We Own the Sky(52)

“Please, please, don’t start on about the Marsden trial again. We’ve spoken about it, and I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“I wasn’t going to actually, Anna,” I said, my face and neck prickling with heat. “What I’m saying, if you’d just listen to me, is that I still think there are options out there. I think we’ve only really scratched the surface with the doctors we’ve seen. There are other kids out there who’ve had what Jack has and have been cured...”

“Don’t say that word,” Anna said, looking at me angrily. Her eyes were dark, opaque. “There is no cure, Rob, there is no chance of a cure, not in cases like this. You don’t think I’ve been researching this, as well? I’ve also read about the new drugs, and the trials, and at the moment there is nothing—nothing, Rob—to suggest that any of this would work for Jack.”

A deep crimson flush spread across Anna’s cheeks. She turned sharply toward me, nearly spilling the wine in her glass.

“And before you interrupt me again and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s not just me saying that. It’s the doctors, Rob. And before you accuse me of not caring, or ‘giving up,’ I’m happy to go for a third and a fourth and a fifth opinion if that’s what you want, but they’re going to tell us exactly the same thing.”

“But we can’t know that.”

“We can’t know that? Well, we can’t know anything can we, Rob? Dr.

Kennety, Dr. Flanagan, they’re two of the leading specialists in the world on pediatric brain tumors, and they have both told us the same thing. God, Rob, Jack isn’t something you can program. He’s not a machine you can hack. You can’t just waltz through this like you do with everything else...”

“Why are you even bringing that up? It’s not about that...”

“Yes, it’s not, it’s about Jack. It’s about Jack’s quality of life now. It’s about making sure he doesn’t suffer on some trial that has almost zero chance of working. Just so we can make ourselves feel better, that we did something.”

Anna saw the rage on my face and stopped and took a deep breath. “Sorry,

that wasn’t fair. I didn’t want to imply that you would do anything to hurt Jack. I just don’t see any other way. There’s nothing they can do, Rob. It breaks my heart just as much as yours, but we have to listen to the doctors.”

Listen to the doctors. Anna always had an inordinate amount of respect for the professions. The doctors, lawyers, teachers of the world—the type of person you would ask to countersign a passport photo. Because in those people, she saw herself. Hard work, prudence, judiciousness. There was, she thought, a nobility to these professions, and to question them was unthinkable. Where I grew up in Romford, those people were often the enemy. They didn’t get a free pass.

“I’m sorry,” she said, touching my arm. “I don’t want to argue. I just think that all we can really do is enjoy our time together.”

“Enjoy,” I said, cutting her off. “How are we going to enjoy any of this? We’re just sitting around, doing fucking nothing.”

The muscles in Anna’s neck stiffened, and she put her wine on the side table.

The glass rocked slightly on the mat. She picked up her book and left without saying a word.

  *

I went to check on Jack, and he was sound asleep. I tucked the covers under his body, cocooning him, and put Little Teddy in the crook of his arm.

In our bedroom, I could hear the faint sound of water running, of Anna in the shower, so I went downstairs and poured myself a whiskey and stewed at my desk.

I logged in to  Hope’s Place—now an almost hourly ritual—and there was a new thread at the top, already with pages and pages of posts. The son of one of the forum members had died and they were honoring him, replacing their profile pictures with his, a little boy, his face lopsided, as if he had suffered a stroke. He was courageous, they said, a warrior. Heaven had gained an angel.

I couldn’t read any more. They were just wasting time, with their sunset

photos, their Thankful Thursdays and Welcoming Wednesdays, their ruminations

about “gratitude” and “mindfulness.” Because all their talk of being “brave” and

“blessed” was a delusion, a ruse, which sugarcoated the unpalatable truth that their children were dying and they were doing nothing to save their lives.

Then I remembered Nev. What was the name of his son again? I pulled up my email and found his note from a few months ago. Josh, that was it. His son had had glioblastoma and been treated at the clinic in Prague.

I read Nev’s email again and started researching the clinic and the doctor he had recommended. Dr. Sladkovsky’s website was sleek, easy to navigate, and I began reading about the clinic’s patented immuno-engineering treatment.

Patients had their blood drawn and their T-cells reengineered with a vaccine. The blood was then injected back into their bodies. It was, according to Dr.

Sladkovsky, beautifully simple. Just a case of enhancing the body’s natural immune system rather than destroying it with chemotherapy.

I started to watch video testimonies of patients who were treated at the clinic.

Kirsty, twenty-three, had pancreatic cancer. They filmed her soon after she arrived. She looked hollow, her head wrapped in a scarf, a scaly red rash covering her neck and face. The voice of a solemn narrator said that under the standard of care for stage IV pancreatic cancer, she would die within six months.