After the End(42)
Except, of course, if I hadn’t met Pip, I wouldn’t have Dylan.
I can’t pay Dylan’s expenses myself, and I can’t borrow that amount, either. I think of the many times I’ve clicked on a link shared on Facebook, or forwarded from a work colleague. Could you spare a few pounds to help? How often have I done just that? Perhaps not every time, but often. Perhaps not a large donation, but a donation, nonetheless. And if that action is replicated again and again and again . . .
On the train back to Birmingham I find GoFundMe and open an account. I create a page, add Dylan’s story, a few photographs. I scroll through Pip’s album of daily Dylan photos, lingering on one of the three of us together. It’s a selfie; we’re squashed together, our cheeks touching, our grins wide. The shot is close on our faces; nothing in the background. It makes my chest tight. That’s how I used to feel, being with Pip and Dylan. I’d get home on a Friday, and work would disappear, and the world would shrink, and it would just be Pip, Dylan, and me.
What will happen after the court case?
Will Pip come to Houston? I know the answer before I’ve even formed the question. Of course she’ll come. Dylan will need her. I blink hard, looking out of the window at the barren fields until I’m sure I’m not going to cry. I’ll need her. Turns out you can hate what someone’s doing, yet still love them so much it hurts.
I send the crowdfunding link to everyone in my address book, then I open Twitter and paste the GoFundMe link into a tweet. I attach two photos of Dylan. In one, he’s running down the sand dunes in Woolacombe, laughing into the sun. In the other, he’s in PICU, his eyes closed, and his skin translucent.
Prevented from taking my own son for lifesaving treatment. Where are my rights as a father? Please help raise money for #DylanAdams’s legal battle, and to pay for living costs while he has treatment in America.
I add some hashtags—#righttolife #prolife #parenting—then post it, sharing the message with every celebrity I can think of. Could you please RT this for your followers? I spend the rest of the journey retweeting, refreshing, and searching for celebrities.
So sad! a woman called Alexa Papadakis has tweeted. Her bio claims three reality TV shows and a link to her manager. Come on tweeps—do your thing! A sad-face emoji completes the post, which has already been shared forty-eight times. Alexa’s fans follow her example, and my feed is soon a stream of crying emojis and hashtags. I click on the GoFundMe link and see that the big fat zero is now thirty pounds. We’re on our way.
* * *
It’s gone four before I get to PICU. My Twitter feed is a barrage of supportive messages, but answering them all has left me exhausted rather than invigorated, and it’s a relief to switch off my cell and pull the screen around Dylan’s cot, shutting out the rest of the room.
I tune out the sound of the Slaters, and the murmured conversation between Cheryl and Aaron. I lower the bars of the crib and lift Dylan gently out. His eyes are open, but he weighs heavy as a sleeping child. “The whole world’s on your side, champ,” I whisper.
When Dylan was born, the midwife encouraged Pip to lay him against her bare chest, a blanket around them both.
“We recommend as much skin-to-skin as possible when they’re tiny,” she told Pip. “It’ll stabilize the wee man’s heart and respiratory rates, regulate his temperature—even increase the amount of oxygen in his blood.”
I sit Dylan on my lap. He is unwieldy, his head too heavy for his neck, and his back inflexible. One-handed, I undo the snap fasteners on his onesie, then unbutton my shirt. I move Dylan so his legs fall either side of mine, his head tucked into the crook of my neck, and his bare chest against mine. I pull the fleece blanket from the side of the crib and wrap it around his back. Emotion surges inside me and I fight it back down because this isn’t the time. That isn’t how I want my boy to see me.
I feel the flutter of his heart in its bony rib cage. I watch the readings on the monitor, see Dylan’s oxygen saturation level rise from 93 percent to 95, 96. I see his pulse slow. And then I close my eyes, and ignore the machines. Instead I listen to what Dylan is telling me. I listen to the warmth of his body against mine, to the regular thump thump of his heart. I listen to his breathing, moist on my neck. I listen for life—and I find it.
seventeen
Pip
I switch off my alarm before it goes off, and lie in the darkness. Max has been gone for three weeks, and in that time I haven’t slept for longer than a few fitful hours, before waking again with a leaden feeling in my chest, like someone is pressing me into the bed. This morning the weight is even heavier, my eyes sticky with yesterday’s grief. The afternoon was spent reviewing Dylan’s medical situation with my barrister and his team. Holding it together for three hours cost me a night’s sleep—phrases from the doctors’ reports swirling in the blackness around me. No prospect of any quality of life . . . distressing seizures . . . permanent reliance on pain relief.
Everyone party to proceedings must produce independent evidence in support of their case, and key to that, I was told, are the doctors’ reports.
“The judge will expect a second opinion.” My barrister, Robin Shane, is improbably young, with a beard that looks as though he has borrowed it from someone older. His eyes crinkle kindly when he speaks, making our conversations a little less overwhelming. My father engaged him, coming with me for that first meeting, and passing his card to Robin with the instruction to send the bill to me. I am not allowed to argue.