"The Savior Sibling" Response

          Mollie is teenage girl whose life is disrupted by the unexpected diagnosis of an aggressive type of leukemia. She suffers through chemo with the support of her family, but no treatment is successful, and the family seeks a bone marrow donor match. Finding none, they decide to have another child on the slight chance it will be a match for Mollie, which the little girl eventually is.

I like the unexpected turn the story took near the end, and how it raised some difficult ethical questions in the mind of the reader. I was unaware of the real-life events this story was based on, but now I’m intrigued to look up the stories of “Anissa and Marissa Ayala,” as your note at the beginning of the story says. 

However, I felt like the story ended just as it was getting really interesting! Since this is based on a real-life, controversial story, use that fact to your full advantage and focus on what makes this an exceptional case rather than just another sad cancer story, which is what it felt like until the last two pages. Ending the story what felt like abruptly after a solution is found raised a lot of questions for me: how will the transplant affect the child? Is a solution like this morally right or acceptable to the family? How has the character changed through her struggles, or is this “savior sibling” an example of deus ex machina? I recommend beginning the story after diagnosis and after chemo so the bulk of the focus could be on the “ethical controversy” and harsh media attention brought up at the very end. Focusing on this ethical conundrum could help eliminate some of the instances of “telling,” rather than showing, I found in the story, which I think functioned as summations to move the story to its most interesting point. One example of this I found was “David and I became closer as a result of everything, which was a blessing.” Rather than give readers this general summary to speed things along, it would be more helpful for characterization to give specific examples of how David helped Mollie, or using his humor to lighten the family mood helped their relationship, or some specific detail like that.