Page 18 of Tear Me Apart
Thirty minutes later, Juliet is on I-70, climbing through Georgetown. It will take another two hours to get to Vail in the afternoon traffic, and the storm is bearing down. She is pushing it, speeding when she can. If she gets pulled over, she can flash her credentials, explain the situation, and get off with a stern warning.
She doesn’t want to think the worst, but she has to be the rational one. Stem cell transplants are tricky. Just like any organ transplant, the match needs to be as close to perfect as possible in order to prevent rejection. Siblings are often the best chance, but with Mindy, they have to hope for a match within the family. Juliet quails at the thought of the donor database. It could be months before a good match is found, months a child with aggressive AML doesn’t have.
She’s never heard this kind of pain from her sister. Even when Lauren’s first marriage fell apart, when her husband Kyle took off and left her alone, pregnant and unemployed, she hadn’t reached out, hadn’t asked for help.
Truthfully, Juliet wasn’t at all surprised to see their union fail—she’d never liked Kyle, felt he wasn’t right for Lauren from the start; he was a blustery, booming kind of man, a braggart of the worst sort, the kind who didn’t know his own shortcomings—but she hadn’t heard a word about the split until well after Mindy was born. All she knew was he hadn’t wanted a child and had gotten mad when Lauren found out she was pregnant, so they divorced and he moved to California.
What a jerk he’d been. Rotten and self-involved. What kind of man leaves when he finds out his wife is pregnant?
Juliet likes Jasper much, much better. He is kind, and smart, and loves Lauren beyond reason, and Mindy, too. That is good enough for her.
She feels guilty for even thinking of Kyle right now. The topic is verboten, and for good reason. Mindy has no idea Jasper isn’t her biological father. It is an agreement they’d all made soon after Lauren and Jasper married. Kyle didn’t want Mindy, Jasper did. That, in Lauren’s eyes, made him her real father. Honestly, sometimes Juliet forgets that he isn’t.
But in a situation like this...if there isn’t a match, will Kyle have to be brought back into the picture? That could get very ugly.
Don’t put the cart before the horse. Of course one of us will be a match.
She drives in the near dark grimly, watching the first flakes of the storm in her headlights, wondering what the next few days hold for them.
* * *
VAIL HEALTH HOSPITAL
Lauren is frantic waiting for Juliet to arrive, and not hiding it well. She’s been tearing at her hair; a glance in the bathroom mirror shows it standing on end, but she doesn’t care, doesn’t bother to smooth it down. Mindy is calm and collected, handling this new setback with typical stoicism, but after Lauren has her cheek swabbed, she leaves her daughter alone with Jasper and walks the halls of the hospital, praying.
I will do anything. I will do anything. Please. Please.
She walks to the front doors of the hospital, stations herself to watch for her sister. The storm is on them, the snow coming down in true blizzard style, tiny stinging flakes spaced so closely together the parking lot has become a blur. Just when she starts to get worried, she sees a sweep of headlights and starts to breathe again.
Get her swabbed, get the results. That’s all she can think of. Surely the odds will be in their favor, and one of the three of them will be a close enough match they will be able to save Mindy’s life.
Juliet waves as she walks toward the doors.Hurry, hurry, Lauren thinks, knowing she’s being unreasonable; the DNA results will take hours to be returned. She curses herself, why hadn’t they done this before? Why hadn’t they been ready? Anticipated the worst?
Because the insurance won’t pay forwhat iftests, Jasper’s voice echoes in her head, and she cringes at the thought of what this is going to cost them, the first time she’s really allowed herself to have the thought. Mindy has tried to talk to them about it, but they’ve brushed it off. Even with their excellent insurance, the finances are going to be an issue now that they have to move into a whole different stage of treatment. It takes money to raise an athlete of Mindy’s caliber. Jasper’s lawyering pays well, and Lauren’s art makes up the difference. But adding hundreds of thousands in hospital bills and medications and new treatment protocols is going to strain them. And if they need to do experimental treatments, apply for studies...
It won’t happen. This is going to work.It has to work.
“Aren’t you freezing?” Juliet asks when she reaches her, shaking her hair, snow slipping to the ground.
“No,” Lauren answers, though she is, she is frozen to her core, to the bone. Everything rides on one of the three of them being a match. Everything.
“Let’s go. They’re ready for you upstairs.”
She pretends not to see Juliet’s lips compress at not being properly greeted or welcomed, just marches away into the hospital, knowing her sister will follow. Later, she’ll apologize. Later, when things aren’t so murky and scary.
Lauren hasn’t ever needed Juliet before, not like this, and it makes her terribly uncomfortable. They are so dissimilar, the two of them. One a scientist, one an artist. One a loner, the other a mother, a wife, a coach. Lauren sometimes feels badly about the distance between them, but then she looks at Mindy, at her accomplishments, and knows she’s done right to be 100 percent present for her daughter, even if it means she’s isolated herself from the only family she has. Mindy is the only one who’s ever truly mattered to Lauren, then, and now.
In the elevator, she offers the finest olive branch she can think of. “I wish you were running the tests. At least I’d know they were right.”
Juliet looks surprised, then shyly pleased. “They’ll be right. I’m sure we’ll find a match. Dr. Oliver knows what he’s doing.”
“I’d have believed you without a second thought if the chemo was working. She’s so weak, Juliet. It’s made her so sick. And the cancer is still eating her alive, despite all he’s done.”
“That happens sometimes. Hang tight, okay? Have faith.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Knock it off, Lauren. I’m as upset about this as you are.”
