Chapter 22 #2
My question wasn’t whether art was inspirational or not.
I knew it was, because I could never forget when I saw my own inspiration for the first time—a little girl covered in mud, eyes ablaze with glee.
That was Bianca’s job though, to make people feel things.
For me, photography was a personal endeavor.
I’d never set out to re-create that spark for someone else, only to satisfy something inside myself.
I never imagined helping a stranger, but assuming Beth meant what she said, that made me her Bianca Bridge.
Maybe my dream wasn’t so terminal after all.
For the past four years I’d seen my camera as a crutch, my own personal way to deal with Cara’s cancer.
But I was wrong. I wasn’t using photography to cope with her disease—photography was just something I was passionate about.
I was using Cara to cope with my fear of the future.
Suddenly I had all these choices to make, like whether I should continue working with the Heartbreakers or go to school, and that was overwhelming in a terrifying way.
Coming home and leaving it all behind was my easy out.
I thought back to the conversation I’d had with Oliver, and how he’d said I blamed myself for her sickness.
There was so much certainty in his voice, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
At the time, I’d thought he didn’t understand, couldn’t understand, the position I was in, but now it all made sense.
It was Isaac Newton and an apple all over again, a sudden epiphany so strong it felt like I’d been struck on the head with a piece of fruit.
All this time, I’d been paralyzed with guilt.
Guilt for not noticing when Cara first got sick.
As a result, I’d developed some weird, twisted psychological aversion to chasing my own dreams.
Oliver had said something else that night, something about absorbing the blow, and I’d brushed it off as nonsense.
Reading Beth’s letter made me understand.
Life is never going to give you a break.
It’s a hard, unforgiving son of a bitch, and when it steamrolls you over, there are only two choices: stay down, or get back on your feet and fight.
After Cara’s diagnosis, I spent my time on the ground, surrendering out of fear, but now I needed to stand up and throw a few punches myself.
I looked at my website and all the pictures that defined my life, and instead of erasing everything, I clicked on the search bar. Then, I typed in three letters: SVA.
I was going to save my sister, but first I had some absorbing to do.
***
When I returned to the pediatric floor an hour later, I found the door to Cara’s room wide open.
My parents were nowhere in sight—they were probably at the cafeteria getting coffee or catching up on sleep in the lounge—but I found my siblings together.
Drew had dragged a chair up to Cara’s bed, and the two were in the middle of a game of Rummy 500.
Neither noticed me, so I leaned against the door frame and took a moment to watch. It was Drew’s turn. He picked up the king of spades, which completed a flush, but he dumped the card in the discard pile like it was useless. I frowned and cocked my head.
“Really?” Cara said, setting down her hand. “Playing is no fun if you’re going to let me win.”
“Let you win?” Drew leaned away from her as if he was insulted, but there was a hint of a smile on his face. “I’d never do that.”
“Yeah, uh-huh,” she said and rolled her eyes. “If you didn’t take the jack at the start of the game, maybe I’d believe you.”
“He’s got the queen too,” I said, pushing away from the door and making myself known.
At the sound of my voice, Drew’s head swiveled in my direction. “Stella, hey,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Not much.” I stepped into the room. “I was just wondering if I could have a moment with Cara.”
“Sure, no problem.” He collected the cards, and as he crammed them back inside their flimsy cardboard box, he said to her, “Rematch later?”
She nodded, and then we both watched Drew stand up and cross the room.
When he reached me, he gave my shoulder a quick squeeze before continuing out into the hall.
Once he was gone, I looked back at Cara and inhaled a long breath through my nose, telling myself to relax.
It wasn’t that I was nervous, but what I was about to say to her was important and I wanted my head straight.
“You came,” Cara said. There was something off about her voice.
“Well, yeah, dork,” I responded, making a face at her. “There’s nothing in the world that would keep me from you.”
That must have been the wrong thing to say, because Cara sighed and folded her hands in her lap. “Thanks, Stel,” she said. Her tone was dull, and I felt like she was speaking to an empty room because she wouldn’t look in my direction.
“You mind if I join?” I asked, gesturing at the bed. She nodded, still avoiding my gaze.
Okay, strange, I thought as I took a spot on the edge.
Something was definitely bothering her, and I figured it most likely involved me, considering that she’d been fine a minute ago with Drew.
I waited for a second, giving her a chance to speak up, but then five seconds turned into ten, and ten to twenty.
“Cara, what’s wrong?”
“Besides the obvious? I’m fine.” She smiled, but it was halfhearted and faded in an instant.
“Doesn’t seem liked it,” I said, crossing my arms. “Are you mad at me or something?”
“No.” Cara twisted her hands together before finally glancing up at me. “Dr. Mitchell told me I need another transplant”—she hesitated, the expression on her face grave—“if you’re willing to be my donor.”
I almost laughed. She was worried because she thought I wouldn’t donate for her? “Cara.” I grabbed her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Of course I will be your donor. How could I not?”
She pulled away from me. “It’s not that. I’m afraid…” She trailed off, leaving her fear unfinished.
“Hey,” I said, reaching out for her again. “Don’t worry. This will work.”
I was nervous too, but Dr. Mitchell seemed confident about the procedure’s success.
First, I would undergo a physical exam to make sure I was healthy enough to donate.
Once that was out of the way, the actual surgery could take place.
Under normal circumstances, she would have to do human leukocyte antigen (HLA) typing—a test to make sure donor stem cells matched the recipient’s—but since we were identical twins, a confirmation was unnecessary.
My bone marrow would be harvested from both sides of my pelvic bone, which kind of freaked me out, but Dr. Mitchell assured me that I would be under anesthesia and that the surgery would be painless. It was a relatively simple operation, and I could be released from the hospital the very next day.
Since the transplant was syngeneic, my healthy cells could be given to Cara shortly after being harvested.
They would be infused into her bloodstream, much like a blood transfusion, and the process itself would only take a few hours.
After the transplant was complete, Dr. Mitchell would monitor Cara for signs of new, blood-forming cells that produced healthy blood cells.
The growth was called “engraftment” and was the first sign of a successful treatment.
“That’s not what I meant,” she said, shaking her head.
“Then what?”
“I don’t…” She trailed off for a second time. I waited for her to collect her thoughts, and finally she took a deep breath and said, “I don’t know if I want you to go through with the donation.”
“What?” I exclaimed, the word hissing out of my mouth in a breathless manner. “Cara, I have to. If I don’t, then you won’t get better.”
She shrugged and looked away from me. “You don’t know that for sure.”
“Your doctors do.” My stomach was clenching with a sudden pain, and I felt like I’d been shot with a bullet of ice. A cold, tingling sensation was spreading through my body. “Besides, why would you be willing to take that kind of chance?”
Who is this person sitting next to me? It couldn’t be my sister. She’d been a fighter since day one. She would never roll over and let cancer beat her. She was a pro at absorbing punches. I didn’t understand where this white flag was coming from.
Cara’s eyes were dark, and she sat unmoving for a long stretch of silence. “Stella, I’m scared,” she finally said, and her voice was so quiet that I had to lean in to hear her. “I don’t want to die, but—but I can’t stop thinking that I’m ruining your life, and that scares me so much more.”
“Look at me, Cara,” I said, shaking her shoulder. “You are not ruining my life. How could you ever think that?”
When she glanced up, there was a pinched expression on her face.
“Oh, come on. Don’t pretend like our world doesn’t revolve around this place and the treatments and the cancer, because it does, Stella.
It’s a big, shitty black hole that sucks everyone in.
” She was sneering at me now, but her voice trembled and I knew she was more distraught than angry.
“Then you got your job, and I was so happy. For a moment I thought you’d done it, you’d escaped, but all it took was a phone call and some bad news, and now you’re stuck here again. ”
My throat lumped up as the tears that had been hanging in her eyes finally fell and streamed down her face. “How can I be stuck in a place if it’s exactly where I want to be?” I asked her. “Black hole or not, you’re still my sister.”
Cara laughed through her tears, but the sound was bitter. “Because, Stella. There’s this thought that keeps running through my head, and it’s tormenting me because I know it’s true. If I’m not here anymore, then you don’t have to be either.”