Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(95)

DJ rubbed his temples, but he didn’t say anything, and Trisha’s heart squeezed.

“Why do you paint, Emma?”

She shrugged, as though the question were too easy for her to dignify with an answer. But then she relented. “Because it’s the only way I know how to survive. How to trudge through all the shit in the world. I paint because it makes me bloody happy. I am my work, Dr. Raje.”

“No. No, you aren’t. You aren’t your art any more than I am my surgery or your brother is his food.” She felt DJ’s gaze on her but she couldn’t look at him. “We, all three of us in this room, think we live for our work. But is it really that simple?”

Emma didn’t respond, and Trisha went on. “Sure, you paint because you want to understand the world, but I think you really do it because you want to change it, by changing every person who looks at your paintings, one by one. You want to make people uncomfortable. You want to force them to think about things they’ve never bothered to consider . . . Your brother cooks because he wants to comfort people, to show them the pleasure their bodies are capable of experiencing, to make them pause and savor their own existence as they fly through life. You can see it in his face every time someone eats his food . . . And me? I do it because I want to save lives, take away suffering. Whatever the case, we want to change things around us. Because we want to matter, and we believe that our work makes us matter. The work isn’t the end, it’s the means for what we really want: to matter.

“If it were the work itself, every failure would destroy us. Instead, it makes us try harder. Because it’s the changing things that makes us matter. But that’s only part of it. Having someone who can see us, especially someone who can see and love that us who works so hard to matter—that’s what completes it, completes us. If that went away, that’s the thing that would destroy us. You’re already loved. Your brother left his life for you. You already matter. All you need is to find another way to change the world. And there are other ways.” She swiped through the pictures and held them up to Emma.

Emma stared at the screen, but she shook her head stubbornly. “That’s a great speech, but there is only this one way I know how to process my world. I can’t do it.”

Trisha stood. “You know, I’ve been accused of being self-absorbed, of not bothering with the feelings of others.” She still would not look at DJ. “But what you’re doing makes me look like the empath of the year.”

“This is not a tantrum, Dr. Raje. I’m—”

“Actually, it is, love.” Finally DJ spoke, cutting Emma off. He threw a quick look at Trisha, and what she saw in his eyes was different from anything she’d ever seen. Then he looked back at Emma. “It is a tantrum. Do you have any idea how many terminal patients would die for a cure, for a chance to live? Do you have any idea how many people in this world live with disabilities? It’s a simple Google search.” He held out his hand and Trisha handed him her iPad. He typed out the search, his fingers steady, all of him filled with purpose. The way he looked back at his sister, his heart in his eyes, made Trisha want to wrap her arms around him. “One out of five people in America, according to the Census Bureau. And every one of them is as alive as you or I.” He pushed the tablet into Emma’s hands.

Emma didn’t answer, but they looked at each other, so many unsaid things clogging the air between them.

“Brain surgery is not open-ended,” Trisha said. “The bigger the tumor grows, the harder it will get to not damage healthy brain tissue. In fact, those episodes of vision loss that you’ve been experiencing—they most likely mean that nerve atrophy is setting in. You’re risking your life for your vision, but the chances that you’ll have your vision much longer aren’t good.”

Emma clutched the iPad.

“I know you’re angry, that you’ve been through things no one should have to go through, but we’re out of time. You have to make a decision. Think about your brother. Think about what losing you would do to him. Meet Jane once. If not for yourself, do it for him.”

DJ closed his eyes and Emma looked at him like she was going to die from the pain.

Trisha opened the door and took a second to wave over the nurse who was waiting down the corridor with a wheelchair. “The nurse is going to take you in for your scan. I know that if you do it, if you meet Jane, you won’t regret it. But in the end this is your life and your decision.”

Emma didn’t answer. But she didn’t say no and that was all the answer Trisha needed for now.

The moment Emma was gone, leaving Trisha alone with DJ, the air in the room changed.

He looked at her, the intensity in his eyes from a moment ago replaced by wariness. The purpose inside her was replaced by mortification.

Seriously, what on earth had come over her when she’d blurted out her feelings? He was her patient’s brother. He was working with her family. Why hadn’t she thought about the fact that she’d be seeing him again? Over and over again. Now here she was standing a mere few feet from him unable to look at him without every single word they’d said rising up between them like one of those tacky bead curtains.

“Thank you,” he said simply.

“Just doing my job.”

Awkward silence loomed.

“I really do believe that meeting Jane will change Emma’s mind.”