After the End(37)

“That isn’t going to happen.” I don’t mean to be short with her, but she doesn’t know Max, she doesn’t know how deeply he has researched this, how deeply he feels about it. “So what are the next steps?” I speak with more authority than I feel.

Dr. Khalili hesitates. Two lines appear briefly above the bridge of her nose, before she assembles her features into something more neutral. “In the unlikely event that we can’t reach agreement, it would be down to the trust to make a recommendation, and—if it came to it—to seek authority from the courts to go ahead with that treatment path.”

I look at this doctor who has known my son for five months, yet never once seen him run or hear him talk. She knows so much more than me about the surgery Dylan’s had, the drugs he’s on, the damage to his brain that to my untrained eye is a whirl of dark space on a scan. I saw her sit up a little straighter when Max talked about proton beam therapy; I saw the flicker of respect in her eyes. He impressed her—he impresses everyone. I have Max’s strength of conviction, but I don’t have his powers of persuasion. I can’t back up my decision with facts and figures, only with heart and instinct and the painful, absolute certainty that this is the kindest thing I can do for my son.

Can I trust this doctor to make the right decision?

And what will happen to Max and me if she does?





fifteen





Leila


I can’t thank you enough, Dr. Khalili.”

Leila smiles at Darcy, who babbles happily and reaches out chubby arms to grab Alistair’s glasses. She is sporting a onesie bearing the slogan Two dads are better than one. It has been two days since I sat in the quiet room with Dylan’s parents, two days where the atmosphere on the ward has been thick with tension. Today’s good news is welcome.

“We’d love to show our appreciation,” Tom says. “We have a house in Antigua—”

“Air con,” Alistair chips in, “infinity pool, views overlooking the ocean . . .”

“—and we’d love you to use it. Take a friend—or your lovely mum, maybe?”

Leila thinks about switching gray, rainy Birmingham for a fortnight in the Caribbean sun; thinks about Habibeh, shivering in her thick fleece.

“It’s really generous of you, thank you. But I can’t.”

“Of course you—”

“Hospital policy,” Leila says gently. “To make sure we treat everyone the same.” They look downhearted, and Leila feels churlish. “There’s a charity called PICU Friends,” she says. “I’m sure they’d be over the moon with a holiday for their next raffle, if you’d consider . . . ?” Before she’s even finished speaking, both men are nodding enthusiastically.

“We’d love to.”

Leila smiles. “Thank you so much. They’re raising money for a new defibrillator. The trust doesn’t have the budget to replace it till the new financial year.”

“That’s terrible.”

“There’s one in theater and another in HDU, but it certainly isn’t ideal. Supporting the Friends would be the best possible thanks you could give us.”

Leila walks with the Bradfords to the end of the corridor. On impulse, she gives them both a hug as they say goodbye. As she walks back to the ward, she sees Pip Adams watching from Room 1. It hurts, Leila knows, to watch someone else’s child arrive and then leave, all while your own lies silent and sick. Max Adams is here, too, but something has happened—some shift in their relationship—that has infused the whole ward with unease.

Pip—or Max—has moved the two chairs by Dylan’s bedside so that, instead of sitting side by side, they are separated by his cot, meaning any conversation must be had through bars.

“They’re hardly talking, anyway,” Cheryl said this morning. “This morning he said I’ve got to go to the house later.” When Leila didn’t bite, Cheryl raised her eyebrows. “The house. Not home, the house. I think they’ve split up.”

Leila feels sad. She wishes she could tell the Adamses that it will be OK, that this is the most horrific, the most terrible thing that will ever happen to them, but that—one day—they will be able to laugh again. That the mountain that has formed between them and feels so insurmountable might not recede, but they will learn to climb it. They will meet again, at the summit, and look back at what they have climbed, and it will feel impossible, and yet somehow they will be there.

She cannot tell them that. It is not her place. She has a job to do, and today she must do the hardest thing she has had to do since qualifying as a doctor. She looks at the wall behind the nurse’s desk, where a vast corkboard is covered with pictures and letters of thanks. School photographs, holiday snaps, graduation shots. Professional shoots—the whole family lying on their stomachs in a bright white studio, laughing. Kids skiing, kicking footballs, riding horses. Kids playing basketball in wheelchairs; running on prosthetic legs. Kids who have beaten the odds, whose lives hung in the balance in this very hospital, whose parents sat in this very room and listened to a doctor tell them their child might not live. And yet they did.

Today, Leila must tell Pip and Max Adams that the hospital has made a formal recommendation regarding their son’s treatment path. She must give them the opportunity to agree with the recommendations, and then—if either parent dissents—she must inform them that the trust will be instigating legal action.