by Luke Allnutt
There was something else that made me wary. Nev was very public with his support for Dr. Sladkovsky. He was active on the forums, but there was never a testimonial from him on Sladkovsky’s website. A boy cured of glioblastoma, one of the most aggressive and devastating childhood cancers. Why wasn’t Josh a poster child for Dr. Sladkovsky?
One night, to put my mind at rest, I did a little research. I wasn’t going to fall for a scam, like some lonely groomed teen. I did a reverse image search on Google, but all the photos of Josh led back to Nev’s photo album. I ran the photos through a little script I had written, to scrape and analyze the image’s metadata, to see if it showed when and where the photos were taken, but there was nothing. No data. Nothing at all.
“Hello,” I could hear a voice, a northern voice. “Nev speaking.”
For a moment, I was speechless, surprised that anyone had answered, a lingering suspicion that perhaps Anna was right.
“Hello,” the voice said again. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes, hello, Nev. It’s Rob.”
A pause.
“Hello, Rob, very nice to hear from you.” I knew Nev was from the north because Josh had been treated at the Royal Preston Hospital, but I was surprised by the thickness of his accent. In the background I could hear what sounded like children playing.
“Hold on one second,” Nev said. “Can you take your shoes off?” There was a muffled sound in the distance, a banging noise. “Sorry about that. Just come in from the park. So how are you, Rob? How are things going?”
“Not too bad,” I said, and it was strange thing to say, an odd platitude. “Actually, Jack isn’t doing very well, I’m afraid.”
Another pause. The line sounded faint, as if we were calling long distance. “Well, all I can say is that I’ll be thinking of you all. I can remember just how terrible that time was.”
“Thanks.” I struggled to find my words. “Look, the reason why I called. I was just speaking with my wife about the treatment at the Prague clinic...”
Anna looked angrily at me, shaking her head. She quickly stood up and walked out of the living room.
“She’s reluctant, you see, has read bad things about the clinic.”
Nev was silent.
“Are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m still here,” Nev said, the warmth gone from his voice.
“I didn’t mean to, you know...” I stumbled.
“No, no, it’s fine,” Nev said. “I know a lot of people feel that way. I understand. Look, Rob, I’m not a medical man, I’m an engineer by trade. I can’t convince you that the clinic is right for your Jack. That’s up to you. I would never ever try to convince or persuade you—or anyone—what to do. I can only tell you what happened to my son. That’s all I can do.”
The phone was quiet for a second, and in the background I could hear what sounded like children’s cartoons.
“Thank you, I appreciate that. As you can understand, it’s a difficult time.”
I looked up and saw Jack slowly walking down the stairs, Anna holding his hand. He was a little unsteady on his feet and was clutching Little Teddy under his arm.
Looking at Jack, I didn’t know what else to say to Nev. It all seemed ridiculous. Should I ask him if he was lying about his son’s health, as Josh sat a few feet from him watching cartoons?
“I’m really sorry, Nev, but I’m going to have to go. Jack has just woken up.”
“Of course, Rob, of course,” Nev said, his voice warm once again. “It was nice to chat, Rob. And please, please, if ever you want to talk more—about anything—just give me a buzz.”
“Thanks, Nev, I really appreciate that.”
I waited for him to hang up, listening for the click, but it didn’t come, and for a few seconds I listened to Nev breathe on the other end of the line. Just as I was about to put down the phone, I heard a child’s voice in the background: “Daaa-deee, Daaa-deee,” and then Nev shout, “Coming, sweetheart.” I stayed on the line, listening to the muffled voices, the sound of things being moved around, until finally I hung up.
* * *
The silence was corrosive as I entered the bedroom. Anna was reading and didn’t look at me when I got into bed. After the phone call with Nev, we hadn’t spoken, avoided each other in the house.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t fair to you and I lost it a bit. I’m sorry, okay?”
Anna put her book down and smoothed the sheets with her hand. “I’m sorry too. I didn’t handle it very well. I know you’re trying to help Jack, I get that, but I just think...”
She stopped herself, not wanting to retread old ground, and then looked at me cautiously, almost like a child in trouble. “I feel ashamed even saying this, because it feels so selfish, but I feel like I’m losing you,” she said.
I understood the shame. To think now about ourselves, about our relationship, seemed somehow grotesque.
“You’re not,” I said, turning to her and rubbing her leg. “Why do you say that?”
Anna shrugged. “We’ve just been so distant from one another. I’m not blaming you. I’ve been the same. I suppose it’s inevitable.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking down at the patterns on the duvet, pulling on a small piece of thread.
“We used to talk about everything, didn’t we?” Anna said. “Do you remember after we lost the babies and we would sit up late and talk about it? Till one or two in the morning. It was sad and horrible, but it felt good somehow to talk, because we suffered together and we understood each other. I felt I had so much to say. But now, with this, with Jack, I just can’t, I can’t find the words.”
The room was dark, just the low glow of Anna’s lamp. It felt like a hotel room, a room that wasn’t ours.
“I know,” I said. “I feel the same.”
“I don’t want to lose you,” Anna said. “Because that’s what happens when...” She stopped herself, found her words again. “And I don’t want that to be us.”
I knew what she had meant, what she stopped herself from saying. Because that’s what happened to couples when their children die. We had seen it in the movies. Anna had read about it in her novels. We knew how it went with those wretched couples. Every time they looked at each other, every time they heard each other’s voice, they would be reminded of what they had lost. The child that had once bound them together now ripped them apart.
Anna started to cry, and even though we had become experts in each other’s tears, this time they were new, undiscovered, like nothing I had ever heard before, as if they came from another place, another age. Her tears just weren’t hers anymore.
I pulled her toward me, and her face was dripping with tears and snot.
“It’s my fault, I know it’s my fault,” she said, over and over again.
I held her tighter because I was worried she wanted to hurt herself, to pound her fist into her face. “It’s not your fault, please don’t say that. How on earth could any of this be your fault?”
And then as quickly as she had begun, Anna stopped crying. Her voice was insistent, strangely serene. “It is, I know it is.”
“Sweetheart, how? What do you mean?”
Anna swallowed. “The miscarriages.”
“Anna, no, don’t think...”
“I couldn’t hold on to them, and I can’t hold on to Jack,” she said. “It’s my body. It rejected our babies, and now it’s rejecting Jack.”
“No, Anna, no,” I said, starting to cry. “That’s just not true, and you know it’s not true. The two aren’t connected, and you know that. Please don’t do this to yourself.”
There was nothing I could say or do. The horror of watching someone perform a clumsy and unanesthetized surgery on themselves. I could hold her frail body and let her tears and snot drip onto mine. I could pull her close to me, stroke her neck and back, but it
would not be enough. It could never be enough.
“I love you,” I said, and those words now felt bitter, laden with guilt.
“I love you too,” she said, and we lay for a while in silence. I wanted to speak, to remove the wedge that had come between us, but I couldn’t find the words, as if I was struck dumb before a crowd of people.
It was strange to hold her in my arms again. We hadn’t touched each other for a long time. Once, all we wanted to do was touch. How quickly, back in Cambridge, I came to know her: every inch, every nook and fold of her body; every scent, every dimple and mole on her face and back.
Our compatibility never had to be learned; it was always just there, from the beginning. There were no learning curves or proficiency tests. It was our shared mother tongue.
We had managed to keep it over the years, that thrill of the touch. But then as quickly as it once came, it was now gone. We were strangers again, our bodies utilitarian, perfunctory, places to be lived in but not explored.
I knew why we did not, could not touch, why perhaps we had even began to repulse each other. Because it felt like a betrayal. A betrayal of Jack. Everything was now tainted. To experience joy, to experience anything he could not, felt like a stab in Jack’s back.
That was why I reached under the duvet and started stroking Anna’s legs, my hands gingerly moving around to her crotch. I was trying to get something back, something we had lost. I thought she would resist me, because now most certainly wasn’t the time, but she didn’t and instead angled herself toward me, slightly raising one leg, and I could feel her wetness on my fingers.
I kissed her and then shuffled down the bed, putting my head under the covers, like a child’s game. I lifted up her nightie and then buried my head into her, feeling her flinch and buck, her legs thrusting and then wrapping around my head.
Subject: Re: Jack
Sent: Fri Dec 12, 2014 10:42 am
From: Rob
To: Nev
Dear Nev,
Thanks for your info regarding the clinic. I gave them a call and mentioned your name and they were very welcoming. They talked about some payment options and I think we’ll be able to manage it, at least for the first few treatments.
I went ahead and booked flights to Prague for the three of us. I haven’t told my wife yet. We have spoken about it repeatedly but she has made it clear that she won’t allow Jack to be treated in Prague. I’m still trying to change her mind.
Time is running short. I can see it in Jack’s eyes. It’s like we’re treading water, knowing that we’re going to drown. I will keep you updated.
Rob
They did their best to make the chemo ward a happy place, especially before Christmas. There were multiple trees around the ward, professionally decorated, surrounded by stacks of donated presents. The nurses wore red noses and Christmas hats, and the cleaning and kitchen staff dressed as Santa’s little elves.
I watched as the nurse tweaked a valve on Jack’s cannula. He winced a little, but sat still. He was an expert at sitting still, now.
“Is Steven here, Daddy?”
“I don’t think so, not today, beautiful.”
“Oh,” Jack said, “He’s probably with his mommy and daddy.”
“Yeah,” I said, stroking Jack’s hand. “Maybe he’ll be here next time.”
Steven had leukemia and often had his treatments at the same time. They quickly became friends, passing things from bed to bed, their toys and sticker books. They made silly noises and faces to each other when the nurses weren’t around.
One afternoon, we got talking to Steven’s parents and, when the boys were napping, went for a coffee in the hospital canteen. Knowing, I think, how ill Jack was, Steven’s father was diplomatic and only told us bits and pieces about his son’s diagnosis and treatment.
I knew, though. I knew. Steven was expected to make a full recovery. His treatment wasn’t about extending life, about hustling for a few extra months. His leukemia was curable.
Quite why Steven’s tumors were lying dormant, sinking back into the blood and plasma from where they came, while Jack’s spread, mushrooming through his brain, I didn’t know. Was it in my and Anna’s genes? A defect, a crack that went unnoticed in our own bodies, but in Jack’s was a fatal flaw. A product of the two of us: a mutation born of our union. A flaw forged by us.
I was glad Steven wasn’t here today because every time I saw him, I wished it were him. I wished they could swap places, so that it was Jack’s cancer that was seen by the doctors as just a blip. And for that, I would accept the bargain. Gladly, in a beat of my heart, I would accept, no, welcome, beg, that Steven—kind, thoughtful Steven—be given the brain tumor instead.
The pump started once again and its rhythm reminded me of Ivor the Engine. Jack was quiet, watching cartoons on my laptop and sipping juice. I sat back in my chair and read the email on my phone. There was a new message from Nev.
Subject: Re: Jack
Sent: Sun Dec 14, 2014 8:17 am
From: Nev
To: Rob
Dear Rob,
I’ll be blunt with you because I know you’re running out of time. If I had listened to the doctors, my Josh wouldn’t be here now. I think you’re making a good decision about Prague. Yes, there are no guarantees, but at least you have a chance.
I don’t want to push anyone and I respect that every parent makes their own choices. But sometimes, I have to speak up. How many of these lives could be saved? Every day it’s like watching planes crashing. Planes full of children that don’t have to die. I will not be a part of that.
Are you sure you can’t persuade Anna about the clinic? If you want I could talk to her. If that’s an imposition, I apologize. I just want to help.
Nev
PS I’m sending a video of me and Josh that we did for Jack. I hope he likes it.
I clicked on the video and, there, sitting at the kitchen table were Nev and Josh, dressed up as Batman and Robin.
“Hello, Jack,” they both said, waving into the camera. And then Nev, in that thick northern voice: “We know you’ve been feeling a little poorly, Jack, so we wanted to say, from us both, Batman and Robin, get well soon.”
“Get well soon,” Josh shouted, and his Robin mask slipped down and I saw his face, confident, alive, his school tie loosely slung around his neck.
“See you later, Jack,” they both said in unison, Josh waving with one hand, pulling up his Robin mask with the other. Then Nev reached forward into the camera and the screen went blank.
“Hey, Jack,” I said, “look at this.” I held out my phone and started playing the video.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Josh, you remember I told you about Josh. He did the picture of the castle for you.”
“The boy who had the injuries like me?”
“Yes.”
“And now he’s better?”
“Yes,” I said, putting my arm around him, careful not to nudge his cannula.
“Can we watch it again?”
Jack watched the video a few more times and then touched my arm and looked at me. “Daddy, am I sleeping in my bed tonight?”
“Yes.”
“At my house?”
“Yes, beautiful, in our house.”
“Will Mommy be there?”
“Yes.”
“And Daddy?”
“Yes.”
“Everyone?”
“Everyone, Jack.”
He was tired, his eyes beginning to droop, and in a few seconds he was asleep. I pulled the blanket up around his neck and watched the rise and fall of his breath. It still didn’t make any sense. How could Jack be dying? There were mistakes being made, I was sure of it.
I looked at his hands, chastely resting on the tray-table. He seemed so indelible. His fingers, made of skin
and bone, gripping onto the white plastic ridge of the tray. His slender legs and thighs, wedged into the soft fabric of the seat. If I leaned close, I could feel his breath on my neck. How could any of that not exist?
* * *
That night, after we got home from hospital, Jack was sick in his bed. I carried him, limp in my arms, to a chair, and then stripped down the sheets. He was shivering, his teeth beginning to chatter, so I wrapped him up in towels.
I looked at him, sitting in the chair. The whites of his eyes were no longer white. His skin had become pallid, like the skin of an old man. His hair was lank and limp. The chemotherapy was eating away at him, hollowing him out, like a body scoured with bleach. As he shivered, his little broken body convulsed, spewing out every ounce of himself, every last drop of moisture.
I lifted him out of the chair, put him back under the fresh sheets, and he quickly fell asleep. I remembered a holiday to Cornwall, in a trailer with my parents. I was fourteen, and one night I went out with some local kids and came home drunk. I vomited in the bathroom and all over the kitchen floor. My mother was angry, gave me a whack, said this wasn’t what she came on holiday for.
In the morning, shamefaced, Mom gave me another dressing-down. “You should thank your dad,” she said, angrily doing the dishes, “he stayed up with you all night to make sure you were okay. He set his alarm to go off every fifteen minutes, so he didn’t fall asleep.”
After Anna came in to relieve me, I lay awake until my alarm went off in three hours’ time. Jack was sleeping soundly and I watched him—happy that he had found some temporary relief.
His peace didn’t last long. I could hear his stomach gurgle, and then the sound of him beginning to retch. I shook him awake, getting the bucket in place, and he vomited again and again, his body so weak and broken now, his stomach distended, his legs and hips so lean.