A Hope for Emily

19

Rachel

The doorbell rings and my heart turns over before I take a deep breath and go to open it, telling myself this meeting is going to be okay, that we’re handle this like the two mature and responsible adults that we are.

“Hello, James.”

He nods his greeting and I step aside as he comes in. He looks defeated rather than angry, which surprises and saddens me. I was pitching for some sort of battle, but I feel as if it is already over, or as if it never happened at all.

Since Emily’s page exploded all over the internet—admittedly in a fairly minor way, at least in internet terms—my emotions have been all over the place. Regret, fear, excitement, hope. The last one I hold onto, cling to it with my fingertips, because it’s been so long I’ve felt it properly, and it’s so, so fragile. In the end, I know it’s the only one that matters.

“I’m sorry about all this,” I say as James sinks into my sofa and gazes around my bland, beige living room without interest. He’s never actually been here before.

“Are you?” He sounds tired. It’s Tuesday evening; he’s come from being with Emily. I don’t know what he wants to say to me, although I can guess. How could you. How dare you. This is not what we agreed on, Rachel..

“Yes, I am, James.” I try to keep my voice from turning strident. “I never meant… well, I never wanted you to come out the bad guy in this. That was absolutely never my intention.” In the thirty-six hours since the news reporter contacted me, the story has broken online on a local news page that James is opposed to the treatment, and there has been a slew of horrible, hateful comments under it, as well as on the Instagram post I didn’t even know about. How could a father deny his daughter treatment? I feel sad for the mom, but she needs to know when it’s over. What a bastard. What a saddo. These people are desperate. Why don’t they pay for it themselves? Poor kid, but it’s not my problem.

Each comment felt like a slap or a punch; I made myself read them all, and by the end, I felt bludgeoned, bruised and bloody. I can’t even delete them, because I don’t have the password to the account. Yet as much as I try to feel angry with Eva for creating the account without telling me, even as I recognized that I’d basically given her permission to do anything online, wanting her to boost the visibility of Emily’s page. Never truly thinking through what could happen, despite my vague apprehensions about a scenario, it turns out, exactly like this. Something going viral. Hatred being spewed. James alienated and even more intransigent, turned into the bad guy by a bunch of faceless consumers, because it’s a better story.

James doesn’t reply to my stammering apologies, and I sit opposite him, my hands clasped between my knees, unsure what to do, how to handle this. He asked to meet me, and I was expecting blustering demands to take down the page, to stop it all, to just go away, Rachel. Isn’t that what he’s wanted from me all along, even if he’s never said? That’s what it’s felt like.

But I’m not going away. When I last looked, Emily’s crowdfunding account had eleven thousand dollars in it. The page has over thirty thousand views. Despite the admitted backlash, I don’t want to take it down.

“What were you thinking, Rachel?” he finally asks. He sounds so tired, so resigned and so sad, that everything in me cringes with guilty remorse. I realize I’d far prefer him to be angry than hurt. I know I didn’t handle this the way I should have, but his record isn’t unblemished, either. If he’d just talked to me… “I mean, I understand the need to do something,” he continues. “I can see why you’d start the page, even though you knew I don’t agree with the treatment.” He draws a shaky breath. “But to not even tell me about it… to have me find out from a news reporter, who actually came to my office…”

“I didn’t mean that for happen.”

“I know you didn’t, but the fact is, it did. And you made the page over a week ago, so…” He rubs a hand over his face. “Surely there was time to tell me? Mention the page, the funding, all for a treatment I’ve already said no to?”

“Which is why I didn’t tell you.” My voice wobbles, and then rises. “You would have just told me not to do it—”

“Yes, I would have, because I don’t think this is the right course for Emily, or for that matter, for you.”

“For me?” I swell with indignation, feel myself getting bigger. “How can you presume to know what’s best for me, James? You don’t know anything about me anymore. You have no right to pretend you do. You left me.” The words are ripped out of me and hurled at him, words I’ve never actually said, because I’ve been determined to be so reasonable, so understanding, about everything, for Emily’s sake. Right now I don’t feel any of that.

He shakes his head, lips compressing. “I may have been the one to end the marriage, but that’s because I was the one brave enough to call time. You know we were basically strangers for months before that, Rachel. We barely spoke, never mind touched or acted like a husband and wife. I’ve been willing to be the bad guy if you need me to, but let’s be honest about that for once.”

I can’t argue with the truth of his words. “I wouldn’t have left you,” I state. Of that I am sure.

“No, you would have just endured. Sorry I’m not the same kind of martyr.” He shakes his head. “In any case, this isn’t about us, Rachel. I’m sorry, I have always been sorry, for any hurt I’ve caused you, but right now this is about Emily.”

“Yes, and that’s where we differ. I think the experimental treatment is best for Emily, and you don’t.” I speak flatly . “And if we’re going to talk about not telling each other things, James, how about the fact that you refused even to have discussion with me about this? All I’ve got from you are one liners by text, and then a complete shutdown.”

“I didn’t think either of us had the emotional energy for a big drama over such a remote possibility—”

“I’ve got the emotional energy.” I lean forward, my fists curling. Maybe there will be a battle, after all. I’m ready for it. I almost want it. I’ve suppressed so much over the last three years, because I didn’t want anything to take away from my focus on Emily. From doing whatever I could to help her… including this. “I’ve got the time and the space and now even the money to get Emily this treatment,” I tell him. “All I need you to do is agree, James. You won’t have to do anything—”

“Do you honestly think this is about me feeling put out or something?” There is a spark in his eyes I haven’t seen before, or at least not in a long time. “Do you honestly think this is about me not wanting to be hassled?”

“I don’t know what to think. You won’t even talk about it—”

“Because there’s no point!” His voice rises to something like a roar, and suddenly I am shouting too.

“You don’t think there’s a point. Just you. Not me. And I have as much of a right, if not more of one, to decide on Emily’s care—”

“More of one?” he repeats, nodding as if he knew I’d say that. “That’s how it has always been with you, Rachel. You have to win, and it is no

t meant to be a contest.”