Between Sisters

“I think I’ll lie down. I didn’t sleep well last night. ”

So they’d both been awake, staring at their separate ceilings from their separate rooms. Meghann wished she’d gone to Claire last night, sat on her bed, and talked about the things that mattered. “Me, either. ”

Claire nodded. She waited a second longer, then turned and headed for the bedroom.

Meghann watched the door slowly close between them. She stood there, listening to her sister’s shuffling footsteps beyond the door. She wondered if Claire was moving slower in there, if fear clouded her eyes. Or if she was staring at that small, tattooed pink patch of skin in the mirror. Did Claire’s brave front crumble in the privacy of that room?

Meg prayed not, as she went to the condo’s third bedroom, which was set up as an in-home office. Once, files and briefs and depositions had cluttered the glass desk. Now it was buried beneath medical books, memoirs, JAMA articles, and clinical trials literature. Every day, boxes from Barnes & Noble. com and Amazon arrived.

Meghann sat down at her desk. Her current reading material was a book on coping with cancer. It lay open to a chapter called “Don’t Stop Talking Just When You Need to Start. ”

She read: This time of tragedy can be one of growth and opportunity, too. Not only for the patient, but for the family as well. It can be a time that draws you and your loved ones closer.

Meghann closed the book and reached for a JAMA article about the potential benefits of tamoxifen to shrink tumors.

She opened a yellow legal pad and began to take notes. She worked furiously, writing, writing. Hours later, when she looked up, Claire was standing in the doorway, smiling at her. “Why do I think you’re planning to do the surgery yourself?”

“I already know more about your condition than that first idiot we saw. ”

Claire came into the room, carefully stepping over the empty Amazon boxes and the magazines that had been discarded. She stared down at the filled legal pads and inkless pens. “No wonder you’re the best lawyer in the city. ”

“I research well. I’m really starting to understand your condition. I’ve made you a kind of abstract—a synopsis of everything I’ve read. ”

“I think I better read it for myself, don’t you?”

“Some of it’s . . . hard. ”

Claire reached for the standing file on the left side of the desk. In it was a manila file with the word Hope emblazoned in red ink on the notched label. She picked it up.

“Don’t,” Meg said. “I’ve just started. ”

Claire opened the file. It was empty. She looked down at Meghann.

“This goes in it,” Meg said quickly, ripping several pages out of her notebook. “Tamoxifen. ”

“Drugs?”

“There must be people who beat brain tumors,” Meghann said fiercely. “I’ll find every damn one and put their stories in there. That’s what the file is for. ”

Claire leaned over, picked up a blank piece of paper. On it, she wrote her name, then she placed the paper in the file and returned t

he file to its stand.

Meg stared up at her sister in awe. “You’re really something. You know that?”

“We Sullivan girls are tough. ”

“We had to be. ”

Meg smiled. For the first time all day, she felt as if she could draw an easy breath. “You want to watch a movie?”

“Anything except Love Story. ”

Meg started to rise.

The doorbell rang.

She frowned. “Who could that be?”