A Hope for Emily

“That poor, poor girl. Has there been any change?”

“I don’t think so.” I don’t actually know. Emily has been in the palliative care unit for four weeks; James and I have been deliberately not talking about her for two.

My mother prods the browning beef. “It’s just so sad, the way she’s gone downhill so quickly. And no one can find out why?”

“No.”

“Do you think…” My mother’s voice drops to a hush. “Do you think she’ll die?”

“One day,” I say. “I mean we all will, Mom.”

“Oh yes, Eva, but you know what I mean. Is she… is she dying?” She says this as if she’s not meant to ask, and maybe she isn’t.

“I don’t know.” My ignorance weighs on me heavily. I fight the guilt of disappointing Rachel. Is she waiting to hear from James? To hear from me?

“I mean, it’s awful, it’s tragic, but… it would be a mercy in a way, don’t you think?” My mother shoots me an uncertain, apologetic look, as if she’s not sure if she should say such a thing. My family is Catholic, and my mother believes firmly in the sanctity of life. Yet it’s different when you’re facing the issue head on and not some abstract theory floating somewhere out in space, a what if that is only meant to happen to someone else.

And yet… it would be a mercy. Wouldn’t it? A mercy for me.

“I don’t know, Mom. I don’t know how… aware she is. Of everything.” I usually picture Emily sleeping peacefully in a hospital bed, but I don’t think she’s like that all the time. When I researched her condition, the internet told me that she could be opening her eyes, exhibiting reflexes, jerking spasmodically, all of which seems a little bit… creepy.

“I thought you said she was in a coma,” my mom says.

“A state of unresponsive wakefulness,” I correct.

My mother frowns. “You mean, like a vegetable?”

I flinch a little. “You’re not supposed to use that term anymore.” Or so I read online, on one of the evenings I’ve spent alone, when James was with Emily, and I was searching the internet for more information about it all, about the research that might be a false promise, or might be her salvation. Who knows? Who knows?

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” My mother prods the beef again, and the fat sizzles. “What’s the point of getting upset over a few words?”

“They matter. They can hurt.” I don’t think Rachel wants her daughter being called a vegetable. I know I wouldn’t.

“But that’s what she is, isn’t she?” My mother’s voice has taken on a stubborn, pedantic tone that she often adopts when she suspects she’s not in the right. “She’s not talking or communicating or anything, is she?”

“I don’t think so.” I’m pretty sure about that, but I picture Emily with her eyes open, moving even a little, and I think how that could easily seem like communication, especially if you so desperately wanted it to be.

“Well, then.” My mother gives a little nod, as if she’s somehow proved her point, done her duty. “It would be a mercy, then.”

I almost tell her about Rachel seeing me, about the new research and the experimental treatment, and how Emily might have a chance at a little more of life. But I don’t, because I don’t want to admit my part—or lack of it—in it all. I’m still pretending that it’s over, that it’s nothing to do with me, even as I acknowledge all along how I’m kidding myself. Really, I’m just biding time.

“So why did you come over?” my mother asks in her typically blunt way. I shrug, blushing, embarrassed by my obvious need.

“I just hadn’t seen you in a while.”

My mother softens. “Oh, Eva.” She gives my shoulder a little squeeze. “It will happen. Don’t worry.”

I know she’s talking about pregnancy, just as I know that isn’t really why I came over. There is so much more I want to talk to her about—the tension with James, whether I should fight for this experimental treatment alongside Rachel—but my mother, loving as she can be, won’t give me the kind of advice I need.

If I told her James and I were having trouble, she’d advise me to cook him a steak and wear a negligee tonight. That’s just her world. As for Rachel… I don’t know what she’d say then. Stand by your man, maybe? It’s heartbreaking, but you don’t need to get involved?

Why don’t I want to hear that?

I am surprised to find James at home when I get back. It’s only seven o’clock, and he usually doesn’t return till nine.

“Hey.” I toss my keys on the hall table and come into the living room to see him sprawled on the sofa, his laptop on the coffee table in front of him, a carton of Chinese takeout in his hand “Is everything okay?” I ask cautiously. “With Emily?”

“Yeah.” James shrugs as he digs for a piece of pork in his lo mein. “I was just tired, and there didn’t seem much point to being there.”