A Hope for Emily

“No one is winning here,” I say in a voice that throbs with both anger and emotion. “No one.”

“Yet it’s still some sort of sick competition with you. You have more right to decide. You feel the grief more—”

“We’re not grieving,” I shout, even though I know that’s not really what he meant. “Not yet, even if you almost seem as if you want to—”

“Don’t.” The single word is savage, and I know I’ve gone too far. But I’m so angry, my body practically vibrating with it, with the unjust intractability of my ex-husband’s position. He just won’t budge. James takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. I wait, my hands bunched. We’ve never fought like this. That taut conversation in Starbucks is the closest we’ve ever come, but even that was nothing like this. I want to scream. I want to slap James’ face. I want to cry and cry and have him hold me, but I know he never will, and that makes me even angrier.

“This isn’t about me not caring, Rachel.” James speaks slowly, enunciating each word as if he has to take time and care to form them. “This isn’t about me not having time or patience or energy for Emily. It isn’t about me jaunting off into the sunset with Eva, and forgetting that I had a family, that I have a daughter.”

My nails dig into my palms. “Are you sure about that?” I squeeze out of my too-tight throat.

“Yes, I am absolutely sure. I love Emily, Rachel. I have always loved Emily. It destroyed me as much as you when she started to get sick—”

“It can’t have.” The words burst out of me before I’ve thought them through. “It can’t have, because you’ve moved on, James. You might not think you’re jaunting into the sunset or whatever, but you have definitely moved on.”

He looks at me levelly. “Perhaps you should, too.”

“And yet you tell me this isn’t about you not forgetting you have a family?” I choke. How dare he? How dare he pretend he is still in torment over Emily, when he so obviously isn’t? “That this isn’t about you not wanting to be hassled?”

“Of course it isn’t—”

“The nurse yesterday told me you left on Saturday at lunchtime.” I didn’t believe her at first. I was so sure James would never do that. “And that you have been leaving early since she’s been in the palliative unit.” I can barely get the words out. “And I thought it was Dr. Brown who would be forgetting about Emily.”

The look that flashes across James’ face is impossible to discern—a potent mixture of fury, hurt, and guilt. I take a shuddering breath, trying to reign the emotions back in, when in truth I feel like sobbing and sobbing and never stopping.

How did we get here? The summer before last we rented a cottage on Cape Cod and sat on the beach with our legs entwined while the sun set and Emily made sandcastles, patting the damp sand so industriously, flipping the bucket over with endearing expertise.

It was past her bedtime but she was having so much fun—it was her first time at the beach when she wanted to do something other than eat the sand—that we couldn’t bear to bring her in.

The sunlight had looked as if it were melting over the surface of the ocean, and the only sound was the shoosh of the waves and our daughter’s laughter.

How did we get here?

And how do we get back—if not there, because I know that can’t happen, then to somewhere else, somewhere survivable, at the least?

James hasn’t spoken for a few minutes and neither have I. Have we reached an impasse built of anger and resentment? Neither of us knows how to cross it.

“If this isn’t about you forgetting you have a family,” I finally ask, my jaw aching with how hard I am clenching it, “then what is it about? Why won’t you even talk about this treatment? Why are you so quick, so determined, to believe there’s no point? Why can’t you crack your mind open just a little?”

James doesn’t answer for a long moment. Outside I hear Andrew call to Jake, and then the sound of him opening his front door, followed by Jake’s piping voice, all of it a stark contrast to the palpably taut silence in this frozen room.

“Emily is not going to get better,” James finally says, choosing each word with care, making me think of someone stepping from stone to stone over a rushing river, carefully placing his foot on each slick spot. “Everything, everything we have experienced since she first became sick, has pointed to that. Dr. Brown believes that. His entire medical team believes that. I believe that.”

I take each word like a blow, absorbing their impact. It is at least a minute before I manage to speak, my tone, I hope, reasonable, or almost. “None of you have considered this treatment.”

James leans forward, his elbows braced on his knees, his expression caught between pity and exasperation. “Rachel, I have considered this treatment. Do you think I didn’t do the research you did? Do you think I didn’t read the articles in Scientific American, do you think I didn’t see the report about the man in a vegetative—”

“Don’t use that word.”

James rolls his eyes, he actually rolls his eyes, and then continues. “In a state of unresponsive wakefulness. Fine. I saw it, okay? I saw how little was achieved. He was barely better than before—”

“Little to you, maybe. You’ve already consigned Emily to the grave—”

“Stop it.” The words are low but fierce. “Stop making this a damn competition.”

“It’s not a competition, James. I’m not trying to win here. God knows, I wish you felt as I did. I wish that more than anything.” My throat is closing up and I blink furiously. I will not cry. Not in front of my ex-husband, who is treating this so unemotionally. He might say he cares, but his words, his actions, say differently right now. And that hurts as much as anything else—when did my ex-husband stop caring about our daughter? The two evenings and Saturdays every week are just a chore to him now, I realize. A burden he has to bear. He wants it all to be over.

James leans back, rubbing his hand over his face. “Rachel, I don’t think this treatment is a good idea for you, either.”