After the End(54)
“But there’s a reason why Dylan’s mum isn’t with you today, isn’t there?” the presenter says, terrier-like in his pursuit of something more salacious. Old news, I think. I want to turn it off, but missing Max has become a physical ache—like homesickness—and seeing him both hurts and heals.
“My wife and I both want the best for Dylan.” Max pauses. “It happens to be that we disagree on what that means.”
“I understand you’re currently living in a hotel some distance away from your home.” The terrier again. Nip, nip, nip.
“I wanted to be closer to the hospital. To my son.”
“Is your wife staying there too?”
Max flounders. His eyes dart towards Laura King, but she doesn’t see, doesn’t pick up on it.
“Reports say that you’ve left your wife—we can only imagine the strain something like this must put on your—”
Max’s fists ball by his sides. “My wife and I haven’t separated, and where I’m living has nothing to do with my fight to get Dylan the treatment he deserves.” He looks like he has more to say, but the camera closes on the presenters, and whatever it was is lost.
But you did leave me, I say silently.
* * *
The final days before the court case are both endless and fleeting. I spend every moment I can with Dylan, squeezing a lifetime of memories into minutes and hours. I bring in every book from his shelves at home, and read them over and over, while he lies still, drifting in and out of sleep. I sing to him, bathe him, brush his barely-there hair. I tell him stories filled with sunshine and happy endings, feeling like a liar because life doesn’t have happy endings, does it?
The hearing of St. Elizabeth Hospital Trust v. Adams will take place in the family court at London’s Royal Courts of Justice, a vast Gothic building with turreted roofs and hundreds of windows that stare down at us as I get out of the taxi arranged by my barrister.
There is no public gallery in family court, and the crowd of people outside the building have been kept on the opposite side of the road by metal barriers and fluorescent-jacketed police. They wear T-shirts emblazoned with Dylan’s photo, and wave placards begging the court to let our boy live!
Our boy? When did he become their boy?
They make me want to take Dylan home and lock the doors. They make me want to take down every photo of him I’ve ever put on Facebook, to stop these people copying them, Photoshopping them, using them as their own profile picture. Far from drawing strength from this show of what I know is meant as solidarity, it simply serves to turn the knife.
They shout at me as I walk up the steps with Robin Shane and his two assistants.
“Murderer!”
“Don’t turn round,” Robin says. “Keep walking.”
Inside, my shoes echo on the tiled floor as we make our way to the courtroom, where a sudden All rise! brings the lawyerly muttering to a sharp close.
The judge—the Hon. Mr. Justice Merritt—wears a black robe with velvet trim, the only colour two short red ribbons at the neck. He wears no wig, and his hair is grey and neatly trimmed. He looks like a grandfather. I imagine him bouncing a toddler on his knee, creaking onto all fours so the kids can play horsey.
In front of the judge’s bench is a lower one, occupied—as per the plan Robin sketched for me in the back of our black cab—by the clerks. In front again, facing towards the judge, are several further rows. We are sitting on the left, behind the hospital’s legal team, next to Dylan’s guardian and barrister. Max’s team is on the right.
“Who are all those people with him?” I whisper.
Robin raises an eyebrow. “Here to make his barrister look impressive. They’ll have shoved the interns into suits, and billed your husband for the privilege.”
I’ve seen the crowdfunding page Max started—watched it move from five figures to six. I’ve seen, too, the invoices from Robin’s office to my father—the sums eye-wateringly large. In some unspoken agreement, neither Max nor I have touched our “rainy-day” savings account, and I wonder what it would take for either of us to do so.
“My lord,” begins the hospital barrister. “The case before you concerns Dylan Adams, who is currently admitted to the paediatric intensive care unit at St. Elizabeth’s Children’s Hospital, Birmingham. The difficult task with which this court is charged is that of establishing whether it is in Dylan’s best interests for life-sustaining treatment to continue. Discontinuing such treatment will, on the evidence before the court, sadly lead to the child’s death, but it is this sad application on which this case rests—my clients seek leave of the court to end Dylan’s suffering.”
I stifle a cry. I have been told the case may last for several days, that I may leave whenever I want, that it may be too hard.
It is hard. Harder than I ever imagined.
But I don’t leave. I listen to doctors say in calm, still voices everything Dr. Khalili said to us in the quiet room, just a few weeks ago. I listen to the judge asking What exactly does that mean for Dylan? and Could you explain that in layman’s terms, please? and I try to read a face that gives nothing away.
On the second day we hear from the consultant oncologist, who speaks eloquently about Dylan’s tumour and subsequent treatment, and waits in the witness box for Max’s barrister to respond with more questions.