IT'S RAINING.

The kind of rain that comes down so heavy it sounds like the shower's running, even when you've turned it off. The kind of rain that makes you think of dams and flash floods, arks. The kind of rain that tells you to crawl back into bed, where the sheets haven't lost your body heat, to pretend that the clock is five minutes earlier than it really is.

Ask any kid who's made it past fourth grade and they can tell you: water never stops moving. Rain falls, and runs down a mountain into a river. The river finds it way to the ocean. It evaporates, like a soul, into the clouds. And then, like everything else, it starts all over again.

IT'S RAINING.

Like the day Anna was born-New Year's Eve, and way too warm for that time of year. What should have been snow become a torrential downpour. Ski slopes had to close for Christmas, because all their runs got washed out. Driving to the hospital, with Sara in labor beside me, I could barely see through the windshield.

There were no stars that night, what with all the rain clouds. And maybe because of that, when Anna arrived I said to Sara, "Let's name her Andromeda. Anna, for short."

"Andromeda?" she said. "Like the sci-fi book?"

"Like the princess," I corrected. I caught her eye over the tiny horizon of our daughter's head. "In the sky," I explained, "she's between her mother and her father."

IT'S RAINING.

Not an auspicious beginning, I think, I shuffle my index cards on the table, trying to look more skilled than I actually am. Who was I kidding? I am no lawyer, no professional. I have been nothing more than a mother, and I have not even done a very square job of that.

"Mrs. Fitzgerald?" the judge prompts.

I take a deep breath, stare down at the gibberish in front of me, and grab the whole sheaf of index cards. Standing up, I clear my throat, and start to read aloud. "In this country we have a long legal history of allowing parents to make decisions for their children. It's part of what the courts have always found to be the constitutional right to privacy. And given all the evidence this court has heard—" Suddenly, there is a crash of lightning, and I drop all my notes onto the floor. Kneeling, I scramble to pick them up, but of course now they are out of order. I try to rearrange what I have in front of me, but nothing makes sense.

Oh, hell. It's not what I need to say, anyway.

"Your Honor," I ask, "can I start over?" When he nods, I turn my back on him, and walk toward my daughter, who is sitting beside Campbell.

"Anna," I tell her, "I love you. I loved you before I ever saw you, and I will love you long after I'm not here to say it. And I know that because I'm a parent, I'm supposed to have all the answers, but I don't. I wonder every single day if I'm doing the right thing. I wonder if I know my children the way I think I do. I wonder if I lose my perspective in being your mother, because I'm so busy being Kate's."

I take a few steps forward. "I know I jump at every sliver of possibility that might cure Kate, but it's all I know how to do. And even if you don't agree with me, even if Kate doesn't agree with me, I want to be the one who says I told you so. Ten years from now, I want to see your children on your lap and in your arms, because that's when you'll understand. I have a sister, so I know—that relationship, it's all about fairness: you want your sibling to have exactly what you have—the same amount of toys, the same number of meatballs on your spaghetti, the same share of love. But being a mother is completely different. You want your child to have more than you ever did. You want to build a fire underneath her and watch her soar. It's bigger than words." I touch my chest. "And it still all manages to fit very neatly inside here."

I turn to Judge DeSalvo. "I didn't want to come to court, but I had to. The way the law works, if a petitioner takes action—even if that's your own child—you must have a reaction. And so I was forced to explain, eloquently, why I believe that I know better than Anna what is best for her. When you get down to it, though, explaining what you believe isn't all that easy. If you say that you believe something to be true, you might mean one of two things—that you're still weighing the alternatives, or that you accept it as a fact. I don't logically see how one single word can have contradictory definitions, but emotionally, I completely understand. Because there are times I think what I am doing is right, and there are other times I second-guess myself every step of the way.

"Even if the court found in my favor today, I couldn't force Anna to donate a kidney. No one could. But would I beg her? Would I want to, even if I restrained myself? I don't know, not even after speaking to Kate, and after hearing from Anna. I am not sure what to believe; I never was. I know, indisputably, only two things: that this lawsuit was never really about donating a kidney… but about having choices. And that nobody ever really makes decisions entirely by themselves, not even if a judge gives them the right to do so."

Finally, I face Campbell. "A long time ago I used to be a lawyer. But I'm not one anymore. I am a mother, and what I've done for the past eighteen years in that capacity is harder than anything I ever had to do in a courtroom. At the beginning of this hearing, Mr. Alexander, you said that none of us is obligated to go into a fire and save someone else from a burning building. But that all changes if you're a parent and the person in that burning building is your child. If that's the case, not only would everyone understand if you ran in to get your child—they'd practically expect it of you."

I take a deep breath. "In my life, though, that building was on fire, one of my children was in it—and the only opportunity to save her was to send in my other child, because she was the only one who knew the way. Did I know I was taking a risk? Of course. Did I realize it meant maybe losing both of them? Yes. Did I understand that maybe it wasn't fair to ask her to do it? Absolutely. But I also knew that it was the only chance I had to keep both of them. Was it legal? Was it moral? Was it crazy or foolish or cruel? I don't know. But I do know it was right."

Finished, I sit down at my table. The rain beats against the windows to my right. I wonder if it will ever let up.

I GET TO MY FEET, look at my notecards, and—like Sara—toss them into the trash. "Like Mrs. Fitzgerald just said, this case isn't about Anna donating a kidney. It isn't about her donating a skin cell, a single blood cell, a rope of DNA. It's about a girl who is on the cusp of becoming someone. A girl who is thirteen—which is hard, and painful, and beautiful, and difficult, and exhilarating. A girl who may not know what she wants right now, and she may not know who she is right now, but who deserves the chance to find out. And ten years from now, in my opinion, I think she's going to be pretty amazing."

I walk toward the bench. "We know that the Fitzgeralds were asked to do the impossible—make informed health-care decisions for two of their children, who had opposing medical interests. And if we—like the Fitzgeralds—don't know what the right decision is, then the person who has to have the final say is the person whose body it is… even if that's a thirteen-year-old. And ultimately, that too is what this case is about: the moment when perhaps a child knows better than her parents.

"I know that when Anna made the choice to file this lawsuit, she did not do it for all the self-centered reasons you might expect of a thirteen-year-old. She didn't make this decision because she wanted to be like other kids her age. She didn't make this decision because she was tired of being poked and prodded. She didn't make this decision because she was afraid of the pain."