After the End(34)

Pip’s eyes fill with pain, and Leila’s heart drums double-time in a chest suddenly too small for its contents.

“I can’t,” Pip begins, hard-fought breaths every few words. “I can’t make him live a life I wouldn’t want to live myself.” And she looks up at Leila, with a jaw just as fixed, just as determined as her husband’s.

“I want to let him go.”





thirteen





Max


The first time I stayed over at Pip’s she had me rescue a spider from the bathtub.

“Careful of his legs,” she said, as I carried it downstairs in cupped hands and released it into the garden. “Don’t hurt him.”

I stare at her now, incredulous. Pip cries at dog rescue adverts, donates to disaster relief, moves rainy-day snails off the sidewalk so they don’t get crushed. She cannot bear to see a living thing suffer. What is she saying?

“But we decided—”

“No. You decided.” She turns to look at me. “He’s been through so much, Max—I can’t bear to see him suffer anymore.”

“The proton beam therapy could take the cancer away completely. It could save his life!”

“What life?” She’s crying, and I feel cleaved in two, wanting to comfort her, yet appalled by what I’m hearing. “Tube-feeding, catheters, cannula, mouth suctioning . . . that’s not living, Max, that’s existing.”

Dr. Khalili clears her throat. “Perhaps it would be best if you took some more time to discuss—”

“There’s nothing to discuss,” I say. “I’m not giving up on my son.”

“Take as much time as you need.” She leaves, and I stand and walk to the window, my back to Pip.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

“It’s breaking my heart.”

“Then—” I spin round, my outstretched arms speaking for me. But she shakes her head.

“If he was an animal—a horse who couldn’t walk, couldn’t graze—you wouldn’t hesitate. You’d say it was the kindest thing to do. One final act of compassion.”

“Our son isn’t an animal!” I spit out the words, appalled by the comparison, but Pip doesn’t flinch.

“Please, Max. Don’t let him suffer anymore. This isn’t about us, it isn’t about how we’ll feel if we lose him. This is about Dylan, and accepting that we’ve reached the end of the road.”

“No.” I cross the room and open the door. I am no longer torn in two. I no longer feel the urge to wipe away her tears. “I will never, ever give up on my son.” However long you spend with someone, however well you think you know them, they can still be a stranger to you.

In Room 1, I stand for a moment at Dylan’s side, holding his hand and silently vowing to do everything in my power to protect him. I’m seized by the urge to gather him up in my arms and take him; to bundle him into the car and drive to the airport and take the first plane home.

Home. America hasn’t been my home for more than a decade, yet I am suddenly overwhelmingly homesick. We’ll be there soon, I promise Dylan. We’ll get you the best doctors, and the best treatment, and then you’ll come home. You will.

I leave the car keys by Dylan’s crib, and go to the taxi rank by the main hospital entrance.

“Kenilworth? That’s going to be seventy, eighty quid, you know that, right?”

I bite back a response that he’s a cabdriver, not my financial adviser, and mumble a That’s fine. He makes a halfhearted attempt at conversation, then gives up, and we travel home in silence.



* * *





I’m not used to being in the house on my own. Since October I’ve hardly been here at all. My time is split between hotels, airplanes and cars, and the sterile hallways and wards of the hospital. If I’m here, it’s to sleep, or to rush in to shower and change after a long flight.

Upstairs the door to Dylan’s room is open, and I pull it closed without looking, without checking. I know Pip goes in there. Sits in the nursing chair and turns on his mobile, looks at the empty crib and imagines it full.

Occasionally Pip asks me to get something from his room. A clean onesie, a toy, a favorite book. I have to steel myself to walk in, and when I do I go straight to the bureau, the toy box, the bookcase. I don’t look around. I can’t.

There are two other bedrooms on Dylan’s floor: the office, for when I work from home, and the guest room, for when my mom is over. Pip and I have the master suite on the top floor. There’s a separate dressing room, lined with closets, and a bathroom with two basins, and low sliding doors where the sloping roof meets the ceiling. I open one of these now and pull out a suitcase from the crawl space.

I put it on the bed and start to fill it. Shorts, sweaters, pants, suits. I don’t let myself think about what I’m doing; about whether I’m packing for a night, for a month, forever. I don’t let myself think at all. I only know I can’t be here right now.





fourteen





Pip


Sometimes you only know for certain if you’ve made the right decision once you’ve made it. Either it slides smoothly into place as though it were always meant to be there, or it sits, spiky and misshapen, in the corners of your mind. This isn’t right—you’ve made the wrong choice.