My Sister’s Keeper

My Sister’s Keeper

by

Jodi Picoult

My Sister’s Keeper: 32. 2002: Sara Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
During platelet therapy, Kate strikes up conversation with a boy named Taylor, who is in chemotherapy for acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Sara watches them talk and quickly realizes that they’re flirting with each other. He asks for Kate’s phone number, and she gives it to him. Once he leaves, Kate gasps dreamily and calls him gorgeous. She excitedly asks Sara if he’ll call and where they’ll go for their first date. Sara tells her to take it slow, but internally, she’s full of joy.
Although Kate’s illness isolates her from her peers and casts doubt on how much she’ll grow up, in a moment of fortuitous irony, it is precisely her cancer that leads her to her first love interest, Taylor. Her flirtation with him signifies the miracle of her survival; after all, she was never expected to grow old enough to have a boyfriend.
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Kate gets into a routine of hiding in the closet and talking to Taylor on the phone every evening, emerging later blushing and overjoyed. Sara is stunned to see her actually get to grow up. One night, Sara finds her in the bathroom staring at herself in the mirror. She asks Sara what Taylor sees when he looks at her, and Sara answers that he probably sees a girl who understands his struggle. Kate answers that Taylor’s cancer has a much higher survival rate than hers, and she asks if loving someone means caring more about their life than yours. Sara says yes. Kate then speculates that something bad is going to happen to balance out the good event of meeting Taylor. Sara denies this, but three days later, they learn that Kate has relapsed.
Kate’s dalliance with Taylor allows her a sliver of normalcy in her otherwise abnormal adolescence. While this is largely for the better, her increased focus on her physical appearance also risks increasing her self-consciousness due to the physical effects of her treatments. Kate’s feelings for Taylor are also significant since she puts his wellbeing over her own. Given that Kate is normally the one being looked after, her desire to look after someone else marks an important moment in her process of coming of age—even as her survival prospects are once again jeopardized.
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The night Kate comes home from her first date with Taylor, Sara eavesdrops on Kate and Anna talking in their room. Kate tells Anna that she kissed him and that he was a good kisser. Anna doesn’t understand the appeal of kissing until Kate compares it to hockey, at which point it clicks for Anna. She then tells Anna that Taylor has scars on his hands from graft-versus-host disease. She felt them when they were holding hands. Anna asks if it was gross, but Kate says that it was like they matched.
As Kate’s relationship with Taylor progresses, the two continue to grow closer because of their cancer rather than in spite of it. While having a relationship with a healthy person might have been difficult for Kate, her comment about their matching scars shows how Taylor’s cancer means that Kate can relate to him and truly be herself.
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To combat her relapse, Kate must undergo a blood stem cell transplant—once again using donations from Anna. Initially, Kate doesn’t want to undergo chemo in preparation since it will separate her from TaylorSara tells her that it’s her life, to which Kate says: “Exactly.” The hospital compromises by allowing her to start her chemo as an outpatient, with the condition that they’ll hospitalize her if her condition worsens. Neither Sara nor the hospital are happy about this but understand that Kate is reaching the age where she becomes more strong-willed.
For the first time, Kate pushes back against her own treatments—an echo of Anna’s own efforts to resist Sara’s control of her medical decisions. However, although Kate’s reasoning is more frivolous—she wants to see Taylor—Sara respects her wishes and compromises with her, a sharp difference from how she’s responded to Anna.
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Get the entire My Sister’s Keeper LitChart as a printable PDF.
My Sister’s Keeper PDF
During Kate’s first chemo appointment, Taylor shows up to keep her company. It’s 2:50, and he bets her that she can’t make it to 3:00 without vomiting. Kate accepts. Sara watches them and thinks about the first time Brian met her: he saved her life during a massive storm in Providence. In the present, Taylor and Kate tease each other about throwing up during chemotherapy—then, at 2:57, Kate throws up. Taylor’s demeanor immediately changes as he holds the emesis basin to her chin and rubs her back. Sara is overwhelmed with the realization that Kate has grown up from the tiny child she used to be. Taylor tells Kate that she can pay him for losing the bet by coming to a dance at the hospital with him. Kate accepts, and Taylor cuddles up next to her for the rest of her chemo.
Rather than just being a frivolous fling, Taylor quickly becomes an important source of support for Kate by keeping her company during chemo. Once again, their shared status as cancer patients allows him to be there for her without any judgement or squeamishness; for instance, rather than shying away from the fact that chemo makes you throw up, Taylor is able to draw on his own experiences to help Kate find humor in it and unflinchingly comfort her when she gets sick. Thus, Kate and Taylor’s cancer allows them to understand each other on a deeper level.
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Sara, Anna, and Kate have been shopping for hours to find Kate a dress for the dance. Since Kate’s body is scarred, none of the dresses look good on her. When the saleswoman compliments the dress she’s looking at, saying that it covers cleavage, Kate asks her if it will cover her Hickman line, which she reveals, and storms out. Sara tells her that Taylor already thinks she’s beautiful, but Kate cries that she doesn’t. Sara offers to sew a dress, but Kate angrily tells her that she doesn’t know how to sew and can’t learn in a day; Sara, she says, can’t fix things every time. She leaves, but Anna follows, leading her into a salon. They ask the stylist if they do prom hairstyles, revealing Kate’s bald head to confuse them. The two sisters collapse into laughter.
Sara and Anna’s different responses to Kate’s breakdown highlight their different approaches to Kate and how, at least in this case, Anna’s approach works better. Sara’s offer to learn sewing in two days only reinforces Kate’s hopelessness over her appearance, since it’s not a feasible appearance. Anna, by contrast, does not attempt to fix the situation, but instead helps Kate learn to laugh at it. This shows how, sometimes, embracing a bad situation rather than trying in vain to control it is the better option.
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Quotes
Sara acts as a chaperone at the desk. Kate and Taylor are inseparable for the night, Kate in a gold dress that Sara ordered for her online. Before they left that night, Sara caught Brian in tears in the kitchen. He was crying because he’d never expected to see a night like this for Kate. At the dance, Sara tries not to worry too much—especially given Kate’s compromised immune system—but becomes concerned when she realizes that Kate and Taylor have vanished. She searches and finds them outside, talking about death. Taylor lifts the mask Kate is wearing and kisses her.
A first prom and kiss are major milestones for most teenagers, but it’s especially significant for Kate, who was originally not expected to live past the age of five. This fact is evident in both her parents’ reactions: Brian breaking down in tears in disbelief that this night has come, and Sara allowing her to have her first kiss despite the fact that both Taylor and Kate are immunocompromised.
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The morning of her transplant, Kate is upset because Taylor hasn’t called or returned her calls in three days. Sara goes to ask a nurse if he’s in, and the nurse tells her that Taylor died that morning. Sara doesn’t tell Kate for a month, fearing it will kill her. When she tells her, she talks about how she went to Taylor’s house and talked to his mother, who told Sara that Taylor developed a 105 degree fever the night of the prom and died soon after. She doesn’t tell her about how Taylor’s mother sat with his body for five hours and still thinks she hears him moving in his room upstairs. Kate begins to sob and rejects Sara’s comfort, telling her not to talk to her.
Sara’s decision to keep Taylor’s death from Kate is a protective act, but it’s also a moment where Sara has decided that she knows what’s best for Kate, effectively robbing her of her chance to properly mourn for Taylor. This reflects Sara’s broader pattern of enacting control over her daughters’ lives in an attempt to protect them—especially Kate—even when one or both of their daughters are telling her it’s not what they want.
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Quotes
Kate doesn’t speak to Sara for a week. Sara is devastated, feeling that she has “lost [her] daughter before she’s even gone.” But one day, she walks by Kate’s room and sees her looking through photos of her and Taylor at the prom. Sara looks at the photos and thinks of how bizarre and terrible it is that such a bright person is instantly gone; Sara thinks of it as “practice.” Kate has also taken out older photos of herself, including baby pictures from before she was diagnosed. Kate says that she doesn’t remember being this little girl, but that she was beautiful.
The photographs Kate is looking at symbolize the opportunities lost due to cancer. The most straightforward instance of is of course Taylor, who died—but Kate’s baby pictures from before her diagnosis also signify the metaphorical “death” of the person that Kate could’ve been if she’d never gotten cancer.
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