A Hope for Emily

In all the time I’ve known him, James has visited Emily three times a week—Tuesday and Thursday evenings, all of Saturday, without fail. I admire that. It’s a lot more than some men would do.

I take another sip of wine as I both try to listen and ignore James’ replies to Rachel.

“Rachel, Dr. Brown is the professional here. He wouldn’t make this decision without thinking through it very carefully. And if the whole team agrees…” He stops, and I think I can hear the rising tones of Rachel’s reply, even from the living room. James lets out a short, sharp sigh, a sound of weariness edged with impatience.

“I don’t want to fight you on this.” Another pause, and then his voice softens. “I know it’s hard. Of course I know it. I feel the same, Rachel, even if you don’t believe me. I do.” His voice catches. “Don’t you think I miss her?” Another sigh. “I know that, I didn’t mean she was… Yes. I know.”

I get up from the sofa, not wanting to eavesdrop. This conversation, like so many others they’ve had, feels too intimate for me, and it’s usually made worse by the fact James won’t want to talk about it afterwards. I’m not threatened, not exactly. It’s just, when James and Rachel talk, I feel… extraneous.

I go into the bedroom to change, taking my time, drinking my wine, and when I come back into the living room, James is slumped on the sofa, his wine half-drunk in front of him.

“Sorry about that,” he says, his voice flat.

“You know you don’t have to be sorry.”

I sit in the chair opposite him and sip the last of my wine. We’ve been married for eight months, together for a year, and yet moments like this still unnerve me. I don’t know how to handle them; I don’t know what James wants from me. I don’t even know what I want from him.

“Want to talk about it?” I ask, although I know he won’t and in any case I’m not sure I want to know. While part of me is avidly, obsessively curious about Rachel and Emily, the front I give to James and everyone else, even myself, is that I’m good with it all, that I’ve accepted the situation, that I am doing my best to be supportive without prying or feeling threatened. And for the most part that is true. It is just so often I don’t know what the right thing to say or even to feel is.

I sip my wine, even though there isn’t even a mouthful left, and wait.

James sighs heavily as he rakes a hand through his hair. “I don’t even know.” He lapses into a morose silence, and I wait another beat. A cramp bands my stomach, reminding me of what I’ve missed out on again. “The medical team has advised that Emily go into palliative care,” he says, his voice toneless, almost indifferent, but I know that’s a front too, because I see how he blinks rapidly as he throws back the last of his wine in one reckless gulp, his throat working, his mouth tightening to hold it all back.

“Oh, James.” I think of Emily, the little girl I’ve never met, now moving from a search for a diagnosis to a wait for death. That’s what palliative care is, isn’t it? “I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah.” He rotates his glass between his palms, his head lowere

d, his hair flopping forward. I wish I could go sit next to him, put my arms around him, give him the comfort he surely needs, but I can’t. I love him, and I know he loves me, but Emily and Rachel and everything about them has been our no-fly zone since he laid it all out on our second date. We just don’t go there. Ever.

“How is Rachel feeling about it?” I ask cautiously. It’s not my business, but I can’t help but recall Rachel’s raised voice on the phone, and I wonder about the woman I’ve never met. Is she coping? Does she handle it all the way James does, with stoic silence? Or is this the moment that will break her, and if it is, what can—or should—I do about it?

“She wants to fight it. Insist Dr. Brown and the others keep trying to find a diagnosis.”

I digest this information for a moment, wondering what it means. What more can they do? James has told me only a little about all the tests and scans and therapies, endless ways to try to get Emily better, and clearly none of them have worked. “Can she do that?”

“It would mean a lawsuit. It could get ugly.” He sighs, lifting his head. He looks so tired, his dark blue eyes filled with weary misery. “Especially if I don’t agree, which I won’t.”

For some reason that jolts me, his firmness, even though I know it shouldn’t. James has already told me that he has been grieving Emily for months, years. When she went into a coma, he thought it was the beginning of the end. This is just the next step, natural, and yet so not. So very much not.

I’ve seen one photo of Emily; it’s in our bedroom, on top of James’ dresser. She’s a toddler, hoisted in James’ arms, giving the camera a joyous, gap-toothed grin, her flyaway strawberry-blonde hair caught up in a high, wispy ponytail. It was taken, he told me, just a month before the symptoms started in earnest.

Every time I look at that photograph, I feel a wave of sorrow for the little girl I’ll never know, and an uncharitable envy for the life James has already had that has nothing to do with me. I asked him if I should meet Emily, knowing it had to be up to him, and he said no. He told me he didn’t want me to see Emily the way she was now, and I accepted that. How could I not? But I wonder; I wonder about the photo albums that surely exist somewhere, that James never shows me. I wonder about the photos that still must be on his phone, that I’ve never seen, and I wonder why he won’t show me, even as I know I am not brave enough to ask. Is it because it hurts too much? Or because it’s too private? Maybe both.

“So what are you going to do?” I ask when James doesn’t seem as if he’s going to respond.

Another shrug, so defeated. “I don’t know. I’m hoping Rachel will see sense. It’s been three years, Eva, and Emily has never improved. She’s been in this—state—for four months. She isn’t going to get better. The doctors have told us that, and Rachel needs to accept it.”

“But you don’t really know that.” The words slip out of me before I can stop them. I don’t know why I said them; I don’t know the first thing, really, about Emily’s condition, except that it’s undiagnosed, despite all the testing they’ve done. James looks at me in surprise, a flash of woundedness in his eyes. I feel as if I’ve betrayed him.

“I only meant,” I clarify quickly, “that since Emily’s never been diagnosed, you can’t know what will happen.”

His mouth twists. “You sound like Rachel.”

Which doesn’t seem like a compliment. “I’m just saying, I understand why Rachel might want to fight the doctors, even now.” Suddenly my throat feels tight and I lurch upright from my seat, emotion coursing through me that I thought I’d buried a long time ago. “I’m going to get a refill. You want one?” I hold out my hand, and James gives me his glass. I smile, or try to, and he gives me something like a smile back. We’re okay. We won’t talk about this anymore, and we’ll be okay, like we always are, because we love each other. Because James is wry and self-deprecating, and I’m focused and a little smart-mouthed, and together we work. When we’re not talking or thinking about Emily, we laugh. We joke. We play off each other, and it’s fun and easy and light, and yet in moments like these it’s as if it all vanishes, as if we’re nothing but this tension and silence and sorrow.

I want to get us back to where we work, and so the last thing I want to do now is argue with my husband about how his ex-wife behaves, or seem to be on her side. Not that there are even sides in this situation. Everybody is just trying to do what’s right, aren’t they?

Except sometimes it’s so hard to know what the right thing to do is. And sometimes, I reflect bleakly as I slosh more wine into my glass, sometimes you know what the right thing to do is, and you still don’t do it.