After the End(56)

“I’m not laughing,” I said, laughing.

I look at Pip. I look through everything she’s said and done over the last two months, and I know that I still love her. I’ll always love her. And once we’re in Texas, and Dylan’s getting better, we’ll talk. We’ll get back what we had before.

“Mrs. Adams.” Pip’s barrister stands. “I know this is incredibly hard for you. Could you tell us, in your own words, why you support the hospital’s recommendation that Dylan’s treatment path should include palliative care only?”

Pip’s head makes a tiny, jerky movement—more a tremor than a nod. Her lips quiver as she opens her mouth, and when she speaks it’s so quietly there’s a collective rustle in the court, as everyone leans forward to hear.

“I love my son. What everyone’s saying in the papers, on TV, it isn’t true. I’m not a monster. I would give anything to make this nightmare go away, and have Dylan back home where he belongs.” She says nothing more for the longest time, her eyes tightly closed and her face tense with the effort of trying not to cry. I feel the way I did in the quiet room, when Pip was crying—like there are two of me sitting here, not one. One me fighting Pip and the hospital, and another wanting to put my arms around her and say You’re doing so well.

“But that can’t happen.” She’s louder now, her knuckles white on the rail in front of her. “I have spent every day with my son since he was admitted to hospital last autumn. I’ve been there when he’s had seizures so bad they’ve had to sedate him, when they’ve given him morphine for the pain. I’ve learned how to suction his saliva, how to massage his back to loosen the secretions, how to manipulate his arms and legs so they don’t waste away. It is relentless, and exhausting, and it would consume my life—our lives—if Dylan came home.” Anger swells inside me but she hasn’t finished. “And I would do all of it and more, if I felt that in between the drugs and the hospital appointments and the physio and the suctioning there would be a life worth living.” Silence hangs over the courtroom. Pip looks at the judge. “But I don’t believe there is.”

I rub the back of my neck. Drop my head and screw up my face like it’ll take away the noise in my head, the pictures put there by Pip. I’ve been there too, haven’t I? I’ve seen those things too, I’ve helped with his physio, and . . . When you’re not working, comes the tiny voice. Pip and I made our decisions based on different experiences, different realities. The realization is unsettling.

“Mrs. Adams, you understand that, if this order is granted, your son will die?”

A single word, tight and painful. “Yes.”

The barrister prepares to sit, but Pip starts to talk again. “I want to make it clear that I don’t want Dylan to die. But I don’t want him to live the way he’ll live if he survives. There is . . .” She falters, and the final words trail away as though she is suddenly exhausted. “There is a difference.”

I think about my own speech, prepared and ready for this afternoon, when Laura will prompt me with Please tell the court why you oppose this application. I think of the wealth of evidence we’ve put together, all focused on keeping Dylan alive. I think of the images Pip conjured for the court. And I falter.

“All the evidence has been in support of the applicant,” Laura says, when court takes a short break. She takes a sip of canteen-bought coffee and makes a face. “It’s bound to make you question yourself—that’s its whole aim. You’ll feel better once our own witnesses give evidence.”

I do. Our first witness, Dr. Hans Schulz, has dark brown hair and owlish glasses, with a bearing so rigid that when he came to the hospital I half-expected him to click his heels together. He was the second independent doctor Laura found.

“I’m sorry,” said the first, a French pediatrician in a Paul Smith suit. “I can’t support your case.” His report was brief, so similar to Dr. Khalili’s they might have been written simultaneously. No realistic possibility of a meaningful life was his chilling conclusion.

“I spent some considerable time with the patient,” Dr. Schulz tells the court, his English impeccable. “I noted that his pupils responded to light, and that—when I spoke—he turned his head in my direction.”

The hospital’s QC is making notes, leaning across to whisper something to his assistant. The room is air-conditioned, but I’m burning up, and I loosen my tie and undo my top button. I’m here and yet not here; listening to all these people talk about a nightmare that surely cannot be our life. I keep looking at Pip, but she stares at her hands, clasped in her lap like she’s praying.

Dr. Schulz gives evidence for two hours. He answers questions from the judge, from the hospital’s QC, from Laura, from Dylan’s barrister. He has done well, I think, and with this afternoon’s video evidence from Dr. Gregory Sanders, it cannot fail to make a dent in the certainty presented by St. Elizabeth’s.

Laura is pleased. She thinks the judge will be swayed by Dr. Schulz, by a child who is responding to light and voice.

“The public will seize on that in particular—you’ll see.” We’re sitting in Pret a Manger, and she dabs mayonnaise from the corner of her mouth with her napkin. “The journalists will love it.”