“Yeah,” I answer. “I guess.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Emma asks.
“The problem is that I don’t know how to be with anyone while I’m still taking care of her,” I blurt, and as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know I’ve crossed a personal line.
“That’s some heavy shit,” Emma says.
“Tell me about it,” I respond.
Emma starts again, “Are there any new medications coming out, or—”
“There’s always supposed to be something on the horizon,” I tell her. “They’re always so close to an answer, if not a full-fledged cure, at least that’s what they keep saying, but it never happens. Either the drug ends up not working or it kills the test subjects. Either way, empty words float heavy on the wind.”
“Yeah,” Emma says. “That they do.”
“Listen,” I tell her, “I’ve got to get back in there, but I am glad that you stopped by.”
“Of course,” Emma says. “Anytime. We’re still friends, right?”
We’re still friends, right?
How am I supposed to answer that question?
In a lot of ways, I really don’t know Emma all that well. We’ve been kind of forced into close proximity and so we’ve gotten to know each other at an increased pace, but at the same time, right now, I’m not sure that I’m in a position to make long-term predictions about where this could go and where it will go.
“You know,” I tell her, “no. Emma, I don’t want to be your friend. I want us to be together in a real way, but that just can’t happen with everything else that’s going on. It’s not fair and it’s not simple, but it is reality.”
Emma’s bottom lip rises for a moment and then retreats back into its normal position.
“Really?” she asks. “You’re going to give up on having your own relationships because you think your sister will think you’ve deserted her? Shit, that was a mouthful. It doesn’t matter; look,” she says, “if you’re not happy, how is it that you think you could really hope to make someone else happy?”
“Actually,” I tell her, “it’s really not that hard to do. People get behind self-sacrifice pretty easily. I’ve always wondered where we got the idea that in order to make another person happy, we also need to be happy—not just that moment or that day, but in our lives, in our careers, with our family and friends. A great deal of my life has been spent feeling miserable,” I tell her. “That’s never stopped me from making Danna smile.”
“Okay,” Emma says, “but if she smiles when you’re ‘feeling miserable,’ who’s to say that she wouldn’t smile more if you were happy.”
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “It’s complicated.”
“Well, there’s a cop out if I’ve ever heard one,” Emma scoffs.
“What do you want me to do?” I ask.
“I want you to quit thinking that you have to give everything up to be there for your sister,” she says. “You can be there for her and still live your own life.”
“I should get back in there and see how she’s doing,” I tell her.
“All right,” she says. “I’m not going to hold a gun to your head and say ‘have a relationship with me.’ If us being a thing isn’t going to work out for you, that’s that. I just don’t want to you to think that in order to be there for your sister you have to live the rest of your life in a hole. So, why don’t you think about where you see the two of us on the spectrum between stranger and lover and you let me know. Until then,” she says, “I really do hope that your sister gets to feeling better real soon.”
“Thanks,” I tell her. “I appreciate that.”
The conversation ends and we haven’t really settled anything.
>
There’s a lot to think about, but I don’t know if anything’s going to be able to change reality enough for me to have what I want to have with Emma.
I head back up to Danna’s room and just watch her sleep for a little while.
My life has gotten so small over the last 10 years or so. It almost collapsed when Jamie died, and when Danna was diagnosed, well, by that time, I’d already started to go numb.