My Sister’s Leukemia Fate Chapter 1

When I walked out of that so-called home for the last time, I left the lab report on the table. The one with the leukemia diagnosis.

It all started when my sister had a check-up at the hospital where I work. They found something, and as it turned out, my bone marrow was a perfect match.

On a dark impulse, I twisted the truth. I told my family I was the one who was sick.

I shouldn't have been surprised, but their reaction was unanimous—and brutal. They were dead set against my sister donating her marrow to me.

"Donating is risky. How could we let your sister take that chance?" they said.

"This is your battle to fight," another voice added. "Don't drag your sister down with you. We all have our fate. You have to accept yours."

Even my sister, Cobie, refused without a second thought, saying she was trying to get pregnant.

In that single, shattering moment, I saw it all with perfect clarity. The fragile bonds of our family, already stretched to their breaking point, were nothing but a sham. They had ripped away the last shred of decency with their own hands.

And just like that, a strange sense of peace washed over me. There was nothing left to hold on to.

* * *

When I got the news about the perfect match, I had just found out I was pregnant.

My supervising doctor, a mentor to me, pulled me aside, his face grim. If I wanted to donate bone marrow to my sister, Cobie Warren, I would almost certainly have to terminate the pregnancy.

He urged me to think it through, to talk it over carefully with my husband.

And I did hesitate.

We had been trying for this baby for so long, enduring rounds of fertility treatments and endless holistic remedies.

When I told my husband, Mark, he was so ecstatic he practically wanted to rent a billboard to announce to the world that he was going to be a dad.

How could I possibly give that up?

But Cobie was only twenty-nine. She wasn't like me.

She was the golden child, the apple of our parents' eye, raised in the warmth of their constant affection. If anything happened to her, it would destroy them.

So, after a long afternoon of wrestling with my conscience, I decided to go to their house after my shift.