I wasn’t sure why my mother and I were going to the doctor’s office.
            “Mom, are you feeling okay?” She couldn’t ignore me forever.
            “Hailey, its you.”  Me?  I was fine.  Maybe it was my fourteen year-old check-up,  I thought. But I wouldn’t blow out the candles on the cake until tomorrow.  Anyway, my mom had called me by the wrong name again!
            “Mom, I’m Lydia!”  She hadn’t been herself lately.  She seemed to forget my name, calling me Hailey.  I didn’t even know anybody named Hailey.  Who was she mistaking me for?
            “I’m sorry, Honey.  Silly me!” she exclaimed.  She treated me like I was six, and acted as if it was a normal, everyday mistake to forget your child’s name.  After that, neither of us said anything until we arrived at the clinic.

            An hour later I was in the waiting room listening to my mother plead with the doctor.  Was my mother crazy?  Why had she brought me here? I felt perfectly fine.  The physician hadn’t found anything wrong with me.
            “Ma’am, we have no reason to give her an MRI.  Your daughter does not appear to have anything wrong with her and she says she feels fine,” the doctor said.
            “Please help her,” my mother begged, teary-eyed.  My mom had been crying all the time lately.  When I asked if she was okay, she would put on a fake smile and tell me that she was absolutely fine.
            The doctor walked over to me.  “Is your mother… all right?”           
            “As far as I know,” I responded.  “Can I call my dad?”
            “I was thinking of suggesting that,” the doctor said.
            On the phone my father seemed very upset with my mother, yet he did not sound surprised, as if he had been waiting for this to happen sooner or later.  He said he would come immediately.  With that, I hung up.
            When my dad arrived, he did not say anything to us.  After apologizing to the doctor, he drove us home in our family’s old rusty jeep.
            The rest of the evening went on as if it were a normal night.  My parents tried to cheer me up.
            “Lydia, do you want to have a birthday party?” my father asked me during dinner.
            “On one day’s notice?  Anyway, Dad, I’m too old for that!”
            There was an uneasy feeling in the air.  My parents seemed relieved when it was finally time for me to go to bed.  They both tucked me in and kissed me goodnight.  The last time they had both tucked me into bed must have been when I was eight!  Once they were downstairs, I heard them start to argue.  I couldn’t help but wonder what they were talking about.  I quietly crept out of bed and tiptoed down the stairs.  I strained to hear the conversation.
            “We can’t do it again.  They have laws about it now!”   What were my parents talking about?  Were they criminals?
            “We had her for fourteen more years.  We couldn’t ask for any more.” I could hear my dad’s voice.
            Just then I sneezed.  Instantly, they swiveled around.  They stared at me, both at a loss for words.  I decided to begin the conversation.
            “Okay, you can’t hide it anymore! I want to know what’s going on!” I shouted.
            They glanced at each other.  My mom spoke, “Your father will explain.”
            I walked into the room and plopped down on the couch, wondering what they could possibly tell me.
            “Before you were born, Lydia, you had a sister, Hailey.”  Why hadn’t they ever told me this?  I had always thought I was an only child.
            He continued, “She was the love of our life.  And then she unexpectedly passed away.  He stopped.
            “We were able to save some of her DNA,” my mother continued.  “You’re Hailey’s exact clone.  You have the same heart condition as her.  She died on her fourteenth birthday.  You will too.”  My mother looked at me through the tears that began to fill her eyes.  “There’s nothing anybody can do about it.”  Waterfalls were now rushing down her cheeks.
            I kept telling myself that I was only dreaming,  yet it was too real to be a dream.  This was not a television show.  I couldn’t pinch myself and wake up in my warm, safe bed.  The more I thought about it, the less it made sense.  I had heard about scientists cloning sheep, but humans?  I sat there with all of these questions swirling around me, unable to think straight.  One thought came to me clearly.   If this were true, I would die tomorrow.   I had to make every single second, every breath count.  There was no time to waste.
            “Are you sure that the same thing will happen to me? I asked in disbelief.  “The doctor said I was fine today.”
            My father choked back his tears now.  I had never seen my dad cry before.  “I’m sorry, Lydia—“ he managed, avoiding eye contact.
            Yesterday, I couldn’t wait for my birthday, but now I feared every passing minute that led me closer to tomorrow.  It’s not my birthday, I thought, it will be my deathday.  I pictured myself blowing out the candles and then dropping dead on the floor before I even got to have a piece of the cake.
            We all went upstairs and again my parents both tucked me in and kissed me goodnight.  They stood at my door and watched me for a long time, before I finally heard them walk away.  I heard their bedroom door click shut behind them.
            My mind raced with this new, horrible truth.  I tossed and turned all night, barely getting any sleep until it was almost morning.
            I got up at noon.   The day is already halfway over, I thought, as I climbed out of bed.  Downstairs, when I sat down at the kitchen table, my mother came over to me, smiling.
            “So do you want breakfast or lunch? She asked playfully.  How could she be joking around today?  Did she forget everything that happened yesterday?  Did she forget that I was going to die? Maybe she’s just trying to cheer me up, I thought, but her smile wasn’t the fake one that she usually put on.
            My father came into the room.  “Lydia!  The lab where we cloned your sister has been doing extensive research.  They found they had made a very obvious mistake.  When they had tried to implant the modified embryo into your mother’s womb to clone Hailey, your mother had already been pregnant… with you!”
            I was not so quick to share in their joy.  “So, I’m not a clone?” I asked doubtfully.  After everything that had happened, I did not know what to think.
            My parents could have made up the lab report as a supposed happy ending, so I could enjoy the rest of my birthday.  Or the lab could have been wrong.
            As I watched my parents happily going about the tasks of the day, seemingly relieved and unconcerned, I wasn’t sure what to think.  My parents really could be right.
            I could only wait and see: birthday or deathday?