I’m forty-two, and according to her Facebook profile Eva is only thirty-six. She looks younger than me, by more than six years, with her smooth skin and clear eyes and styled hair. She is beautiful, but in a hard-edged way; I sense something brittle about her, ready to snap, and I wonder what attracted James to her. The fact that she is so unlike me? Or is it arrogant to think that way?
It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. He chose her. Here we are.
She takes another sip of wine and then lets out a weary breath. “So what is it you want James to do?”
I pause, assessing the moment. Eva already looks resigned and we’re both standing up in the kitchen. How much time will she give me? I need more than a few minutes’ hasty, stammered recap standing by a counter.
“Can we sit down?” I ask, trying to sound humble. “I have to explain…”
A pause, and then she nods and walks into the living room, sinking into the sofa, with an air of something close to resignation to having me here, wrecking her evening. I tell myself not to mind. To focus on what’s important. Emily.
“Thank you,” I say, and I mean it. I perch on the edge of a large, squashy armchair opposite her, my hands clasped between my knees.
“So you know Emily was moved into palliative care two weeks ago…” I resume and she nods. “And that was against my wishes. I’m not ready to give up on my daughter.”
“And you think James is?” The words are without censure, more curious than anything else.
“Maybe,” I allow, although it hurts. I’m not ready to write James off that much just yet; I know he is grieving too. “I think, perhaps, it’s easier for him… with…” I trail off, not wanting to put it into words.
“With me?” she finishes, and takes another large mouthful of her wine.
“Yes, I suppose. With you. He has a new life…” Whereas I do not. It’s so painfully obvious, and I don’t even care, yet it hurts to admit it to this woman. My replacement.
I realize then, with a jolt of understanding, that as amicable as we’ve tried to make it, there is a deep, dark river of bitterness and hurt and even rage running beneath all of us, catching us up in its currents. Perhaps that’s why we’ve never met. Why Eva has never seen Emily. It never even crossed my mind that she would, and James never once broached the idea of bringing Eva to see our daughter. Now I wonder if that is normal. Now I wonder if, beneath this surface of careful amicability, we actually hate each other.
Eva looks away from, her lips pursed. “So what is it that you want him to do? You haven’t said yet.”
I take a deep breath. “I want to take Emily for some experimental treatment. I need James to agree. We have joint custody of Emily in regard to her medical care. We both need to agree to any treatment or change in her care plan.”
She looks back at me, her gaze flickering over me, closed and opaque, revealing nothing. “And you don’t?”
“James won’t even engage with me about the possibility.” I hear the despair making my voice waver. When, after hours of online research, I stumbled on the treatment a single clinic in Italy has been pioneering, I knew it wasn’t a miracle. Of course I knew that. I’m not that much of a deluded dreamer, and yet it was the chink of light in the unending darkness that I needed. That Emily needed. It was a wonderful what-if that we could both hold onto. But when I forwarded the link to James, his reply was all too brief.
I can’t do this, Rachel.
I fired an email back, too quickly, assuring him I wasn’t asking him to do it. I would do it. All of it, everything—the money, the travel, the care. But as we both have equal control over Emily’s medical decisions, I needed him to say yes, and so far he has refused even to have a discussion about it. It’s like battering my head against a brick wall, and I’m bruised and bloody now, but still so determined.
“And you think I can convince him?” Eva arches one eyebrow, clearly sceptical.
Do I? I’m not even sure, but I don’t have any other avenues. James won’t talk to me, any mutual friends we had have dropped off, but he surely listens to his wife. “I don’t know,” I admit. “But I’ve run out of ideas, and I really need him to agree. Otherwise it means a court case…” Which I can’t afford. Which will take too much time. Which will make everything worse.
She shakes her head slowly, and inside I am shrieking in protest. She can’t say no, not yet, not when I haven’t even told her the statistics, given her all the hope.
“Look,” I say, cutting off whatever pitying refusal she is poised to make, “I know it’s a long shot. I’m not naïve. This treatment is very new. Very untried. But Emily deserves every chance I can give her—just as any child does. And the research is compelling—this experimental treatment has been done on several patients in conditions similar to Emily’s, and they have regained some consciousness, shown some awareness.” Not huge gains, but something, and Emily’s case could potentially be even more promising.
She’s been in a state of unresponsive wakefulness for less time than the patients who have already had the treatment, and she’s young. I don’t want to get my hopes up, but I am. Of course I am. They are flying sky high, sailing along, euphorically buoyant.
“What is the experimental treatment?” Eva asks.
“It’s a kind of nerve stimulation. The doctors would implant a sensor in Emily’s chest that stimulates the vagus nerve, which connects to parts of the brain pertaining to alertness.” I am reeling off what I now know by heart, having learned it from the internet. There’s not that much out there about this treatment, because it’s so new. It’s been tried on a handful of patients in the last few years, that’s all. Hardly conclusive. I can practically hear Dr. Brown, or even James, say the words as they shake their heads, murmuring about false hope, wild goose chases.
“The patients who have undergone the treatment have experienced some return of consciousness,” I continue steadily. “Sometimes significantly. They’re not jumping out of bed, it’s true, but they can respond to stimuli, they sense a threat, they follow an object with their eyes, they listen. Some have even tried to communicate.” My voice breaks and I draw a ragged breath, doing my best to hold it together. “I know that probably seems like very little to you, but the thought of Emily being able to recognize me again, of responding in any way to me…” I can’t go on, not without starting to cry, and I really don’t want to do that in front of Eva. “It would mean a lot to me,” I manage to finish, my voice clogged with emotion.
Eva looks away again, and I have no idea what she is thinking. Did my little display of emotion move or harden her? Does she think I’m pathetic or admirable? I wait, holding my breath, hoping. When I can’t stand the silence any longer, I finally speak. “Please, Eva,” I say quietly. I’m under control now, thankfully. “I know I’m asking a lot of you. I know this isn’t your problem, that it’s not your responsibility to care about me or Emily.” Her lips twitch but she says nothing. “But you gave Emily a teddy bear, James showed it to me…” I stop, try again. “If you had a child, if you and James had a child…” It hurts to say those words, but I make myself. “Would
n’t you want to do whatever you could to try to help them? Help them to regain even a little bit of themselves, even if just for a little while? I couldn’t live with myself, if I knew there was something I could have done for Emily, and I didn’t do it.”
Her face contorts briefly and she angles her head even farther away from me. Did I say the wrong thing? Have I lost her?