I Cut My Sister Out of My Life—Until She Walked Into My Chemo Room

Every appointment. Every scan. Every awful, fluorescent-lit room where time stretched and hope shrank and expanded by the minute. When my hair started falling out in clumps, she came over with clippers and shaved her head the same night. She didn’t ask if I wanted her to. She just did it, like it was obvious.

When the nausea hit—violent and relentless—she learned the exact angle to hold the bucket so I wouldn’t choke. At three in the morning, when I was shaking and crying and apologizing for the sounds my body made, she sat on the bathroom floor with me and hummed songs we used to listen to in our mother’s kitchen.