Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [125]
I came and went, but Micah continued in the role he’d taken over from my dad. He was strong, steady, and supportive despite his fears, and in mid-March he drove with my sister to San Francisco, where she met with her oncologist. The experimental medication, as the doctors had expected, had had no effect at all. Micah sat beside my sister as the doctor explained that there was nothing left in their arsenals to try; though they could try another chemotherapy drug, there was little hope that it would do anything, other than make her sleep even more than she already was. By that point, my sister was sleeping fourteen to sixteen hours a day; if she had another round of chemo, she’d essentially sleep the rest of her life away.
At the end of the consultation, Micah said good-bye to the doctor. He held my sister’s arm so she wouldn’t fall, and led her outside.
They sat on the steps outside the medical complex. The day was cool, but the sky was blue and clear. On the sidewalks, people passed by, without a second glance. Cars rolled by steadily, and in the distance one or two of them honked their horns. Everywhere else, life was going on as normal, but for Micah, nothing seemed normal at all.
Like me, Micah was exhausted. Yes, he knew it would come to this. We all knew it would come to this. Yet, just as we all had at our mother’s bedside, we’d never stopped wishing and praying for a miracle. There was no logical reason to expect one, but Dana was our sister and we loved her. It was the only thing we could do.
My sister said nothing. Her left eye drooped and a bit of saliva leaked from her mouth. She couldn’t feel it, didn’t even know it was there. Micah gently wiped her mouth.
“Hey sweetie,” he said.
“Hey,” my sister answered quietly. It was no longer her voice; her words sounded different now, like someone mumbling in her sleep.
Micah slipped his arm around her. “Do you understand what the doctor was saying?”
Dana looked at him, moving her head slowly. It seemed to be everything she could do to remember.
“No . . . more . . . meds?” she finally asked. The words were soft, almost too low to hear.
“Yeah, sweetie, that’s right. No more medicine. You’re done with all that.”
My sister stared at him, trying to follow his words. Her expression saddened, half of her mouth forming a frown.
“So that’s it?”
Micah’s eyes immediately welled with tears. It was her way of asking Micah if she was really going to die.
“Yeah, sweetie, that’s it,” he whispered.
He pulled her close, kissed the top of her head, and Dana leaned into his chest.
And for the first time since she’d been diagnosed with the tumor, my little sister began to cry.
By late March, even without the chemo, my sister’s sleep continued to lengthen, and on my visits I’d sit alone in the kitchen for long periods at a stretch, waiting for her to get up from her nap. In those hours, my mind would whirl with thousands of images; how she’d looked as a child, the things we’d done together, the long talks we used to have. We were running out of time and I wanted to wake her. I wanted to spend time with her, I wanted to talk to her, but I never disturbed her rest. Instead, I would go into her bedroom and lie on the bed beside her. I’d run my hand gently through her hair and whisper stories of our childhood or tell her about Landon, but my sister never stirred. Her breath was heavy and labored, like that of someone far older. In time, I would go back to the kitchen and look out the window, seeing nothing at all as I waited for her to wake, while the hours dragged on and on.
In the evenings, after dinner, we’d sit in the living room and I’d stare at Dana, concentrating on how she looked, wanting to remember her face forever. Time had dimmed the image of my mother; it was already dimming the image of my father, and I didn’t want it to happen with my sister. I stared at her, noting the curve of her jaw, her gold-rimmed hazel