My Sister’s Keeper: 32. 2002: Sara 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.

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.

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.

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 Taylor.  Sara 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.