by Janis Thomas
I think about Josh’s words. What family? It’s difficult to accept the fact that Josh’s disorder created and solidified our family unit. Without the wheelchair, my husband is gone and my children and I are merely individuals sharing the same space.
Instead of eating, I pour myself a healthy glass of red wine and carry it to my computer. I don’t pay bills or read emails. I don’t surf. I log on to Facebook. I read some posts of anonymous Facebook friends. Out of habit, I click on the CP Parents page, then remember that Josh doesn’t have CP.
Halfway through the wine, I click on Dante’s page. Before I can change my mind, I move the cursor to the “Friend Request” button and tap my mouse. Request sent. I quickly close the browser and shut down the computer.
Without Colin, Kate, and Josh, the house is eerily quiet. I lie in bed, a novel open in my lap. I don’t read. I don’t wish. I listen to the silence.
THIRTY-TWO
Tuesday, August 9
When I arise the next morning, I half expect to see the stair lift, the bed rail, the ramp on the porch, and my disabled son in his wheelchair. How could a wish of such magnitude come true and stay true?
But there is no lift, no bed rail, and no Josh, and I remember that he spent last night at his friend Jesse’s.
There is also no Colin, no CNN or espresso aroma wafting up from downstairs.
I check my cell phone. No text or call from Josh. I shouldn’t expect my fifteen-year-old son to be up at this hour, but for some reason, his lack of communication needles at me. It’s not just concern for his safety and well-being, which is a typical feeling for a mother. More than that. I’ve only had one day with him as he is now. I want to see my son again, standing up, walking, talking to me. I don’t care if he’s angry or mean or rude or disrespectful or bad in school. All of these are vagaries of youth, trademarks of adolescence. He will outgrow them as he grows older. If he remains in this form, as an adult he will be able to do anything he wants, be anything he wants to be. I know he’s a good person at his core. I know it.
As a mother, as a parent, I have spent the entirety of his life grieving for what he was not and secretly longing for a normal child. Today, he is. I just want to see him as he is today. To revel in his normalcy as I did yesterday and as I hope to do tomorrow.
I shoot him a quick text asking him to call when he can, then head for the bathroom. I can’t avoid work again, much as I’d like to. I didn’t check our finances last night, so I don’t know whether Colin contributes financially to the household, but I am clearly still the main provider. I need my job.
By the time I shower and dress and go downstairs, Katie is already in the kitchen.
“I prepped the coffee for you,” she says from the table. “So you wouldn’t be as out of it this morning as you were yesterday.”
“I’m sorry about that,” I say. I press the button on the Mr. Coffee machine. The espresso machine is gone. “How was dinner last night?”
“OMG, amazing. You have to go there. I had the seared salmon with shiitake mushrooms. It was to die for.”
I cross to the table and sit opposite my daughter.
She looks beautiful this morning in a pale-peach cap-sleeve blouse that brings out the green of her eyes.
“And the dessert? Molten chocolate cake with shaved white chocolate and a raspberry something sauce.”
“Was it coulis?”
“That’s it. How’d you know that?”
Because Dante made it for me. I shrug.
Katie looks at me. “You’re better today, huh?”
“I was fine yesterday, too.” Lie. “But yes. I feel better today.”
“This is kind of nice,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. “Just you and me.”
“It is nice,” I agree.
“Simone and Lisa and Erica and I are going to that volleyball day camp today, but I’ll be home for family dinner.”
“Great, honey. And thanks for prepping the coffee. That was very thoughtful of you.” And I’m going to need it to face the music at work today.
It happens as soon as I reach the office. Val rushes at me like a linebacker and grabs my arm at the elbow.
“Mr. Canning wants to see you in his office immediately.”
“Can I put my purse down?”
“You didn’t return any of our calls,” she says, grabbing my purse from my hands. “Mr. Wells even went by your house at lunch. You weren’t there.”
“I was at the doctor.”
She gives me a skeptical look. “I’ll put your purse on your desk. You should go. Now.”
I yank my purse out of her grasp, withdraw my cell phone, and hand it back. “Thank you.”
I move past her and walk down the hall, dialing Josh’s number as I go. I still haven’t heard from him, and a prickle of unease has taken root at the base of my spine. My call goes straight to voice mail.
“Hi, honey. It’s Mom. I know you’re probably still sleeping, but can you call me as soon as you wake up?”
I end the call and square my shoulders as I reach Bill Canning’s office. I knock softly and hear one of my bosses say, “Come.”
This is a repeat of my meeting with them on Friday. They stand in front of Canning’s desk, arms crossed over their chests. I take a seat and face them. For a split second, I close my eyes and imagine Josh riding his bicycle down the street. I open my eyes and find my bosses glaring at me.
“Well, Emma,” Edward Wells begins. “How are you feeling?”
I manage a faint smile. “Better, thanks.”
“You must have been feeling awful,” Canning says. “I mean, I can only imagine, since you were unable to answer our repeated calls.”
“I think it was a twenty-four-hour stomach flu. Very difficult to answer the phone when you’re vomiting. I even had to go to urgent care.”
“Really.” Wells’s turn. “How were you able to drive yourself?”
“At some point there’s nothing left to throw up.”
“Emma.” Canning. “We’re very concerned about the SoundStage ordeal. Apparently, you sent an email to Richard Stein and the CEO that moved them to reconsider their decision. But then, when it came to crunch time, you were nowhere to be found.”
Josh walking to me, kissing my head. “Hi, Mom.”
“I was sick.”
“Be that as it may. Since you were unable to meet with them, they have solidified their agreement with another company.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say. “I’m sorry they couldn’t wait one more day to meet with me.”
“Yes. So are we,” Wells says. “On Friday we talked about giving your situation a few weeks. But in light of this setback—”
A knock on the door interrupts the old man. He scowls. “Come.”
Valerie opens the door a crack and peers in. Her expression is grave.
“I apologize for the interruption . . .”
“Yes, yes, get on with it,” Canning says impatiently.
“I need Emma . . . Ms. Davies. There are some people here to see her, and it’s important.”
My breath catches in my throat. “Who?”
Val looks at the floor, at my bosses, at the stupid landscape watercolor on the wall. Anywhere but at me. “You should come.”
Bill Canning and Edward Wells seem to intuit that something is very wrong. “Go,” Canning says.
I push myself out of my seat. Never have I felt so heavy as I do now, as though I am covered in a thick layer of tar. My legs are lead. I give Val a questioning look, but she continues to avoid my eyes. She turns and walks down the hall, and I follow. Every step is a torturous challenge.
When I reach the end of the hallway, I see them. They stand inside my office, both awkwardly shifting their weight from foot to foot, speaking to each other in low tones.
I do not want to talk to them. Don’t make me talk to them.
“Emma?” Val’s voice is far away.
As I approach my office, the two men turn and
see me through the glass. One is older, gray haired and heavyset. One is in his late twenties or so with a crew cut. Their uniforms are black and starched and stiff, their badges polished to a shine. I move through the door and force myself to stand up straight.
“Emma Davies?” the older officer says.
I nod.
“We’re sorry to have to tell you this, Ms. Davies. But there’s been an accident involving your son. He was struck by a vehicle while riding his bike . . .”
The rest of his recitation is lost. My ears no longer hear. My eyes no longer see. My brain no longer possesses the capacity for rational thought.
I crumple to the floor.
The drive to Mercy Hospital is surreal. I sit in the back seat of the police cruiser, clinging to the three words I heard before the blackness took me.
“He’s still alive.”
I stare at the metal grate that separates the front seat from the back. The grate shimmers, swirls, morphs, the crisscrossing patterns expanding and contracting before my eyes. I reach out and touch the cool metal, and it liquefies and envelops my hand.
I yank my hand back.
“I need to call his father.” I can’t feel my lips, nor any vibration in my throat, so I don’t know if I’ve spoken the words aloud until the young cop answers me.
“Another unit was dispatched to Mr. Davies. They’re already en route. Should be to the hospital a few minutes after us.”
I lean back against the cool vinyl seat. I close my eyes and pray. Not to God. He wouldn’t listen to me. I don’t deserve Him to listen. I pray to whatever forces have been at work in my life of late. Please change the rules. Please let me go back. Please please please . . .
Harsh white fluorescent bulbs assault me as I enter the ER. I pass the waiting area where a lone woman sits, dressed in a business suit, pressing an ice pack against her cheek. I have a flash of a memory—seeing myself in the mirror after Richard’s attack, my cheek angry and swollen and purple. The woman looks up at me. The woman is me. I squeeze my eyes shut and open them to see a stranger seated on the yellow foam bench. She holds the ice pack on her forearm, not her cheek.
The reception desk is deserted. The older cop knocks on the glass partition and calls out for assistance. A moment later, a harried clerk appears. The cop says something to him and he replies, but I can’t make out their words, as if I’ve lost command of the English language. Perhaps if their conversation were in Joshspeak, I would understand them. The clerk presses a button on the underside of his desk, and the inner door to the ER unlatches.
The cop touches my elbow. I flinch and he withdraws his hand. He escorts me past several curtained areas, another long reception counter where many green-scrubbed staff members chat or talk on the phone or type commands into their keyboards. I am deaf to the commotion around me, to the moans of agony, the beeping of monitors, the medical orders called out by white-coated doctors. I am in a vacuum. There is no sound but the pumping of my heart and the oxygen moving in and out of my lungs.
We stop at the end of the hall, at a closed door with a window over which a white curtain has been drawn. The cop says something to me. I stand mute. He reaches for the doorknob, turns it, pushes the door open, then steps aside to allow me entrance.
I am in quicksand. I can’t move my feet. The cop reaches out to touch me again. I put up my hand to block him. Finally, with herculean effort, I manage to take a step, then another. And another. Into the room.
A nurse wearing scrubs, her red hair scraped into a tight ponytail, stands across the room next to a bed with starched white linens. She blocks my view of the bed’s occupant. She hears us enter, turns and gives me a sympathetic look, then moves toward us. I gaze past her.
And there he is. I know him instantly. The broken figure on the hospital bed seems more like my son than the teenager who walked out of my house last night, or loitered in front of the comic book store yesterday afternoon, or rode his bike down our street yesterday morning. His arms are curled up against his chest and his mouth yawns open. His head is swaddled in bandages and a breathing tube erupts from the middle of his throat, held in place with surgical tape.
In this supine position he looks like my Josh.
“Are you his mother?” the nurse asks quietly. I nod.
“The doctor will be in to see you in a few minutes.” She reaches out and squeezes my biceps. I can’t feel it.
I glance at the cop. I still can’t hear him, but I read his lips. He says I’m sorry, then lowers his head and follows the nurse out of the room.
I’m alone with my son. My eyes are drawn to the yellow plastic accordion pump that rises and falls inside the transparent shaft of the ventilator. The rhythmic motion of the pump is hypnotic. I don’t know how long I stand there staring at the familiar machine. A moment. An eon. Doesn’t matter.
“Emma.”
Colin’s voice behind me cuts through my trance. I can hear now, but I can’t move. My husband says my name again, and I feel him close the gap between us. His shoulder brushes against mine as he tries to grasp my hand. My fingers remain inert.
The intermittent beep of the heart monitor echoes through the room. The whoosh of the ventilator is like a cacophony.
“Oh my God,” he breathes when he sees our son. “Oh my God, Josh!”
He rushes past me and stumbles to the bed, crying out Josh’s name. He grasps the bed rail and leans over it to get a terrible closer look, then begs God to give him strength. Somewhere in the back of my mind I wonder if God can hear him. He turns back to me. Anguish and horror command his every facial muscle. I can’t bear to look at him.
“Oh, Em. Our boy. Our son. Oh dear God, help me, please help me. Josh!”
I suddenly long for the deafness of my arrival. Colin’s cries and divine entreaties are like nails being driven through my eardrums. I press the heels of my hands against my ears, hoping to block the sound of his misery.
He is still looking at me, but his expression has shifted to one of incredulity. “What are you doing, Emma? Why are you just standing there?”
I have no answer that will satisfy him or that he will understand. My horror is tempered by the fact that I have seen Josh in a hospital bed many times before. I’ve beheld countless seizures, spasms, ambulances, ERs, ventilators. This Colin in this new reality has not. He only knows Josh as a normal boy.
And yet, I know that my anguish over Josh goes far deeper and is much more insidious than my husband’s. It cripples me. It robs me of my limbs, my voice, my senses. Because this, this hideous circumstance, this broken boy on the bed before me, is completely my fault.
I did this. With a wish.
The door opens, and a slight man with short dark hair enters. He wears a doctor’s coat and a nametag I can’t read. Black-rimmed glasses perch on the bridge of his nose, and his eyes look distorted and small behind them. He glances at the smart watch on his wrist every few seconds. His hands are hairless and dainty. He nods at me and walks toward the bed. Colin straightens and looks at him with dreaded expectation. I force myself to take a few slow steps forward as the doctor plants himself between Colin and me.
“Mr. and Mrs. Davies, your son’s situation is very grave.” His voice is gentle, but his delivery is matter-of-fact. We are not the first parents to receive bad news. We will not be the last. “Your son has suffered several catastrophic injuries, and I’m going to be candid with you. The prognosis is bleak.”
Colin cries out, then buries his face in his hands and starts shaking his head and moaning. “No. No. No.”
I am a statue.
The doctor looks back and forth between Colin and me. He seems to conclude that out of the two of us, I will not fall apart. He directs the rest of his report to me while my husband whimpers and weeps.
“The impact from the vehicle caused fractures to his C3, C4, and C5 vertebrae—those are in the neck—and the spinal cord has been severely traumatized. It is unlikely your son will ever regain the use of his limbs.”
<
br /> Colin wails in response to the doctor’s prognosis. I stiffen at the sound but say nothing. The doctor is not finished yet.
“Also, the injury is at such a place as to affect his breathing, which is why we had to give him a tracheotomy.” He pauses and checks his watch. “Apparently, your son hit the asphalt with great velocity, and because he wasn’t wearing a helmet . . .” His voice trails off as he watches me closely for a reaction. When I give him none, he continues. “His skull was crushed. The brain damage is extensive, most notably in the frontal lobe, including Broca’s area, which controls speech production.”
“Goo’ mo’ee’, Maah.” Good morning, Mom.
I should have made him wear a helmet. I should have made him stay home for dinner.
I shouldn’t have made the wish.
“We’ve been monitoring his EKG since we stabilized him. So far, there is no sign of brain function. Once the swelling goes down, we’ll have a better picture, but . . . If your son survives, which is unlikely, he may never regain consciousness. And if he does, he will have little or no quality of life. I know how difficult this must be for you, but you need to think very carefully about what to do next.”
He pauses again but has the good grace not to check his watch.
He sighs, then reaches out as if to touch me, decides against it and drops his hand to his side. “Take a little time, Mrs. Davies. Might I suggest . . . it might be helpful . . . Perhaps you might consider what your wishes would be if you were in your son’s situation.”
I flinch at his suggestion. My wishes. I don’t know what my wishes would be. I know what my wishes have been. They’ve been based on my own selfishness, my greed, my covetousness.
I don’t need time to decide. I know what I must do.
THIRTY-THREE
Colin pulls himself together slowly. I wait. He thinks I’m in shock. How else can he explain my behavior? I have not once gone to my son’s bedside. I haven’t touched Josh or spoken to him or gazed upon him for any stretch of time. I stand on the far side of the room near the door, watching Colin mourn, watching the nurses as they check my son’s vital signs, watching the ventilator rise and fall, watching the glowing green line of the heart monitor sail across the screen, creating upside-down Vs, watching the clouds move through the sky beyond the window.