Her parents looked upset, and Sarah sensed something was wrong. Didn’t they want Tina and Richie to be checked out? It didn’t make sense to her. As a family, they’d fought her cancer for years, and she couldn’t imagine having more caring, loving parents than hers. Her nausea was increasing, and a fine film of perspiration had broken out on her face.
Her mother rose to her feet. “I can tell that Sarah’s not feeling well. I think I should take her back to her room.”
“But, Mom, this is important.”
Both doctors stood. “Don’t worry, Sarah. You won’t be left out of the process. You get some rest, and we’ll pick up this discussion later,” Dr. Hernandez assured her.
Sarah struggled against her rising nausea, angry that it was affecting her at this moment. “All right … later.” She noticed that her father didn’t stand, nor did he offer to help return her to her room. He looked shaken and grim. The doctors sat back down.
“I’m okay. Really. I’m just sick from the chemo,” Sarah said while her mother helped her into bed in her room. “Is everything all right with you and Dad?”
“Things are fine.”
The expression on her face told Sarah differently. “Don’t you think the transplant is a good idea? It seems all right to me.”
“There are a lot of risks.”
“But—”
“Sarah, let’s not discuss this now, please. You get some rest, and your father and I will be in later.”
Sarah was tired and ill, but her mother’s distracted, serious expression worried her. Usually, both her parents were eager to discuss any approaches to combat her cancer, but ever since the doctors had mentioned the bone marrow transplant, both of them seemed different.
Sarah told her mother good-bye and watched her hurry from the room. Instinctively, Sarah knew she was returning to the meeting room and a discussion with the doctors Sarah wouldn’t be able to hear. She swallowed her fear and fell into an exhausted sleep.
When she awoke hours later, both her parents were in her room with her. Her dad had the TV turned low, and her mother was flipping through a magazine aimlessly. “Hi,” Sarah said. Her voice sounded hoarse, and she ached all over.
Her father quickly turned off the TV, and both he and her mother came to her bedside. “We need to talk,” he said without preamble.
Her mother gave her a drink of water and helped her sit upright. Sarah fought to clear her groggy brain from sleep. “What’s wrong?” She saw them glance at each other. “It’s the bone marrow transplant, isn’t it?” Sarah asked. “You don’t want me to have it, do you?”
“That’s not it,” her father replied.
Sarah glanced anxiously from face to face. Had the doctors told them something really serious about her condition? “Please, Mom, Dad, you’re scaring me. Am I going to die?” Her heart began to pound.
“Oh, honey, it’s nothing like that.” Her mother put her arms around Sarah and stroked her lovingly. “But it does involve the bone marrow business and Tina and Richie.”
“You don’t want them to be my donors?” Sarah pulled away.
“Sarah, we love you so much,” her mother said. Tears had formed in her eyes.
Her father stepped forward and took her hand. “Baby, there’s no need for Tina or Richie to be typed for compatibility. They’re not going to match you.”
Sarah stared at them, confused and dumbfounded. “How can you be sure? They’re my sister and brother.”
Her mother shook her head. Tears trickled down her cheeks. “No, Sarah, they’re not. When you were three days old, we adopted you.”
Three
SARAH FELT AS if a bomb had exploded. She could not ever remember being taken so completely off guard, not even when she’d first been told she had leukemia. At that time, leukemia meant nothing to her, and besides, her mom and dad had been with her, holding her hand and supporting her. “What did you say?” Sarah asked, assuming she’d heard incorrectly.
“We adopted you, Sarah. It was privately arranged, through an attorney,” her father said quietly.
“It was legal,” her mother added.
The implication that it might not have been fell like another blow to Sarah. “How can that be? Why?”
“I couldn’t have children,” her mother explained. “We had tried everything, gone to all kinds of doctors, but I couldn’t conceive. The doctors didn’t know why, and none of them could help me. I was a medical mystery.”
Sarah remembered her mother’s being pregnant with Richie; she remembered feeling the baby kick from inside her mom’s womb. “How about Tina and Richie? I saw Richie in the hospital right after he was born.”
“That’s another of those medical mysteries,” her father said. “We adopted you, and right after your first birthday, your mom discovered she was pregnant. Sometimes it happens that way. Adoption leads to pregnancy. No one knows why.”
“Once we got the hang of it, there was no stopping us.” Sarah had heard him say those words many times, but now they took on a whole new meaning. Tina was the breakthrough, not Sarah.
“Sarah, listen to me,” her mother said. Sarah turned toward the sound of her voice, feeling like a robot without a will of her own. Her mother’s plump face looked sad and tormented. “We have always thought of you as our own, Sarah. I couldn’t love you more if you’d come out of my body.”
“Except I didn’t,” Sarah replied. She looked at her father. His brown eyes were misty. “I don’t belong to either of you.”
“Yes, you do,” her father insisted. “You’ve been ours since you were three days old.”
“You mean I was a legal transaction,” Sarah said matter-of-factly. “Like when you bought our house.” In her mind’s eye, Sarah saw her father signing papers and handing them over to a nameless man, who handed a baby over to her mother.
“You were our joy,” her mother said fiercely. “We tried for six years to conceive a baby. I thought I would die from wanting a baby to hold and love. I couldn’t even watch TV commercials with babies in them, because it hurt too bad. It made me want a baby all the more. I got depressed. I couldn’t eat or sleep.” She looked to her husband.
“We went to adoption agencies, but the wait for a newborn was five years! Then a fellow in my office said he knew a lawyer who arranged adoptions, and the wait wasn’t nearly so long,” her father explained.
Sarah felt distanced from them, captivated by the story of two people who wanted a baby She felt as though it wasn’t her they were talking about—just some baby somewhere in time. Her mother continued, “We contacted the attorney, and after about six months, he called to say he had a pregnant girl who wanted to put her baby up for adoption. All we had to do was pay her medical expenses.”
A pregnant girl. My mother, thought Sarah. She exhaled slowly and glanced from face to face of the two people she’d loved so unconditionally all her life. Dad and Mom. No. Two strangers. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Why did you wait all these years?”
“It was a condition of the adoption. The birth mother insisted on absolute secrecy.”
“Why, was she a criminal or something?”
“We never asked why.” Her father brushed over Sarah’s sarcasm. “We never met her, of course. The lawyer handled everything, but he let us know that if we broke the trust, we could lose you.”
“Did everyone know I was adopted? Grandma McGreggor and Grandma and Papaw Douglas?” Sarah mentioned both sets of grandparents, then realized they weren’t her grandparents, either. Not really.
“They swore to keep it a secret, and they have,” her mother answered. “As for everybody else, we bought the house and moved to Ringgold when you were a few weeks old, and no one else ever knew.”
“My birth certificate … I saw it,” Sarah announced, recalling the time she’d had to show proof of her age to join a summer softball league.
“You saw an amended copy of the original. It was issued at the time of the adoption,” her mother told her. “The
original was sealed by the courts. As far as the law is concerned, you are our daughter.”
Sarah felt caught in some bizarre nightmare. Maybe she’d wake up and discover that all she was hearing and experiencing was some weird side effect of her chemotherapy. “But the promise you made was for when I was a baby. I’m not a baby now.”
Her mother shook her head. “We couldn’t take that chance. Besides, then Tina came along, and it was so simple to just keep it to ourselves. It wasn’t anybody’s business.”
“It was my business,” Sarah exclaimed.
“When you were ten, you got leukemia, Sarah,” her father said as if that explanation would appease her. “We couldn’t have told you then. It wouldn’t have been fair. We were both scared for you. And you were so sick with the treatments and all. We didn’t want to add anything more to your suffering.”
“And if it weren’t for this relapse, for the bone marrow transplant, you would never have told me, would you?” Sarah realized that her voice was quivering and rising in pitch. “I would never have found out if it weren’t for this.”
Her mother reached for her, but Sarah turned away. “We would have told you when you were older.”
“When would I have been old enough? When I graduated from high school? When I started college? You should have told me when I was little.” Sarah heard her voice crack and hated being unable to hold back tears. She buried her face in her hands.
“Honey, there was nothing malicious on our part for keeping your adoption a secret,” her father said. His voice sounded as if it were coming from a long way off. “We love you, Sarah. We’ve always loved you. You’ve been ours for fifteen years, and you’ll be ours until we all die. This shouldn’t make a difference.”
Sarah refused to raise her head. He was wrong. It made a difference. It mattered that all her life she’d been part of a lie. Regardless of its intent, keeping the truth from her was indefensible. “I—I want to be alone,” Sarah said. “I want to think about all this.”
“We should be with you—” her mother started.
Sarah’s head flew up, and she clenched her fists around the bed covers. “Well, I don’t want you with me.
She saw her mother step backward, as if she’d been struck. Her father put his arm around her protectively. “Don’t speak to your mother that way,” he said.
“You just told me she’s not my mother. You are not my parents.” Sarah knew she sounded hateful and mean, but she couldn’t stop herself. She wanted to hurt them the way they had hurt her.
“We are your parents, young lady, and I won’t have you treating us like garbage.”
Sarah recoiled at her father’s tone of voice. He’d never spoken to her so harshly before. Her mother pulled him closer to her side. “Patrick, this isn’t helping. Sarah needs some space. I understand.” She looked at Sarah, her expression wounded. “We’ll go down to the coffee shop for a little while and give you some time alone. Tina and Richie will be back from the movie in an hour. We need to decide what to tell them.”
Sarah remembered that the social services division of the hospital had organized an outing for the siblings of the patients on the oncology floor. It was part of an overall effort to reach out to what the psychologists called “the forgotten ones”—the healthy family members who often got lost in the shuffle because all attention was focused on the sick child. The mention of Tina and Richie caused Sarah to have a new thought. If her parents weren’t really her parents, then Tina and Richie weren’t really her sister and brother.
An image of Richie as a baby floated into her memory and caused a cry to escape. Everything was a lie! Her whole life, everything she’d ever believed, was founded on lies. She curled up in a ball and slunk under the covers. She didn’t see her parents leave, but sensed she was alone in the room. When she was certain of that, she started to cry. She muffled her sobs with a pillow, not wanting a nurse to hear her and come into the room and ask a lot of questions.
How would she answer them? What would she say to Tina and Richie, to Scott and all her friends back home? Would she tell them at all? Yet, even as she considered the question, she knew she would never be able to keep it a secret. It was too big, too shattering.
Dr. Hernandez’s explanation of the bone marrow transplant procedure crept back into her mind. According to the doctor, she needed a transplant from a sibling for optimum success. Now she knew there were no siblings. She was alone. Utterly alone.
Four
PROPPED ON THE tray table that stretched across her bed, Sarah sat and stared at her reflection in a mirror. Chemo had taken its toll on her looks, but that wasn’t what she was seeing. She was seeing “eyes of such a pale, clear shade of blue as to resemble light streaming through a window.” Scott Michaels had described them that way when she’d been eleven, and it had made her blush. “That was a compliment,” he’d added. “I’ve never seen eyes the color of yours before.”
Sarah reached up and tugged off the scarf. When she had hair, it was a peculiar shade of light, golden brown. Her forehead was high and wide, her cheekbones defined, her chin pointed with a cleft. Why had she never before seen that she didn’t look like anyone in her family? Everyone had brown eyes except her. Tina and Richie both had their mom’s black hair, and although her father was partially bald, his hair was dark brown. How could she have been so blind to the obvious physical differences between her family and herself all these years?
She’d spent the night in a fitful sleep. Her parents had returned to her room last night, but she’d felt stiff and awkward around them. Tina had kept giving her baffled looks and at one point blurted, “So, what’s your problem?”
“Don’t yell at your sister,” her mother had told Tina. “Sarah’s had a bad day.”
“I can speak for myself,” Sarah had said testily. Fortunately, they hadn’t stayed long. Her anger had burned until Richie had thrown his small arms around her when their father had announced it was time to leave.
“I want to stay with Sarah!” he’d cried, his dark eyes filling with tears.
She’d held him, knowing she couldn’t take out her frustrations on Richie. “I’ll be out of here soon.”
“Don’t be a baby,” Tina had ordered.
“Stop bickering,” her father had snapped. “We have to hit the road tomorrow morning. Sarah will be home in a couple of weeks.”
Their mother would stay with Sarah until Dr. Hernandez released her, but suddenly Sarah wished her mother was leaving, too. She didn’t want to be around her parents. “Not my parents,” Sarah reminded herself. She shoved the mirror aside and hunkered down in the bed.
Dr. Hernandez came into her room, but Sarah ignored her. She didn’t feel like socializing. She wanted to fall into a deep sleep, like Rip Van Winkle. And maybe if she woke up in a hundred years, her life would be different.
The doctor pulled a chair alongside of Sarah’s bed. “We have to talk, Sarah,” she said.
“I don’t want to talk.” Sarah slid under the bed covers.
“No choice,” Dr. Hernandez replied. “I’m going to sit here until you come out from under the covers, even if it takes all day.”
Sarah knew she wasn’t bluffing. With a sigh, she raised herself up. “What do you want?”
“First, I want to tell you how sorry I am that you learned about your adoption the way you did.”
“It isn’t your fault.”
“And it’s not your fault, either. Or your parents’ ”
Sarah glared at the doctor. “Yes, it is their fault. They should have told me sooner. It wasn’t right to hide it from me all this time.”
“Most adoptive parents do tell their children. They often start telling them from the time they’re very small, but your parents explained their reasons to me. I’m sure they thought they were doing the best thing by not telling you. They can’t go back and undo the past.”
“Why did you come? To tell me not to be mad? Well, I am mad.” Sarah crossed her arms and fought to
hold back tears.
“I’m your doctor. And even though you’ve been hit hard emotionally, it doesn’t change the dynamics of your cancer. You still need a bone marrow transplant.”
Sarah felt overwhelmed and buried her face in her hands. “I can’t think about that now.”
“You must, my dear.” Silent sobs made Sarah’s shoulders heave. Dr. Hernandez gave her a few moments, then handed her some tissue. “Sarah, I’m not trying to ignore your hurt,” the doctor said kindly. “I’m not telling you to forget and get on with the program. I care about you, Sarah, and I want to see you well—free of cancer. We have to discuss our next strategy … all right?”
Sarah took a deep breath and nodded. “What do you want me to do?”
“Dr. Gill and I had a long talk with your parents yesterday to outline your options.”
“You said I needed a sibling to be a donor. Well, I don’t have any siblings.”
Dr. Hernandez leaned forward in the chair, her dark eyes serious. “I said your best chance was with a sibling donor. But it’s not your only chance. We can put you and your HLA compatibility factors into the National Marrow Donor Program registry and see if we can locate a match.”
“What’s this donor registry?”
“It’s a nationwide network of transplant and donor centers, linked by computers, that medical professionals use to make genetic matches between donors and recipients for organs and bone marrow. Whenever a person volunteers to be a donor, we enter the blood factors into the system.”
“You said someone needed to match me in six ways.”
“Very good,” the doctor said with a smile. “You were paying close attention yesterday.” Her smile faded. “Yes, a six-antigen match is ideal. Research has shown us that with bone marrow, the chance of finding someone outside of your family with compatible HLA is one in twenty-thousand.”
Sarah gasped. “What kind of chance is that?”