Heartbreakers

  Something flashed in Oliver’s eyes. If it was anger, he kept it hidden well, because his words came out calmly. “You think I stopped caring about you?”

  “Don’t make this about me,” I said, taking a step forward as my lips curled. “You were the one who stood me up, remember?”

  “But I never stopped caring,” he said defensively. “Trust me, hurting you was the last thing I wanted to do, but—”

  “Stop!” I said and held up my hand. “You can’t apologize and expect rainbows and butterflies. There’s nothing you can say that will make up for what you did.”

  Instead of answering, Oliver turned away from me and yanked on a handful of his hair. He cursed and swung his fist through the air before forcing himself to draw in a steady breath. “You’re right,” he finally said, his back still to me. “I can’t give you the explanation you’re looking for.”

  That’s it? That’s all he’s going to say? “Fuck you, Oliver! You screwed with my heart, and I’m not even worth the truth?” I didn’t want to cry in front of him, but I could feel my eyes stinging.

  He turned back around. “Be as pissed at me as you want. I deserve it,” he said. “But what I did—it had nothing to do with you.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said as I tried to swipe away my tears. “You’re not making any sense.”

  “I can’t tell you!” he snapped. He flinched at his own tone before shaking his head. “All you need to know is that you’re still my star. Even if you hate me.”

  I stared up at him, pleading with my eyes. I needed something, anything, even if it was the smallest hint as to what had gone wrong between us. But he chose to look down at the ground, his mouth clamped shut.

  “Whatever,” I said, letting all the air and hope and anger rush out of me. My shoulders slumped. “I’m done.”

  Without looking back at him, I ran out of the room, trying to put as much distance between Oliver and myself as I could. When I found the closest bathroom I barricaded myself inside, ready to surrender to crying my eyes out, but then my phone buzzed. Glancing down at the caller ID, I laughed through my tears. Cara’s number flashed across the screen. Between the concert and Oliver, I’d completely forgot that we’d made plans to talk today, and now, more than anything, hearing her voice was what I needed.

  “Thank God it’s you, Cara,” I said when I picked up.

  “Stella?” I froze. It wasn’t Cara. It was my dad. And from the way he was trying to keep his voice from cracking, I knew something was wrong.

  “Oh no,” I whispered as my heart dropped into my stomach. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s your sister,” he said quietly. “You need to come home.”

  Chapter 22

  This was what I knew so far: Cara’s graft had failed. Last week she’d finished her single round of high-dose chemotherapy, and two days after was the transplant. Apparently, she’d won the lottery of transplant failures, because autologous transplants were almost always a success. It meant Cara’s own stem cells hadn’t reestablished in her bone marrow.

  “Rocket,” Drew said, putting a hand my shoulder. “Don’t put a hole in the floor. They’ll be done soon.”

  But I couldn’t stop fidgeting. For the past half an hour, I’d been pacing the hall of the pediatric floor. We were waiting for Cara’s head doctor, Lisa Mitchell, and my parents to finish a meeting about different options moving forward. I hadn’t even been able to see Cara since arriving, and the whole situation was driving me crazy.

  To add to my frustration, I didn’t really understand the graft failure. Before the treatment took place, Dr. Mitchell told us it would work. Now I wanted someone to explain what went wrong and then give me a solution—the “how” to saving my sister.

  “Don’t touch me,” I said and shrugged off his hand.

  “Hey, don’t get mad at me,” Drew said, glaring in my direction. “This isn’t my fault.”

  There were circles under his eyes and his shirt was rumbled, and the realization that he’d probably stayed here overnight made me sigh. I slumped down on the bench outside Cara’s room.

  “I know,” I said in a quiet voice. Drew was right—this wasn’t his fault and I shouldn’t take it out on him. I looked down at my hands, knowing there was only one person I could blame. This one was all on me…

  The flight from Los Angeles to Minnesota had messed me up good. Buckled in at an altitude of thirty-five thousand feet above the ground, I didn’t have much to do but sit and think. And think. And think. And it wasn’t long until I was pulled down by that rip current, drowning in my own thoughts.

  Why did I leave in the first place? Why couldn’t I have trusted that horrible gut feeling I got after Paul first called me? The one that terrified me. From the start, I knew that leaving was a bad idea, but I’d convinced myself that there was only one way to face my fear—to go on some stupid quest of self-discovery by touring with the Heartbreakers.

  I’d been so consumed by my fears and my problems that all I was thinking about was me, me, me. That was exactly what had happened when Cara got sick the first time. There were signs that something was wrong—her lack of energy and usual enthusiasm—but I was too busy living in my own little world to notice, and then bam! I was hit with the world’s largest reality check. Yet somehow, impossibly, I’d managed to forget that and here I was. I’d left Cara again even when I should’ve known better.

  There was a sound of a door opening and closing, and I looked up to see a woman wearing a white lab coat. She was probably somewhere in her midfifties, and her long, gray hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail—Dr. Mitchell at last.

  “Stella,” she said in acknowledgment when she saw me. “You got here quickly.”

  From there, Dr. Mitchell wasted no time in explaining Cara’s situation. There were only a few causes for autologous graft failure. The first was extensive bone marrow fibrosis. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but Dr. Mitchell assured us that this wasn’t why Cara’s transplant was unsuccessful. The second potential cause was viral illness, but Cara wasn’t sick, at least not like that. The final possibility was failure due to certain types of chemo drugs, none of which had been used to treat Cara.

  “Then why the hell didn’t it work?” I demanded after she finished.

  “Stella,” my dad said, his voice a gentle warning.

  I ignored him, not really caring that I was being rude. Both my parents had already heard what Dr. Mitchell was saying, and I just wanted her to get on with it. Instead, she was taking time to explain details she’d normally skip over.

  “Sometimes,” Dr. Mitchell said, “the reason for failure is unknown.”

  My vision started to cloud as I stared at Cara’s doctor. How was that an answer? I wanted to punch her in the face, because really? What total bullshit. How could she not know why the treatment that was supposed to save Cara’s life didn’t work?

  “That’s it?” I snapped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Dr. Mitchell looked down at the clipboard before her eyes flickered back up to me. “It means things don’t look good,” she said.

  I gritted my teeth together for a painful moment, trying to contain my anger. It didn’t work. “So she’s just going to die because the shitty treatment you suggested didn’t work for some unknown reason?”

  “You need to lower your voice right now,” my mom said, no nonsense. She reached out and grabbed my arm. “Just listen.”

  I knew this wasn’t really Dr. Mitchell’s fault, but I wanted to hear solutions, not bad news. I pulled away from my mom as hot tears streamed down my face. “How can you be so calm when she’s just giving up on Cara?”

  “I’m not giving up on your sister. There is still something we can do for her,” Dr. Mitchell told me sternly. She glanced at my parents before continuing. “Since there was no determining factor for the transplant failure, I
think Cara’s best option is to have another.”

  She stared me straight in the eye as she made her announcement, almost as if it held some type of hidden meaning.

  “How?” I asked.

  “Stella,” she told me slowly, “you’d be the perfect donor for your sister.”

  • • •

  I knew what my decision was in an instant. There was no way I wouldn’t donate for Cara, so making that choice was as easy as flipping on a light switch. Dr. Mitchell called the transplant “syngeneic” or “syngepic” or something that started with an s and was along those lines. Basically, it was a procedure in which a cancer patient, Cara, received stem cells donated by an identical twin, me.

  Even though my mind was already made up, I told everyone I wanted some time to think things through, and I disappeared to the patient communication center where I could use a computer. There were some loose ends that needed attention before I could go through with the operation.

  From the start, Cara’s odds were never anything spectacular, but even if the world is ending, some people refuse to be beaten down. Not every cancer patient had the same optimism as my sister though, because while Cara’s survival was unclear, some people were beaten from the start—Stage IV and terminal. I’d seen a few kids like that and, while some chose to chug along like my sister, most decided to get their things in order, to prepare for the irrevocable.

  And that’s what I was doing now, because the fantasy I had about becoming an actual photographer, someone like Bianca Bridge, was as terminal as it could get. Once I accepted the irrevocable, I could focus my attention on Cara.

  There wasn’t too much for me to do: I’d throw out my SVA acceptance letter and call Paul to decline his new job offer, but that wasn’t the hard part. What I was dreading most was shutting down my website, especially after all the hard work I’d put in, but it had to be done. If I didn’t, there would always be something left for me to regret.

  I logged in to one of the hospital computers, pulled up the Internet, and typed in the address. My neck was stiff, and I rolled my shoulders as I waited for the page to load. When it did, I noticed a small, red number one next to my inbox, notifying me of a new message. I figured there was no harm in reading whatever it said before I deleted everything, so I clicked on the icon.

  As per the hospital’s usual crappy Wi-Fi, the page took a few seconds to load, but then I saw this:

  Dear Ms. Samuel,

  My name is Bethany Colt, and while we don’t have much in common (I’m a forty-two-year-old housewife from New Jersey), we do share one connection—the terrible knowledge of how it feels to watch someone you love suffer. Like your sister, my daughter Stephanie has cancer. She was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia last year at the age of twelve.

  Like most thirteen-year-old girls, Stephanie is crazy about the Heartbreakers. The walls of her room are plastered with their posters (much to my horror), and she’s particularly fond of the blog you run called the Heartbreak Chronicles, as she enjoys keeping up with what’s happening in the boys’ lives. It was through the blog that I discovered your photography website.

  I’m writing you this letter to express how truly moved I was by your gallery, especially the pictures you posted of your sister. The past few months have been very difficult for me. As Stephanie grows weaker, I feel like her cancer is claiming parts of me as well, and they’re all the important pieces I need, like my heart and faith and bravery. But seeing your pictures has helped me take those pieces back. Not only does your work reflect your sister’s inner strength, but it shows how loving someone so deeply is a source of courage. Courage to hope and courage to fight. Thank you for giving me my fight back. By sharing your experience, you helped make someone else’s more bearable.

  Sincerely,

  Beth

  I read her message again and again. I kept thinking that if I studied the words long enough, if I read them just one more time, then maybe their meaning would finally click inside my head and I would understand. How could my pictures bring back what she’d lost, especially something as intangible as faith or strength? Was that really possible?

  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 s
aid 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?”