Summary: Campbell
On a rainy morning, Campbell wakes up with Julia at his apartment. Campbell
thinks about Judge DeSalvo’s decision and echoes what Anna says. No matter if they
win or lose, it won’t be over. Julia tells Campbell she hates his
apartment.
Summary: Jesse
In the rain, Jesse goes to a soccer field and lies down. He recalls lying down
in other storms, hoping to be struck by lightning so he would feel alive.
Summary: Anna
Anna thinks about the rain and how it never really stops moving. She notes
that rain goes through a cycle, evaporates like a soul into the clouds, and then
like everything else, starts over again.
Summary: Brian
Brian recalls another rainy day, the New Year’s Eve when Anna was born. Brian
remembers there were no stars that night. He also remembers his decision to name
Anna after Andromeda, a princess in the sky between her mother and
father.
Summary: Sara
Sara gives her closing arguments. She has note cards but quickly abandons
them. She tells Anna she loves her and says that every day she wonders if she’s
doing the right thing. Sara says that even if Anna and Kate don’t agree with her,
she wants to be the one who’s right ten years later, when they are all still
together. Sara says she knows the lawsuit was never really about donating a kidney
but about choice. She also knows that no one ever really makes decisions by
themselves. Sara makes an analogy to a burning building. She says that in her life
one child has been in a burning building, and her other child has been the only one
who knew the way to save her. She acknowledges that she might be risking the one
child to save the other, and that it might be unfair, but it’s the only way she can
save both children. She doesn’t know if it was legal or moral, but she knows it was
right.
Summary: Campbell
In his closing arguments, Campbell says the case isn’t about donating a
kidney, but about a thirteen-year-old girl who deserves the chance to figure out who
she is going to be. He says ultimately nothing else matters except what Anna thinks.
After a short recess, Judge Desalvo returns with a picture of his daughter, who was
killed by a drunk driver. He acknowledges that they have entered into a debate about
the quality of life versus the sanctity of life. He says the sanctity of Kate’s life
has become intertwined with the quality of Anna’s. He admits there is no good
answer, because morals are more important than ethics, and love is more important
than law. But he decides that only Anna can decide how to treat her body. He
declares her medically emancipated and gives Campbell medical power of attorney.
Anna and her parents hug.
Summary: Anna
Campbell drives Anna to the hospital in the pouring rain. Anna asks Campbell
what he thinks she should do, and he says it’s her choice now. Campbell tells Anna
he thinks she will be amazing in ten years. Anna thinks about what she wants to be
and knows only that in ten years she wants to be Kate’s sister.
Summary: Brian
Responding to a call, Brian arrives at the scene of a car crash. A large truck
has crushed a small car. Campbell’s dog comes whimpering out of the car just as
Brian realizes that Anna is one of the passengers. His fellow firefighters try and
hold him back, but he insists on pulling Campbell out of the car and then Anna, who
is unconscious. At the hospital, Sara finds Brian. He doesn’t know how to explain
what happened. Campbell comes out with his arm in a sling and asks about Anna. A
doctor tells them that Anna is brain dead and asks if they want to consider organ
donation. Brian thinks about twin stars and how the first one can shine so bright
that the other may be gone before you notice it. Back in the present, Campbell tells
the doctor that he has medical power of attorney over Anna, and a girl upstairs
needs Anna’s kidney.
Summary: Sara
Sara observes that in the English language no word exists for someone who
loses a child. After doctors remove Anna’s organs, they bring her back down to the
family. Everyone is there, and Sara and Brian sit beside Anna. Sara says she has
spent years anticipating the loss of a daughter, but she is still at a loss. Brian
reminds Sara that Anna is gone and that her body is just a shell. Finally Brian
turns off the respirator. Sara puts her hand on Anna’s chest as her heart
stops.
Analysis
Anna’s sudden death at the end of the chapter creates a dramatic twist in the
novel’s storyline. To this point, everyone in the novel (and probably the reader as
well) assumed that if any of the Fitzgerald daughters were to die, that girl would
be Kate. The accident concludes with Kate finally receiving Anna’s kidney. Anna,
consequently, becomes the sacrifice necessary for Kate to live, rather than the one
who causes Kate’s death. Anna’s observation that rain never really ends, but rather
evaporates and starts all over again, not only foreshadows her death but also her
role in saving Kate’s life. Campbell suggests a similar notion when he thinks that,
whether they win or lose the case, the ordeal is not over. Both comments state that
what appears to be the end may not, in reality, be an end at all, reiterating the
theme that appearance may differ from reality. Anna’s comment additionally suggests
a metaphorical rebirth or reincarnation. Both apparently refer to the idea that even
though Anna dies, she lives on in Kate because her kidney allows Kate to
survive.
The major tensions we see in the novel have largely centered on the issue of
control. Characters want to control their own bodies, to control Kate’s cancer, and
to control the outcomes of their lives. For Anna, the major ethical dilemma she
faced centered on her right to deny Kate a kidney, since she has served as Kate’s
donor her entire life evidently without having any say in the matter. For Kate, her
wish to control her fate centered on whether she should be allowed to deny treatment
for her cancer, which would undoubtedly result in her death. But with Anna’s death,
these tensions no longer apply. Anna’s battle to make her own choices paradoxically
ends with her unable to decide what happens to her body. The question Kate faces
becomes moot, because if she rejects the transplant, Anna’s death would have
occurred in vain. As the novel reaches its end, the different struggles for control
we have seen become suddenly futile.
Sara, in her closing arguments, draws an analogy between saving a child from a
burning building and doing what she has to in order to save Kate. As we’ve seen
repeatedly in the novel, fire serves as the primary symbol in this analogy, and
Sara’s words appear to refer to not only her own actions, but also to Brian’s, who
has made these decisions with Sara and has similarly done all he can to save Kate.
Sara’s analogy makes the point that she deliberately put Anna at risk because no
other means existed to save Kate. Sara acknowledges that, although her actions have
not always been fair to Anna, or even legal or moral as she puts it, her actions
have been right. Here, Sara draws a distinction between different notions of what is
right. What is legal can be considered what the courts define as right. What is
moral can be defined as what society deems to be right. Neither of these ideas,
however, coincide with Sara’s idea of what is right. Sara, not being a court or
society but Kate’s mother, has a different set of criteria for her notion of
“right.” For her, saving Kate’s life ranked as her most important consideration,
even if it meant causing Anna to suffer. Again, the line between right and wrong
appears ambiguous.
In a metaphor that uses both star symbolism and repeats the theme of the bond
between sisters, Brian describes twin stars that move in constant rotation around
one another, raising two ideas that apply to Anna and Kate. First, the stars orbit
each other so closely that, to an observer on Earth, they can appear as one star. In
a similar way, Anna and Kate have been inextricably linked since Anna, conceived
specifically with Kate in mind, came into existence. Anna, as Kate’s donor, has
lived her entire life figuratively in orbit around Kate. Medically, Anna’s history
and Kate’s history are inseparable, reiterated by Judge DeSalvo when he points out
that Kate’s sanctity of life intertwines with Anna’s quality of life. In addition,
Brian notes that one star can often obscure the presence of the other, just as Kate,
who drew everyone’s attention because of her cancer, often obscured Anna. Kate and
Anna shared an intense and complex bond that forms a substantial part of each girl’s
identity. Anna acknowledges repeatedly in the novel that she can’t imagine life
without Kate, and even when Campbell asks Anna what she wants to be in ten years,
she is only certain that she wants to be Kate’s sister.
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