My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult Read Free Book Online

get rid of a dead horse, Einstein?”
    Putting two and two together, Caesar's eyes widen. “No kidding,”
he says, and on second thought, pushes away Red's pasta Bolognese.
    “Who do you think they'll ask to clean out the med school
chimney?” Red says.
    “The poor OSHA bastards,” Paulie answers.
    'Ten bucks says they call here and tell us it's our job."
    “There won't be any call,” I say, “because there won't be
anything left to clean out. That fire was burning too hot.”
    “Well, at least we know this one wasn't arson,” Paulie mutters.
    In the past month, we have had a rash of fires set intentionally. You can
always tell—there will be splash patterns of flammable liquid, or multiple
points of origin, or smoke that burns black, or an unusual concentration of
fire in one spot. Whoever is doing this is smart, too—at several structures the
combustibles have been put beneath stairs, to cut off our access to the flames.
Arson fires are dangerous because they don't follow the science we use to
combat them. Arson fires are the structures most likely to collapse around you
while you're inside fighting them.
    Caesar snorts. “Maybe it was. Maybe the fat guy was really a suicide
arsonist. He crawled up into the chimney and lit himself on fire.”
    “Maybe he was just desperate to lose weight,” Paulie adds, and the
other guys crack up.
    “Enough,” I say.
    “Aw, Fitz, you gotta admit it's pretty funny-”
    “Not to that man's parents. Not to his family.”
    There is that uncomfortable silence as the other men grasp at words. Finally
Paulie, who has known me the longest, speaks. “Something going on with
Kate again, Fitz?”
    There is always something going on with my eldest daughter; the problem is,
it never seems to end. I push away from the table and set my plate in the sink.
“I'm going up to the roof.”
    We all have our hobbies-Caesar's got his girls, Paulie his bagpipes, Red his
cooking, and me, I have my telescope. I mounted it years ago to the roof of the
fire station, where I can get the best view of the night sky.
    If I weren't a fireman, I'd be an astronomer. It takes too much math for my
brain, I know that, but there's always been something about charting the stars
that appeals to me. On a really dark night, you can see between 1,000 and 1,500
stars, and there are millions more that haven't been discovered. It is so easy
to think that the world revolves around you, but all you have to do is stare up
at the sky to realize it isn't that way at all.
    Anna's real name is Andromeda. It's on her birth certificate, honest to God.
The constellation she's named after tells the story of a princess, who was
shackled to a rock as a sacrifice to a sea monster-punishment for her mother
Casseopeia, who had bragged to Poseidon about her own beauty. Perseus, flying
by, fell in love with Andromeda and saved her. In the sky, she's pictured with
her arms outstretched and her hands chained.
    The way I saw it, the story had a happy ending. Who wouldn't want that for a
child?
    When Kate was born, I used to imagine how beautiful she would be on her
wedding day. Then she was diagnosed with APL, and instead, I'd imagine her
walking across a stage to get her high school diploma. When she relapsed, all
this went out the window: I pictured her making it to her fifth birthday party.
Nowadays, I don't have expectations, and this way she beats them all.
    Kate is going to die. It took me a long time to be able to say that. We all
are going to die, when you get down to it, but it's not supposed to be like
this. Kate ought to be the one who has to say good-bye to me.
    It almost seems like a cheat that after all these years of defying the odds,
it won't be the leukemia that kills her. Then again, Dr. Chance told us a long
time ago that this was how it usually worked-a patient's body just gets worn
down, from all the fighting. Little by little, pieces of them start to give up.
In Kate's case, it is her kidneys.
    I turn my telescope