Rachel
The hot, summer sunshine of the first week in Bologna has given way to a damp and oppressive heat, with an oily fog rolling in and blanketing the city in gray. Apparently this is fairly normal, as Bologna rests in the Po Valley, and the fog is trapped in it like water in a basin; it will only lift when the winds blow and the weather finally changes.
The dank skies don’t help my mood, which has been plummeting steadily since we arrived. I’ve tried to keep my spirits up, hoisting them again and again like a tattered sail, but it has been getting harder with every passing day. No matter what Eva said about coming here being the right thing to do, I’m more and more afraid that it isn’t.
And I’m even more afraid that it isn’t working.
Since that first buoyant evening, when everything seemed possible, nothing has felt the way I thought it would. The hospital feels sterile; Dr. Rossi is kind but clinical; and worst of all, Emily feels like an experiment. Here, more than anywhere else, she is a statistic. Data. And I find myself missing the massage therapy and music room I once scoffed at. I miss the familiarity of the doctors and nurses back at the children’s hospital in Boston, the routines, the colourful murals on the walls, the smiles of the staff, the language. I miss my mom, and Andrew and Jake, and I even miss James.
I’ve texted and spoken to them all over the last two weeks, and although they’ve tried to be positive in their own ways, they haven’t helped.
On the phone my mother’s voice sounds suddenly old—wavery and thin, as if she’s already fading away but I tell myself she can’t be. She’s only just been diagnosed. Yet when I asked, she admitted the tremors have become a little worse.
“It’s all expected, Rachel,” she said, as if somehow this made it better. “This is exactly the progression they told me to expect. It’s not a surprise, even if it feels like one.”
“Right.” I didn’t know what else to say. An awkward silence ensued, like something we had to stumble over. Then my mother asked another question about the treatment, and I answered it, and I thought we’d found our way back to a stable place, only for her to pause for a few terrible seconds a little while later, as she tried to sound out words that once came so naturally to her, taking her time with the syllables. Her speech, like her movement, was affected, and it would only become more so.
“I’m sorry, honey,” my mom said, apologizing even though she didn’t need to. Of course she didn’t. “I know it seems… well, I don’t know how it seems. I’m slowing down. My hands tremble. And sometimes my head feels blank, as if there’s nothing in there. Literally nothing.” She let out a choked sound that I thought was meant to pass for a laugh. “Some days I don’t feel it at all. Other times… it feels like a mental freefall, like I don’t know who I am anymore. But I’m sorry. I know this, on top of everything with Emily, must be distressing to you, and I hate that.”
“You don’t need to be sorry, Mom.” It saddened me unbearably, that this was happening to her, and even more so that I was missing it. When I return from Italy, would she seem like a different person? Was she already becoming one? Another cost to this trip that I hadn’t envisaged.
“Still.” She sighed. “I know it’s the last thing you need.”
“It’s the last thing you need,” I said automatically, but she was right. Worrying about my mother on top of worrying about Emily felt like a weight I wasn’t strong enough to bear, and so I ended up trying not to worry or think of her at all, which felt awful in a different way, yet I knew there was only so much my soul could take at one time.
Outside the clouds swell and darken with rain, turning violent shades of purple that would be beautiful if they didn’t look so ominous. Eva told me a thunderstorm is predicted for tonight, and I think the rain might be a relief. I’m so tired of waiting.
Last night I spoke to James to give him an update, even though there wasn’t much to say. Every day Emily gets the nerve stimulation, which I’m recommended not to see, and then a brain scan, which I also don’t see. After a period of recovery, I can finally sit with her, but she’s covered in electrodes monitoring everything all the time, and it all feels far more invasive than I expected, the hospital more sterile and clinical, the future more unknown. Part of me just wants to go home, even as I desperately hope and wait for not a cure. No, I know better than that, but something. Anything.
The despondency that I can’t quite hide has turned James, improbably, into my comforter. “They said it would take some time before there are any potential results,” he reminded me when I admitted just a fraction of my doubts on the phone last night. “You need to be patient, Rachel. I know it’s hard.”
“I know. I just…” I can’t admit to him that I’m afraid I was wrong, that I really have been holding out for a miracle like he accused me of, that this whole thing can sometimes feel like the wild goose chase he said it was. “I know,” I said again. “I just didn’t expect it to feel this way. Maybe I should have, but…”
“I know.” He sounded sad, and I was grateful that he didn’t remind me that he’d been predicting something like this all along.
I haven’t asked James about Eva, although she has said she’s spoken to him. It’s not my place to ask about their marriage, even though I’ve been put smack in the middle of it. It feels strange, that I actually want them to work out. I don’t want this to come between them, even though it already has. Yet maybe, just maybe, this can be something that makes them stronger, helps them to grow. A trial doesn’t have to mean the end for a couple. And, I realize, I like Eva. I can see how her boldness and focus could be good for James. As bizarre as it feels, I am happy for them in a way I never was before.
A few raindrops spatter against the windowpane and then subside; they feel like a warning. I rise from my chair and walk around the room, rolling my shoulders and flexing my feet. Sitting still, strangely, can be exhausting.
During these long hours of waiting, I’ve found myself turning back time inside my head, something I don’t normally do because it’s too painful. Yet here, in this strange place, with so many strange voices and people around me, I need it, to anchor me to the present, to the reason I’m here at all.
And so I sit in the plastic chair next to Emily’s bed and remember. I remember when I found out I was pregnant; we’d only just started trying and I was so surprised, so disbelieving, that I took three tests and lined them all up on top of the toilet. I tried to think of clever and funny ways to tell James, but both of us were too down to earth for that. In the end, as he came through the door one evening, I just blurted it out. The look on his face, his total shock, was comical and endearing. I wish I’d taken a photo.
I remember Emily as a newborn, sleeping on my chest, a solid and pleasing weight, a milk bubble frothing at her lips. I remember her at four months old, staring up at her activity gym in wide-eyed wonder, as if a plush green frog dangling from a yellow string was the most incredible thing she’d ever seen.
Of course, not all of it was wonderful. I remember feeling as if I were going out of my mind when she was teething at six months old, and cried for six hours straight. I remember picking her up from her bouncy chair a little too firmly, my hands squeezing her middle, and hearing her shrill cry pierce the air.
I was sorry immediately, and I hugged and kissed and quieted her, but four years later that memory still skewers me. How could I have lost my temper, even for a second? If only I’d known…
But of course you never know. And when I stomped into her bedroom in the middle of the night, wretched with lack of sleep, or secretly wished that she would just shut up, or when, as a toddler, she insisted on fastening the lid onto her sippy cup and juice spilled everywhere and I shouted at her… all those moments when I gritted my teeth or snapped at her or rolled my eyes or wished that moment away…
Well, now I know you don’t always get them back.
But thankfully there are far many more good memories than hard ones. Snuggles in bed in the morning, when she’d clamber up and wriggle under the duvet. Snuggle, Mama, she’d say as she fit her chubby little body next to mine. Except she couldn’t say snuggle at first; it came out as wuggle instead.
Eventually James and I started calling it that, too. Do you want a wuggle, Emily? Her answering grin would light up her face. Even when she was old enough to say snuggle properly, she still said wuggle. We all did. I picture the three of us in bed on a Saturday morning, arms around each other, sunshine spilling through the windows, wuggling.
Oh God, it hurts so much to bring back these memories, to remember those happy mornings. It leaves me breathless and reeling, gasping for air, one hand clutched to my chest as if I’m having a heart attack.