When we were little, my sister Anne Marie and I were so inseparable we were almost one. We grew up on a seven-acre property outside Stillwater, Oklahoma, and spent our days running around in tiny cowboy boots and barely any clothing, chasing ducks and other birds, pestering the family horse and playing ring around the rosy.
Then one fall we moved to Tulsa, started school. We no longer spent all day together; we no longer got to roam. But it wasn’t only city life or growing up that separated Anne Marie and me.
My sister had her first seizure in kindergarten. At five, she was undergoing tests and procedures, while all I could do was look on, hold her bruised clenched fists in my not-much-larger hands. She had her first brain surgery at six. By then, her life had ceased to bear any resemblance to mine, although I couldn’t accept it.
Over the next two decades, things kept going wrong for Anne Marie. Her brain tumor grew back. She developed more symptoms, got diagnosed: rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, hemochromatosis, more. She dated men who beat her. She dated a man who dragged her into the nightmare world of drugs like crack and PCP. There was always a way for Anne Marie to reach the hospital.