We Own the Sky(61)



Everything. I would beg, borrow and steal to get the money.”

Anna began to sob, and I put my arm around her. She felt cold, gaunt beneath her woolen sweater. “I know,” I said. “It’s horrible—just horrible—to have to discuss it. But I’m sure we could find a way, even if there’s just the tiniest chance that it would work...”

“Will you just shut up?” Anna shouted. “Did you actually read about the

treatments at the clinic in Prague?” she said through gritted teeth, trying to keep her voice down so she wouldn’t wake Jack. “Did your friend Nev tell you about that? Because you know what, Rob, I’ve actually read the whole damn forum, and I know there are plenty of parents who have gone to Sladkovsky’s clinic and had entirely different experiences. Did you read their stories, as well? You should, because then you might start seeing Nev’s claims in a different light.”

“Nev’s claims? So you think Nev is lying about his son getting better? Look,”

I said, thrusting the laptop under her nose. “This is an email from Nev. Read it.

Three years in remission. Three years. Josh has just had another clean scan.”

“Can you please stop being so aggressive?”

I took a deep breath, tried to calm down. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to... I just want to show you how the treatment can work.”

“We don’t know if it worked.”

“What does that even mean? He had the same tumor as Jack—glioblastoma

multiforme—and it’s gone. It’s gone, Anna.”

“Right. But how do we know it had anything to do with the clinic?” Anna

said. “The science is just not there, Rob. They don’t publish their results from their clinical trials. It’s just people’s testimonies.”

“So you’re a scientist now, Anna? A medical expert. Doctors don’t always

know everything, you know.”

“Goodness, you’re even starting to sound like Nev. If Nev is even real...”

“If he’s even real? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know, that’s just what some people have said on  Hope’s Place. That maybe he’s paid by the clinic or something to recruit patients. How can you be so sure he’s who he says he is? He’s just a username, Rob.”

“Aha, I see. That all seems very elaborate. Quite the ruse.”

Anna shrugged. “Stranger things have happened, I suppose. Preying on

desperate parents. It makes sense to me.”

“Look, look at this,” I said, scrolling through Nev’s emails until I found the pictures of Josh.

“What am I even supposed to be looking at?” she said, as I thrust the laptop under her nose.

“Nev’s son Josh.”

“I know, Rob, you told me before. He’s always posting pictures of him on the forum.”

I looked for a flicker of emotion in Anna’s face, but there was none. People said Anna was cold, people who didn’t know her. I remembered her bedroom at college and how sparse it was. There were no fluffy cushions or corkboards with collages of friends at teenage parties. There was just a desk and a chair, and some thin hardback books on the shelf. Her bedspread was plain, a dull green.

Did it all come from her father? She never talked about it, but I knew she felt abandoned. She wouldn’t discuss his abrupt departure for Africa, the grandson he had never met. That’s just what he does, she said, and left it at that.

“Look,” I said, pulling up Nev’s last email. I clicked on the image file and it was Josh’s Minecraft creation. “It’s this Minecraft game. Josh made it for Jack.”

Anna looked at me in disbelief. “You’re talking as if they know each other, Rob. As if they’re friends. You don’t even know this person.”

“Just because I haven’t met him in person doesn’t mean that I don’t know

him.”

Anna shook her head.

“I can call him now if you want,” I said, raising my voice.

“Do whatever you like,” Anna said.

We sat on the sofa, not touching, our bodies angled away from each other, and

the house had never felt so quiet, so cold.

“What is happening to us?” I said. “We can’t even have a normal conversation anymore.”

“Our son’s dying, that’s what’s happening to us,” she said. Already, Anna’s lexicon was different to mine. Whereas I struggled to say the word hospice— with its soft, beguiling hiss—Anna would use words like “terminal” or “dying.”

“Right,” I said, trying to not get angry. “I know it’s horrible—it’s the most horrible thing imaginable—but we’re on the same side in this.”

“On the same side?” Anna said. “You’ve barely spoken a word to me in days.

It’s like you can’t even look at me anymore. You’re obsessed, Rob, with this Nev guy, with this...this false hope that you’re clinging to...”

Anna went back to cleaning the patio windows, trying to get rid of the smears.

At that moment, the only thing I could think to do was to call Nev. It wasn’t just for Anna, it was also for me. Yes, he wasn’t asking for money—“only $25 to kick cancer to the curb!”—or asking me to sign up for his healing-the-holistic-way newsletter, but I still had my doubts. Little things that didn’t add up. I had once asked Nev about his wife or partner, but he didn’t answer. In another email, I asked him where he lived. Nothing.

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