Brett takes Sanquita to a kidney specialist

Brett Bohlinger’s decision to take Sanquita Bell to a kidney specialist becomes a defining test of care: she helps Sanquita reach medical attention, stands beside her through a grave prognosis, and cannot make Sanquita accept the treatment the doctor recommends. The visit begins as an effort to protect a student and friend, but it exposes the painful divide between preserving Sanquita’s life and honoring what she believes makes that life worth living.

Circumstances and the journey to care

The appointment takes place on a frigid morning, when Brett Bohlinger collects Sanquita Bell from Joshua House. The scene is marked by the cold and its sounds: snow crunching beneath boots, ice cracking on Lake Michigan, and furnaces running. Sanquita sits in the passenger seat in a velour running suit and cropped faux-fur-hooded jacket, rubbing her bare hands before the heat vent. Brett tells her that the University of Chicago Medical Center has one of the country’s leading nephrology programs, but Sanquita questions why Brett is spending time on her when she might have other things to do.

At the clinic, Sanquita asks Brett to come into the examination room with her. Brett puts a protective hand on her shoulder and accompanies her. When Dr. Chan asks who she is, Brett identifies herself as Sanquita’s teacher and friend and explains that Sanquita’s mother lives in Detroit. The answer establishes the unusual closeness of their relationship without claiming a formal family role: Brett is there because Sanquita wants her there, and because the medical encounter has become too consequential for Sanquita to face alone.

The diagnosis and its stakes

After an examination, multiple blood draws, and extensive questions, Dr. Chan explains that Sanquita has a very serious condition and that pregnancy substantially complicates it. Her kidneys are already tenuous; the added stress of pregnancy may raise her potassium levels, putting her at risk of cardiac arrest. Dr. Chan wants to see the laboratory results but stresses that time matters and recommends that Sanquita abort the fetus as soon as possible. The recommendation makes the appointment more than a consultation: the choice presented is between a medically dangerous pregnancy and an intervention Sanquita experiences as the destruction of her child.

Sanquita immediately rejects the recommendation, turning to Brett as if Brett has betrayed her. Brett reminds Dr. Chan that Sanquita is well into her second trimester, and the doctor answers that late-term abortions are performed when the mother’s life is at risk. When Brett asks what would happen if Sanquita continued the pregnancy, Dr. Chan estimates Sanquita’s chances at fifty–fifty and the baby’s at roughly thirty percent. The doctor does not spell out that she means survival, but the implication is unmistakable. The percentages sharpen the stakes without resolving the moral conflict: the prognosis makes the danger concrete, while leaving the decision with Sanquita.

Refusal and the limits of persuasion

On the drive back, Sanquita says she will not return to the doctor because she believes the doctor wants her to kill her baby. Brett tries to explain that the recommendation reflects concern for Sanquita’s life, but Sanquita objects that Brett has no children and therefore no right to tell her what to do. The exchange reveals the distance between them as well as their affection. Brett’s medical concern does not give her authority over Sanquita’s choice, and her attempts to protect her friend risk sounding like a denial of the value Sanquita places on motherhood.

Sanquita later tells Brett that Brett would have made a good mother. Brett experiences the remark as both tender and cruel, squeezes Sanquita’s hand, and says she does not want to lose her. Sanquita answers that her life means nothing to her without the baby and that she would rather die than end the pregnancy. Brett’s narration recognizes this as an all-consuming form of love, one that could also prove fatal. The encounter thus refuses an easy distinction between devotion and danger: Sanquita’s determination is an expression of love, but it places her life at risk.

Brett drops Sanquita off at Joshua House at ten in the morning. She had planned to spend the morning with her, stop for breakfast, and shop for the baby, but the doctor’s warning has made celebration impossible. The abandoned plans give the scene a quiet consequence: even ordinary gestures of friendship have to yield to the unresolved emergency. Brett can accompany Sanquita, listen, and urge her to understand the danger; she cannot turn a high-risk pregnancy into a safe one by wanting it badly enough.

Bleeding and the continuing emergency

The danger becomes immediate when Jean Anderson calls Brett to say that Sanquita is bleeding and needs Brett to come early. Brett makes a U-turn, ignoring the horns of two cars, and hurries to Joshua House with Sanquita and the baby in mind. Jean is taking Sanquita to Cook County Memorial Hospital. In the back seat, Sanquita is sweating, her face swollen, and one hand is massaging her belly; she smiles when she sees Brett, who squeezes her hand and tells her to hang in there. Even in crisis, Sanquita asks whether Brett will come back the next day because she has exams to take.

Brett calls the hospital nearly every hour. By three in the morning, Jean tells her that Sanquita will be fine. When Jean’s car returns the next morning, Brett rushes out to meet it and finds Sanquita slumped in the back seat, her head against the window. Sanquita says that the hospital gave her medicine to stop the contractions. The immediate report offers a reprieve, not a resolution: the pregnancy and kidney danger remain part of the unfolding crisis, and Sanquita’s condition continues to require urgent care.

Wider context and later significance

The episode occurs in a period when Brett is learning to treat care as a responsibility rather than an abstract aspiration. Earlier, she accepted a six-week substitute teaching assignment despite wanting to flee the school building, because she saw the work as a way to complete goal twenty on her life list. That choice does not cause the kidney appointment, but it establishes a relevant change in her willingness to stay with difficult obligations. Her bond with Sanquita carries that commitment beyond the classroom and into medical decisions that Brett cannot control.

The book also places Brett’s growing care work beside Shelley’s changing experience of motherhood and employment. Shelley leaves her speech-pathology job at Saint Francis Hospital, where she had helped adults with traumatic brain injuries regain communication and social skills, believing that staying home would benefit her children. She later admits that the role has made her unhappy and plans to return to work in May after a weekend away with Jay Bohlinger; Jay arranges a year-long leave of absence. These separate choices complicate any simple equation between care and self-sacrifice. Brett’s support for Sanquita is intimate and necessary, but it does not make Brett Sanquita’s decision-maker, just as the demands of motherhood do not require Shelley to abandon work permanently.

The later account of Sanquita’s delivery and death gives the earlier appointment additional weight without making the specialist visit itself the cause of those outcomes. During a custody inquiry, Kirsten Schertzing tells Brett that Sanquita entered a coma after her C-section and that, in the thirteen hours before her death, Brett was the only person recorded as having seen her conscious. Brett recalls that Sanquita woke on the evening of the delivery. The scene therefore becomes part of the history of Brett’s promise and later connection to Sanquita’s child: it shows the friendship developing through medical danger, Sanquita’s insistence on continuing the pregnancy, and Brett’s presence at moments when Sanquita’s wishes and survival were in painful tension.