Monday
Anna Fitzgerald-- Why are babies born? That is the question that Anna asks to start out the novel. She concludes that most babies are mostly mistakes, such as faulty birth control, a drunk night or thousands of other unflattering reasons. Anna however was born for a very specific reason, to save her sister Kate. Kate has leukemia APL and Anna was created to be her savior. Anna often wonders if Kate wasn't sick would she even exist? The story then jumps to Anna at a pawnshop selling off a fourteen-karat gold locket that was given to her by her father after a bone marrow harvest. Anna hasn't taken the locket off in seven years yet sells it for twenty pesos and a bit of advice "Tell them you lost it." Anna believes herself to be a freak, a freak that has never had a normal childhood and has had to grow up to fast. Jesse, her older brother had some sort of a childhood in the first four years of his life before Kate got diagnosed, but that's it. Not even her mother Sara know what to do with herself so she spends her time online shopping for things she will never wear. As if to prove a point that nothing is normal and everything revolves around Kate's illness, Anna's mother hears Kate crying and runs to the rescue thinking something to be wrong only to find that Kate was just crying about a TV show. As Kate falls asleep Anna takes her secret binder into the bathroom and runs the bath to make it sound like she should be in there then counts the money she has collected, all together there is $136.87. Along with money in the binder there are newspaper clippings about Campbell Alexander. Anna then goes to her brothers room to ask a favor. Jesse is the child that their parents don't have time to care about since there is always something going on with Kate, so he keeps to himself and does so many things that his parents don't know about. Anna asks Jesse to drive her somewhere and even though he says don't mess with the system everyone in this family has a place he drives her anyway. She is dropped off at Campbell Alexanders office Anna is asked to wait in his office. Upon entering the room Campbell tells Anna he doesn't want girl scout cookies and she can leave, but Anna is really there to hire Campbell to be her attorney. Anna wants to sue her parents for the right to her own body. Judge, Campbell's service dog is also introduced yet Campbell doesn't tell Anna what he is for.
Campbell Alexander--He believes that Anna has come to hire him for a job that planned parenthood could easily take care of without needing a lawsuit. Campbell believes Anna just wants to be able to have birth control or get an abortion, but that is not at all what Anna needs. The real reason Anna wants to sue her parents is because her sister Kate is dying and her mother wants her to donate a Kidney to her. In which Campbell responds that no one can make her donate a Kidney is she doesn't want to. But Anna has been donating things to Kate since she was a new born, the first thing she donated was cord blood. All the time Anna has been donating to her sister and no one ever asked her if she was okay with it. Campbell agrees to take the case even with Anna's lack of funds since he knows he can win this case easily believing that it wont even go to trial.
Sara Fitzgerald-- A flashback to 1990 when Kate was first diagnosed with leukemia. Two year old Kate was in the tub with her four year old brother, when Sara notices a bruise on Kate's back that isn't normal, but doesn't seem to be an issue. Kate Fitzgerald looks like her father Brian, while Jesse Fitzgerald looks like Sara. Brian is a firefighter and Sara used to be an attorney, but now has kids. Her sister Suzanne thinks she's crazy for everything she does. When Kate wakes up late that morning with a string of bruises running down her back Sara, Jesse, and Kate take a trip to the pediatrician. There the draw blood to do some tests which come back inconclusive so they are sent to Ileana Farquad, Providence Hospital, Hematology/ Oncology. Oncology being cancer. At the cancer center Dr. Farquad breaks the news that two year old Kate, has acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). The survival rate is only twenty to thirty percent and if Kate is going to survive she needs a bone marrow transplant from a related donor.
Brian Fitzgerald-- He is at the scene of a fire, one caused by a man being a bit to large for the incinerator at a medical school and all Brian does about it is wait it out and hope it burns out itself. When Brian works night shifts he eats twice so that he can eat with his family as well as with his fellow fire fighters. At his family dinner there are issues with the roast and Sara, his wife, getting upset with Kate for wearing a Cancer shirt when she is a Leo. As for his work dinner they discuss past fires and the arsonist that has been an issue lately. Brian then goes to the roof where he looks at the stars and thinks about his life with Anna who shows up at the fire house unannounced.
