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The doctor says "an irregular growth."
Zahara says "cancer," and the doctor says "we can't be sure," and then there's more tests and a biopsy and they are sure, and yes, it's cancer.
Jeanne holds her sister's hand while Zahara argues with the nurse about the tattoos -- "tiny dots," says the nurse, "you won't see them unless you're looking for them," and Zahara says "I'm Jewish" and the nurse doesn't see what that has to do with it -- and the pitch gets higher and higher until the nurse concedes that henna will probably do, and the moment he leaves the room to go check with the doctor Zahara collapses crying on Jeanne's shoulder, and Jeanne pets her hair and murmurs "you showed him" and refuses to cry herself.
The radiation, Zahara insists, shakily, is "pretty cool, really." (She demands, and gets, lengthy explanations from the techs of exactly how it works and what the latest advances in the science are, during her endless sessions.) Jeanne, afterwards, holding her hand and feeding her ice chips, doesn't see how it can be cool when it's killing -- no. Saving. Saving her sister.
Only it doesn't even do that properly, and they have to operate, and then there's a scar across Zahara's neck that makes people ask impossibly rude questions that imply she did it herself, and Zahara, her eyes flashing, can't even answer them -- they took her voice --
-- but her hands dance as quick and as loud as ever, and Jeanne hisses translations from their private sign language, and back home Zahara sits at her loom and picks up her abandoned shuttle and whistles to herself as she starts a new project, and maybe, maybe, maybe everything can be all right ...
...until at the six-month appointment the doctor says "metastasis," and then "brain," and Zahara punches a hole through the antiseptically mint-green wall and sits there staring at her fist covered in flaking plaster and cries.
Jeanne tries not to think too much about the days that come afterwards.
(Some of it is unforgettable. Zahara, complaining that everything Jeanne brings her to eat is too salty for days before they realize the food's not wrong, her brain's wrong. Zahara, crying because her lap loom is in a tangle for the fifth time that afternoon and she can't pretend it's clumsiness or carelessness anymore, she's holding the pattern in her head wrong. Zahara, asking every ten minutes after her father's cancer treatments, while Jeanne bites halfway through her lip in between telling her that her father's been in remission for ten years. Zahara, too tired to sign anymore, fingerspelling L-I-V-E in Jeanne's hand over and over until her hand clenches painfully on Jeanne's and her eyes roll back in another seizure...)
And then there's the part she does nothing but think about.
That stupid line on the monitor, exactly like a hundred hackneyed TV shows (Zahara deserved better imagery). The nurses moving about the room, quiet and professional and sympathetic and slow, so slow, why didn't they rush, weren't they even going to try? The book lying on the little table, open to the passage that Jeanne had just been going to read aloud to Zahara and now never can.
The doctor says cryonics. Jeanne says no. It escalates to a screaming fight, because Zahara wanted a Jewish burial, and the doctor keeps saying not a relative, and Jeanne takes down the first set of orderlies who are hesitant to use force on a hysterically crying bereaved girl but the second set get her out of the room and threaten to sedate her and then she goes very still and quiet because they have taken so much from her here but they will not take her grief for her sister.
She can't -- won't -- go home. Zahara's sweater is there, draped over the chair by the door where they forgot it the last time they rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night.
Instead, Jeanne goes to a Starbucks, hands the cashier three twenty-dollar bills and says "make me something that will keep me awake for the next week." Sits on the floor with her laptop to drink it. Ignores the looks. It may not be sitting shiva in the strictest sense, but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
She reads the news, voraciously, because the last time she was paying attention to it cryonics wasn't fucking legally mandatory.
As it turns out, there's a lot of news. More, over the next hours. She doesn't move until it's eleven and the Starbucks kicks her out, which is how she ends up following the aftermath of the Quiet War sitting on the floor of a Waffle House, drinking black coffee from the pot and crying. (This makes her the second strangest person in the Waffle House.)
Jeanne doesn't, actually, sleep, in the four days it takes her to figure out that she can technically fulfill Zahara's last insistence to L-I-V-E. She shows up at the fucking hospital again and demands of one person after another that they let her join her sister, until she's finally pushed it far enough up the chain of command and signed enough forms that they let her into a room with a saccharine woman who reads out endless disclaimers and then wants conditions for revival.
"My sister back," Jeanne hisses, and then, when it's clear that won't satisfy, dredges up the first thing she can think of through going-on-five-days of sleep deprivation. "-- and -- a cambric shirt -- without, without any seam -- or needlework--"
The woman just nods gravely, and writes it down on the fucking form, which is exactly the impetus Jeanne needs to barrel onwards.
"--a well -- where never spring water nor rain ever fell -- a thorn which never bore blossom since Adam was born -- an acre of land, between the salt water and the sea strand... a, a cherry, without a stone ... a chicken without a bone ... a story without an end ... a baby with no crying ... and ..." what the hell, it's how the songs always go ... "a true love of mine."
"Sign here," says the woman, and then at long last Jeanne sleeps.