for thekids’ education. We are not the sort of family that has enough spare change to play the stock market.
Dear Mr. Fitzgerald:
This is to confirm your recent redemption from fund #323456, Brian D. Fitzgerald Custodian for KatherineS. Fitzgerald, in the amount of $8,369.56. This disbursement effectively closes the account.
As banking errors go, this is a pretty major one. We’ve been off by pennies in our checking account, but atleast I’ve never lost eight thousand dollars. I walk out of the kitchen and into the yard, where Brian is rollingan extra garden hose. “Well, either someone at the mutual fund screwed up,” I say, handing the letter to him,“or the second wife you’re supporting is no longer a secret.”
It takes him one moment too long to read it, the same moment that I realize that this is not a mistake after all.
Brian wipes his forehead with the back of one wrist. “I took that money out,” he says.
“Without telling me?” I cannot imagine Brian doing such a thing. There have been times, in the past, wherewe dipped into the children’s accounts, but only because we were having a month too tight to swing the costof groceries and the mortgage, or because we needed the down payment for a new car when our old one hadfinally been put to rest. We’d lie awake in bed feeling guilt press down like an extra quilt, promising eachother that we would put that money right back where it belonged as soon as humanly possible.
“The guys at the station, they tried to raise some money, like I told you. They got ten thousand dollars. Withthis added to it, the hospital’s willing to work out some kind of payment plan for us.”
“But you said—”
“I know what I said, Sara.”
I shake my head, stunned. “You lied to me?”
“I didn’t—”
“Zanne offered—”
“I won’t let your sister take care of Kate,” Brian says. “I’m supposed to take care of Kate.” The hose falls tothe ground, dribbles and spits at our feet. “Sara, she’s not going to live long enough to use that money forcollege.”
The sun is bright; the sprinkler twitches on the grass, spraying rainbows. It is far too beautiful a day forwords like these. I turn and run into the house. I lock myself in the bathroom.
A moment later, Brian bangs on the door. “Sara? Sara, I’m sorry.”
I pretend I can’t hear him. I pretend I haven’t heard anything he’s said.
At home, we all wear masks so that Kate doesn’t have to. I find myself checking her fingernails while shebrushes her teeth or pours cereal, to see if the dark ridges made by the chemo have disappeared—a sure signof the bone marrow transplant’s success. Twice a day I give Kate growth factor shots in the thigh, a necessityuntil her neutrophil count tops one thousand. At that point, the marrow will be reseeding itself.
She can’t go back to school yet, so we get her lessons sent home. Once or twice she has come with me topick Anna up from kindergarten, but refuses to get out of the car. She will troop to the hospital for her routineCBC, but if I suggest a side trip to the video store or Dunkin’ Donuts afterward, she begs off.
One Saturday morning, the door to the girls’ bedroom is ajar; I knock gently. “Want to go to the mall?”
Kate shrugs. “Not now.”
I lean against the doorframe. “It’ll be good to get out of the house.”
“I don’t want to.” Although I am sure she does not even realize she is doing it, she skims her palm over herhead before tucking her hand into her back pocket.
“Kate,” I begin.
“Don’t say it. Don’t tell me that nobody’s going to stare at me, because they will. Don’t tell me it doesn’tmatter, because it does. And don’t tell me I look fine because that’s a lie.” Her eyes, lash-bare, fill with tears.
“I’m a freak, Mom. Look at me.”
I do, and I see the spots where her brows have gone missing, and the slope of her endless brow, and the smalldivots and bumps that are usually hidden under a cover of hair. “Well,” I say evenly. “We can fix this.”
Without another word, I walk out of her room, knowing Kate will follow. I pass Anna, who abandons hercoloring book to trail behind her sister. In the basement, I pull out a pair of ancient electric grooming clipperswe found when we bought the house, and plug them in. Then I cut a swath right down the middle of myscalp.
“Mom!” Kate gasps.
“What?” A tumble of brown waves falls onto Anna’s shoulder; she picks them up delicately. “It’s only hair.”
With another swipe of the razor, Kate starts to smile. She points out a spot that I’ve missed, where a smallthatch stands like a forest. I sit down on an overturned milk crate and let her shave the other side of my headherself. Anna crawls onto my lap. “Me next,” she begs.
An hour later, we walk through the mall holding hands, a trio of bald girls. We stay for hours. Everywhere wego, heads turn and voices whisper. We are beautiful, times three.
1997
NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES you drive to the emergency room, it never becomes routine. Brian carries ourdaughter in his arms, blood running down her face. The triage nurse waves us inside, shepherds the other kidsto the bank of plastic chairs where they can wait. A resident comes into the cubicle, all business. “Whathappened?”
“She went over the handlebars of her bike,” I said. “She landed on concrete. There doesn’t seem to be anyevidence of concussion, but there’s a scalp lac at the hairline of about an inch and a half.”
The doctor lays her down gently on the table, snaps on gloves, and peers at her forehead. “Are you a doctoror a nurse?”
I try to smile. “Just used to this.”
It takes eighty-two stitches to sew up the gash. Afterward, with a bright white patch of gauze taped to herhead, and a hefty dose of pediatric Tylenol swimming through her veins, we walk out to the waiting area,hand in hand.
Jesse asks her how many stitches she needed. Brian tells her she was just as brave as a firefighter. Kateglances at Anna’s fresh bandage. “I like it better when I get to sit out here,” she says.
spaceIt starts when Kate screams in the bathroom. I race upstairs and jimmy the lock to find my nine-year-oldstanding in front of a toilet spattered with blood. Blood runs down her legs, too, and has soaked through herunderpants. This is the calling card for APL—hemorrhage in all sorts of masks and disguises. Kate’s hadrectal bleeding before, but she was a toddler; she would not remember. “It’s all right,” I say calmly.
I get a warm washcloth to clean her up, and find a sanitary napkin for her underwear. I watch her try toposition the bulk of the pad between her legs. This is the moment I would have had with her when she got herperiod; will she live long enough for that?
“Mom,” Kate says. “It’s back.”
“Clinical relapse.” Dr. Chance takes off his glasses and presses his thumbs to the corners of his eyes. “I thinka bone marrow transplant’s the way to go.”
My mind jumps to a memory of an inflatable Bozo punching bag I had when I was Anna’s age; filled withsand at the bottom, I’d whack it only to have it pop back up.
“But a few months ago,” Brian says, “you told us they were dangerous.”
“They are. Fifty percent of patients who receive BMTs are cured. The other half don’t survive the chemo andthe radiation leading up to the transplant. Some are killed by the complications they develop after thetransplant’s done.”
Brian looks at me, and then speaks the fear that ripples between us. “Then why would we even put Kate atrisk?”
“Because if you don’t,” Dr. Chance explains, “she will die.”
spaceThe first time I call the insurance company, they hang up on me by mistake. The second time, I wait throughMuzak for twenty-two minutes before reaching a customer service representative. “Can I have your policynumber?”
I give her the one all municipal employees get, and Brian’s Social Security number. “How can I help you?”
“I spoke to someone there a week ago,” I explain. “My daughter has leukemia, and needs a bone marrowtransplant. The hospital explained that our insurance company needs to sign off on coverage.”
A bone marrow transplant costs from $100,000 upward. Needless to say, we don’t have that kind of cashlying around. But just because a doctor has recommended the transplant doesn’t mean that our insurancecompany will agree.
“That sort of procedure needs a special review—”
“Yes, I know. That’s where we were a week ago. I’m calling because I haven’t heard back from you yet.”
She puts me on hold, so that she can look up my file. I hear a subtle click, and then the tinny voice of arecorded operator. If you’d like to make a call…“Shit!” I slam down the phone.
Anna, vigilant, pokes her head around the doorway. “You said a bad word.”
“I know.” I pick up the receiver and hit the redial button. I wind my way through the touch-tone menu.
Finally, I reach a living person. “I was just disconnected. Again.”
It takes this rep five more minutes to take down all the same numbers and names and history I have alreadygiven her predecessors. “We actually have reviewed your daughter’s case,” the woman says. “Unfortunately,at this time, we don’t think that procedure is in her best interests.”
I feel heat rush to my face. “Is dying?”
spaceIn preparation for the bone marrow harvest, I have to give Anna ongoing growth factor shots, just like I oncegave Kate after her initial cord blood transplant. The intent is to hyper-pack Anna’s marrow, so that when it istime to withdraw the cells, there will be plenty for Kate.
Anna has been told this, too, but all she knows is that twice a day, her mother has to give her a shot.
We use EMLA cream, a topical anesthetic. The cream is supposed to keep her from feeling the prick of theneedle, but she still yells. I wonder if it hurts as much as having your six-year-old stare you in the eye and sayshe hates you.
“Mrs. Fitzgerald,” the insurance company’s customer service supervisor says, “we appreciate where you’recoming from. Truly.”
“Somehow, I find that very hard to believe,” I say. “Somehow I doubt that you have a daughter in a life-or-death situation, and that your advisory board isn’t looking solely at the bottom line cost of a transplant.” Ihave told myself that I will not lose my temper, and already thirty seconds into this phone call with theinsurance company, I have ceded the battle.
“AmeriLife will pay ninety percent of what’s considered reasonable and customary for a donor lymphocyteinfusion. However, should you still choose to do a bone marrow transplant, we are willing to cover tenpercent of the costs.”
I take a deep breath. “The doctors on your board who recommended this—what’s their specialty?”
“I don’t—”
“It’s not acute promyelocytic leukemia, though, is it? Because even an oncologist who graduated last in hisclass from some hack medical school in Guam could probably tell you that a DLI isn’t going to work as acure. That three months from now, we’ll be having this same discussion again. Plus, if you’d asked a doctorwho had any familiarity with my daughter’s particular disease burden, he’d tell you that repeating a treatmentthat’s already been tried is highly unlikely to produce results in an APL patient, because they develop aresistance. Which means that AmeriLife is basically agreeing to throw money down a toilet, but not to spendit on the one thing that might actually have a chance of saving my child’s life.”
There is a pregnant bubble of silence on the other end of the phone. “Mrs. Fitzgerald,” the supervisorsuggests, “it is my understanding that if you follow this protocol, the insurance company would have noproblems then paying for the transplant.”
“Except that my daughter might not be alive by then to get it. We aren’t talking about a car, where we can trya used part first and if it doesn’t work, get a new one shipped in. We’re talking about a human being. Ahuman being. Do you automatons there even know what the hell that is?”
This time, I’m expecting the click when I am disconnected.
Zanne shows up the night before we are due to go to the hospital to begin Kate’s preparatory transplantregimen. She lets Jesse help her set up her portable office, takes a phone call from Australia, and then comesinto the kitchen so that Brian and I can catch her up on daily routines. “Anna’s got gymnastics on Tuesday,” Itell her. “Three o’clock. And I expect the oil truck to come sometime this week.”
“The trash goes out on Wednesday,” Brian adds.
“Don’t walk Jesse into school. Apparently, that’s anathema for sixth-graders.”
She nods and listens and even takes notes, and then says she has a couple of questions. “The fish…”
“Gets fed twice a day. Jesse can do it, if you remind him.”
“Is there an official bedtime?” Zanne asks.
“Yeah,” I reply. “Do you want me to give you the real one, or the one you can use if you’re going to tack onan extra hour as a special treat?”
“Anna’s eight o’clock,” Brian says. “Jesse’s ten. Anything else?”
“Yes.” Zanne reaches into her pocket and takes out a check made out to us, for $100,000.
“Suzanne,” I say, stunned. “We can’t take that.”
“I know how much it costs. You can’t cover it. I can. Let me.”
Brian picks up the check and hands it back to her. “Thank you,” he says. “But actually, we’ve got thetransplant covered.”
This is news to me. “We do?”
“The guys at the station sent out a call to arms, nationwide, and got a bunch of donations from otherfirefighters.” Brian looks at me. “I just found out today.”
“Really?” Inside me a weight lifts.
He shrugs. “They’re my brothers,” he explains.
I turn to Zanne and hug her. “Thank you. For even offering.”
“It’s here if you need it,” she answers.
But we don’t. We are able to do this, at least.
“Kate!” I call the next morning. “It’s time to go!”
Anna is curled on Zanne’s lap on the couch. She pulls her thumb out of her mouth but she doesn’t say good-bye.
“Kate!” I yell again. “We’re leaving!”
Jesse smirks over his Nintendo controls. “Like you’d really take off without her.”
“She doesn’t know that. Kate!” Sighing, I swing up the stairs toward her bedroom.
The door is closed. With a soft knock, I push it open, and find Kate in the final throes of making her bed. Thequilt is pulled tight enough to bounce a dime off its middle; the pillows have been fluffed and centered. Herstuffed animals, relics at this point, sit on the window seat in gradated succession, tallest to smallest. Evenher shoes have been neatly arranged in her closet, and the mess on her desk has vanished.
“Okay.” I haven’t even asked her to clean up. “Clearly, I’m in the wrong bedroom.”
She turns. “It’s in case I don’t come back,” she says.
When I first became a parent I used to lie in bed at night and imagine the most horrible succession ofmaladies: the bite of a jellyfish, the taste of a poisonous berry, the smile of a dangerous stranger, the dive intoa shallow pool. There are so many ways a child can be harmed that it seems nearly impossible one personalone could succeed at keeping him safe. As my children got older, the hazards only changed: inhaling glue,playing with matches, small pink pills sold behind the bleachers of the middle school. You can stay up allnight and still not count all the ways to lose the people you love.
It seems to me, now that this is more than just a hypothetical, that a parent falls one of two ways when told achild has a fatal disease. Either you dissolve into a puddle, or you take the blow on the cheek and forceyourself to lift your face again for more. In this, we probably look a lot like the patients.
Kate is semi-conscious on her bed, her central line tubes blooming like a fountain from her chest. The chemohas made her throw up thirty-two times, and has given her mouth sores and such bad mucositis that shesounds like a cystic fibrosis patient.
She turns to me and tries to speak, but coughs up phlegm instead. “Drown,” she chokes out.
Raising the suction tube she’s clutching in her hands, I clear out her mouth and throat. “I’ll do it while yourest,” I promise, and that is how I come to breathe for her.
An oncology ward is a battlefield, and there are definite hierarchies of command. The patients, they’re theones doing the tour of duty. The doctors breeze in and out like conquering heroes, but they need to read yourchild’s chart to remember where they’ve left off from the previous visit. It is the nurses who are the seasonedsergeants—the ones who are there when your baby is shaking with such a high fever she needs to be bathedin ice, the ones who can teach you how to flush a central venous catheter, or suggest which patient floorkitchens might still have Popsicles left to be stolen, or tell you which dry cleaners know how to remove thestains of blood and chemotherapies from clothing. The nurses know the name of your daughter’s stuffedwalrus and show her how to make tissue paper flowers to twine around her IV stand. The doctors may bemapping out the war games, but it is the nurses who make the conflict bearable.
You get to know them as they know you, because they take the place of friends you once had in a previouslife, the one before diagnosis. Donna’s daughter, for example, is studying to be a vet. Ludmilla, on thegraveyard shift, wears laminated pictures of Sanibel Island clipped like charms to her stethoscope, becauseit’s where she wants to retire. Willie, the male nurse, has a weakness for chocolate and a wife expectingtriplets.
One night during Kate’s induction, when I have been awake for so long that my body has forgotten how tosegue into sleep, I turn on the TV while she sleeps. I mute it, so that the volume won’t disturb her. RobinLeach is walking through the palatial home of someone Rich and Famous. There are gold-plated bidets andhand-carved teak beds, a pool in the shape of a butterfly. There are ten-car garages and red clay tennis courtsand eleven roaming peacocks. It’s a world I can’t even wrap my head around—a life I would never imaginefor myself.
Sort of like this one used to be.
I can’t even really remember what it was like to hear a story about a mother with breast cancer or a baby bornwith congenital heart problems or any other medical burden, and to feel myself crack down the middle: halfsympathetic, half grateful that my own family was safe. We have become that story, for everyone else.
I don’t realize I’m crying until Donna kneels down in front of me and takes the TV remote out of my hand.
“Sara,” the nurse says, “can I get you something?”
I shake my head, embarrasseed to have broken down, even more ashamed to be caught. “I’m fine,” I insist.
“Yeah, and I’m Hillary Clinton,” she says. She reaches for my hand and tugs me upright, drags me towardthe door.
“Kate—”
“—will not even miss you,” Donna finishes.
In the small kitchenette where there is coffee brewing twenty-four hours a day, she fixes a cup for each of us.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“For what? Not being made of granite?”
I shake my head. “It just doesn’t end.” Donna nods, and because she completely understands, I find myselftalking. And talking. And when I have spilled all my secrets, I take a deep breath and realize that I have beentalking for an hour straight. “Oh my God,” I say. “I can’t believe I’ve wasted so much of your time.”
“It wasn’t a waste,” Donna replies. “And besides, my shift ended a half hour ago.”
My cheeks flame. “You ought to go. I’m sure you have somewhere else you’d much rather be.”
But instead of leaving, Donna folds me into her ample arms. “Honey,” she says, “don’t we all?”
The door to the ambulatory operating suite yawns open into a small room packed with gleaming silverinstruments—a mouth gilded with braces. The doctors and nurses she has met are masked and gowned, onlyrecognizable by their eyes. Anna tugs at me until I kneel down beside her. “What if I changed my mind?” shesays.
I put my hands on her shoulders. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, but I know that Kate iscounting on you. And Daddy and me.”
She nods once, then slips her hand into mine. “Don’t let go,” she tells me.
A nurse shepherds her in the right direction, onto the table. “Wait’ll you see what we’ve got for you, Anna.”
She draws a heated blanket over her.
The anesthesiologist wipes a red-tinged gauze pad around an oxygen mask. “Have you ever gone to sleep in astrawberry field?”
They work their way down Anna’s body, applying gelled pads that will be hooked to monitors to track herheart and her breathing. They administer to her while she’s lying on her back, although I know they will flipher over to draw marrow from her hipbones.
The anesthesiologist shows Anna the accordion mechanism on his equipment. “Can you blow up thatballoon?” he asks, and places the mask over Anna’s face.
All this time, she doesn’t let go of my hand. Finally, her grip slackens. She fights at the last minute, her bodyalready asleep but straining forward at the shoulders. One nurse holds Anna down; the other restrains me.
“It’s just the way the medicine affects the body,” she explains. “You can give her a kiss now.”
So I do, through my mask. I whisper a thank-you, too. I walk out of the swinging door and peel off my paperhat and booties. I watch through the postage-stamp window as Anna is rolled to her side and an impossiblylong needle is lifted from a sterile tray.
Then I go upstairs to wait with Kate.
Brian sticks his head into Kate’s room. “Sara,” he says, exhausted, “Anna’s asking for you.”
But I cannot be in two places at one time. I hold the pink emesis basin up to Kate’s mouth as she vomitsagain. Beside me, Donna helps lower Kate back onto her pillow. “I’m a little busy right now,” I say.
“Anna’s asking for you,” Brian repeats, that’s all.
Donna looks from him to me. “We’ll be fine till you get back,” she promises, and after a moment, I nod.
Anna is on the pediatric floor, one that doesn’t have the hermetically sealed rooms necessary for protectiveisolation. I hear her crying before I even enter the room. “Mommy,” she sobs. “It hurts.”
I sit down on the side of the bed and fold her into my arms. “I know, sweetie.”
“Can you stay here?”
I shake my head. “Kate’s sick. I’m going to have to go back.”
Anna pulls away. “But I’m in the hospital,” she says. “I’m in the hospital!”
Over her head, I glance at Brian. “What are they giving her for pain?”
“Very little. The nurse said they don’t like to overmedicate kids.”
“That’s ridiculous.” When I stand, Anna whimpers and grabs for me. “Be right back, honey.”
I accost the first nurse I can find. Unlike the staff in oncology, these RNs are unfamiliar. “She was givenTylenol an hour ago,” the woman explains. “I know she’s a little uncomfortable—”
“Roxicet. Tylenol with codeine. Naproxen. And if it’s not on the doctor’s orders call and ask whether it canbe put on there.”
The nurse bristles. “With all due respect, Mrs. Fitzgerald, I do this every day, and—”
“So do I.”
When I go back to Anna’s room, I am carrying a pediatric dose of Roxicet, which will either relieve her achesor knock her out so that she no longer feels them. I walk in to find Brian’s big hands fumbling a Lilliputianclasp on the back of a necklace, as he hangs a locket around Anna’s neck. “I thought you deserved your owngift, since you were giving one to your sister,” he says.
Of course Anna should be honored for donating her bone marrow. Of course she deserves recognition. Butthe thought of rewarding someone for their suffering, frankly, never entered my mind. We’ve all been doingit for so long.
They both glance up when I come through the doorway. “Look at what Daddy got me!” Anna says.
I hold out the plastic dosage cup, a poor second-best.
Shortly after ten o’clock, Brian brings Anna to Kate’s room. She moves slowly, like an old woman, leaningon Brian for support. The nurses help her into a mask and gown and gloves and booties so that she can beallowed in—a compassionate breach of protocol, as children are not usually allowed to visit protectiveisolation.
Dr. Chance stands beside the IV pole, holding up the bag of marrow. I turn Anna so that she can see it.
“That,” I tell her, “is what you gave us.”
Anna makes a face. “It’s gross. You can have it.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Dr. Chance says, and the rich ruby marrow begins to feed into Kate’s central line.
I place Anna on the bed. There is room for both of them, shoulder to shoulder. “Did it hurt?” Kate asks.
“Kind of.” Anna points to the blood running through the plastic tubes into the slit in Kate’s chest. “Doesthat?”
“Not really.” She sits up a little. “Hey, Anna?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad it came from you.” Kate reaches for Anna’s hand and places it just below the central line’s catheter,a spot that falls precariously near her heart.
Twenty-one days after the bone marrow transplant, Kate’s white cell counts begin to rise, proof ofengraftment. To celebrate, Brian insists that he is taking me out to dinner. He arranges for a private-dutynurse for Kate, makes reservations at XO Café, and even brings me a black dress from my closet. He forgetspumps, so I wind up wearing my scruffy hiking clogs with it.
The restaurant is nearly full. Almost immediately after we are seated, the sommelier comes to ask if we wantwine. Brian orders a Cabernet Sauvignon.
“Do you even know whether that’s red or white?” I do not think, in all these years, I have seen Brian drinkanything but beer.
“I know it’s got alcohol in it, and I know we’re celebrating.” He lifts his glass after the sommelier pours it.
“To our family,” he toasts.
We click glasses and take sips. “What are you getting?” I ask.
“What do you want me to get?”
“The filet. That way I can taste it if I get the sole.” I fold my menu. “Did you hear the results of the lastCBC?”
Brian looks down at the table. “I was sort of hoping that we could come here to get away from all that. Youknow. Just talk.”
“I’d like to talk,” I admit. But when I look at Brian, the information that leaps to my lips is about Kate, notus. I have no call to ask him about his day—he has taken three weeks off from the station. We are connectedby and through sickness.
We fall back into silence. I look around XO Café and notice that chatter happens mostly at tables where thediners are young and hip. The older couples, the ones sporting wedding bands that wink with theirsilverware, eat without the pepper of conversation. Is it because they are so comfortable, they already knowwhat the other is thinking? Or is it because after a certain point, there is simply nothing left to say?
When the waiter arrives to take our order, we both turn eagerly, grateful for someone who keeps us fromhaving to recognize the strangers we have become.
spaceWe leave the hospital with a child who is different from the one we brought in. Kate moves cautiously,checking the drawers of the nightstand for anything she might have left behind. She has lost so much weightthat the jeans I brought do not fit; we have to use two bandannas knotted together as a makeshift belt.
Brian has gone down ahead of us to bring the car around. I zip the last Tiger Beat and CD into Kate’s duffelbag. She pulls a fleece cap on over her smooth, bare scalp and winds a scarf tight around her neck. She putson a mask and gloves; now that we are venturing out of the hospital, she is the one who will need protection.
We walk out the door to the applause of the nurses we have come to know so well. “Whatever you do, don’tcome back and see us, all right?” Willie jokes.
One by one, they walk up to say their good-byes. When they have all dispersed, I smile at Kate. “Ready?”
Kate nods, but she doesn’t step forward. She stands rigid, fully aware that once she sets foot outside thisdoorway, everything changes. “Mom?”
I fold her hand into mine. “We’ll do it together,” I promise, and side by side, we take the first step.
The mail is full of hospital bills. We have learned that the insurance company will not talk to the hospitalbilling department, and vice versa, but neither one thinks that the charges are accurate—which leads them tocharge us for procedures we shouldn’t have to cover, in the hopes that we are stupid enough to pay them.
Managing the monetary aspect of Kate’s care is a full-time job that neither Brian nor I can do.
I leaf through a grocery store flyer, an AAA magazine, and a long-distance rate announcement before I openthe letter from the mutual fund. It’s not something I really pay attention to; Brian usually manages financesthat require more than basic checkbook balancing. Besides, the three funds we have are all earmarked for thekids’ education. We are not the sort of family that has enough spare change to play the stock market.
Dear Mr. Fitzgerald:
This is to confirm your recent redemption from fund #323456, Brian D. Fitzgerald Custodian for KatherineS. Fitzgerald, in the amount of $8,369.56. This disbursement effectively closes the account.
As banking errors go, this is a pretty major one. We’ve been off by pennies in our checking account, but atleast I’ve never lost eight thousand dollars. I walk out of the kitchen and into the yard, where Brian is rollingan extra garden hose. “Well, either someone at the mutual fund screwed up,” I say, handing the letter to him,“or the second wife you’re supporting is no longer a secret.”
It takes him one moment too long to read it, the same moment that I realize that this is not a mistake after all.
Brian wipes his forehead with the back of one wrist. “I took that money out,” he says.
“Without telling me?” I cannot imagine Brian doing such a thing. There have been times, in the past, wherewe dipped into the children’s accounts, but only because we were having a month too tight to swing the costof groceries and the mortgage, or because we needed the down payment for a new car when our old one hadfinally been put to rest. We’d lie awake in bed feeling guilt press down like an extra quilt, promising eachother that we would put that money right back where it belonged as soon as humanly possible.
“The guys at the station, they tried to raise some money, like I told you. They got ten thousand dollars. Withthis added to it, the hospital’s willing to work out some kind of payment plan for us.”
“But you said—”
“I know what I said, Sara.”
I shake my head, stunned. “You lied to me?”
“I didn’t—”
“Zanne offered—”
“I won’t let your sister take care of Kate,” Brian says. “I’m supposed to take care of Kate.” The hose falls tothe ground, dribbles and spits at our feet. “Sara, she’s not going to live long enough to use that money forcollege.”
The sun is bright; the sprinkler twitches on the grass, spraying rainbows. It is far too beautiful a day forwords like these. I turn and run into the house. I lock myself in the bathroom.
A moment later, Brian bangs on the door. “Sara? Sara, I’m sorry.”
I pretend I can’t hear him. I pretend I haven’t heard anything he’s said.
At home, we all wear masks so that Kate doesn’t have to. I find myself checking her fingernails while shebrushes her teeth or pours cereal, to see if the dark ridges made by the chemo have disappeared—a sure signof the bone marrow transplant’s success. Twice a day I give Kate growth factor shots in the thigh, a necessityuntil her neutrophil count tops one thousand. At that point, the marrow will be reseeding itself.
She can’t go back to school yet, so we get her lessons sent home. Once or twice she has come with me topick Anna up from kindergarten, but refuses to get out of the car. She will troop to the hospital for her routineCBC, but if I suggest a side trip to the video store or Dunkin’ Donuts afterward, she begs off.
One Saturday morning, the door to the girls’ bedroom is ajar; I knock gently. “Want to go to the mall?”
Kate shrugs. “Not now.”
I lean against the doorframe. “It’ll be good to get out of the house.”
“I don’t want to.” Although I am sure she does not even realize she is doing it, she skims her palm over herhead before tucking her hand into her back pocket.
“Kate,” I begin.
“Don’t say it. Don’t tell me that nobody’s going to stare at me, because they will. Don’t tell me it doesn’tmatter, because it does. And don’t tell me I look fine because that’s a lie.” Her eyes, lash-bare, fill with tears.
“I’m a freak, Mom. Look at me.”
I do, and I see the spots where her brows have gone missing, and the slope of her endless brow, and the smalldivots and bumps that are usually hidden under a cover of hair. “Well,” I say evenly. “We can fix this.”
Without another word, I walk out of her room, knowing Kate will follow. I pass Anna, who abandons hercoloring book to trail behind her sister. In the basement, I pull out a pair of ancient electric grooming clipperswe found when we bought the house, and plug them in. Then I cut a swath right down the middle of myscalp.
“Mom!” Kate gasps.
“What?” A tumble of brown waves falls onto Anna’s shoulder; she picks them up delicately. “It’s only hair.”
With another swipe of the razor, Kate starts to smile. She points out a spot that I’ve missed, where a smallthatch stands like a forest. I sit down on an overturned milk crate and let her shave the other side of my headherself. Anna crawls onto my lap. “Me next,” she begs.
An hour later, we walk through the mall holding hands, a trio of bald girls. We stay for hours. Everywhere wego, heads turn and voices whisper. We are beautiful, times three.