Christopher Schultz

It was the first news I’d ever heard after being told to sit down.  I wondered later if everybody remembers the first time that happens, like we  remember the first meek kiss and the first spill off our bike.

It was winter and I was a junior in college. I’d just come into my  room after a week of midterms, and the phone rang. My sister, Heidi. When she  told me that I should sit, I didn’t know what to think. Did something really  good happen? I didn’t think there was anything bad that she could possibly  say.

She started retracing the previous few months: Remember when I came  to visit and my ankle was hurting? We were dancing at that concert, and I had to  kind of limp? She went on, and I knew then. I knew it was coming, and my mind  raced forward. No way. Not her. I hadn’t sat down when she told me to, but I sat  down then.

The word malignant came through, rammed its onomatopoetic leer  right into my face, choked me a little. But there was something behind it—the  tone that carried it, her voice, imparting the word its due weight but not  giving it anything more, as a policeman might announce a miscreant child over  the phone to his parents: Ma’am, we’ve got a little problem. It brought me back,  that tone. It was my sister, after all. She’d beat this thing. How did I know?  That voice, the first hint of strength that I (and, I came to realize, she)  never knew she had.

We went wig shopping when I was home at Thanksgiving. We talked  about how strange it was for insurance to pay for a wig, in full, when they were  so ornery about every other possible payment. We had fun in the store, trying on  different styles—the platinum Zsa Zsa, the impossibly spherical Supremes, the  bright red Annie, the Princess Lea. As Heidi decided which wig to get, I told  her that she would never put it on. She held it up the way people hold wigs,  raising it to eye level, twisting her wrist, her fingers spreading the nylon  mesh inside. It’ll be bandannas and maybe hats, but not this, I  said.

When I came home for Christmas she was in the hospital, closing out  the first round of chemotherapy. I slept on the couch next to Heidi’s bed that  night. As I walked around the floor I saw many patients. I made eye contact with  many of them, and they had a strong look. There were a few, dispirited, but the  others I couldn’t believe. Every last look, a big heart behind it, so  vibrant.

That’s when it hit me. Everybody’s always asking what he or she  can do. Hair disappears, weight rises and falls, I.V. tubes plug in and pull  out, nausea ebbs and boils. But there is still your sister or brother who  expects you—wants you&mdash;not to switch the mood to dire just because that’s what  people do. They throw that strong glance your way, and you know that all you  must do is treat them as you have before. This underlying simplicity hit me and  my chest swelled a little.

I swept a small swath of blonde hair off Heidi’s pillow and put it  inside the book on the couch where I’d slept. I understood, just a little, what  my place in this was: to be myself, just as I’d always been with my sister. She  would hold us together over the next two years, her assuring aspect as much of a  constant as the wig that stayed in her closet.

Christopher Schultz’s sister, Heidi Schultz Adams, is the founder  and executive director of Planet Cancer (

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