 better, instead of this downward spiral towards… I can’t bear to think it. I won’t. Not yet.
It takes me a moment to realize what he’s saying.  I can barely get the words out. Did a doctor really say that?
“Starve her.” I am disbelieving, icy.
But I will have to one day, seems to be the implication. One day he’ll encourage me to make that decision.
My stomach churns and I rise from my seat. “I’ll need to discuss all this with James.” He should have been here, but he had a work meeting and didn’t realize how important it was. Neither did I. “When we’ve had a conversation, we’ll be in touch.” I don’t know what that conversation will sound or feel like, because even though we are determined to be amicable, James and I don’t always agree about Emily, about her care. He trusts the doctors more than I do; he’s willing to simply go along. It hasn’t mattered so much until now, but I have to hope—I have to believe—he will agree with me on this.
I nod tersely, unwilling to verbalize my acceptance of that plan. I could still fight it. There has to be some way I could fight, some legal avenue James and I could go down.
I walk stiffly from the room, along the corridor to the ward where Emily has been for the last eight months, since a chest infection meant another hospitalization. She was only supposed to be in for a few weeks, until her condition stabilized, but even after she recovered from the infection, her condition continued to spiral downwards, until she slipped so deeply into a sleep, she has never seemed to wake up.
Sometimes I torment myself with my lack of memory of the last time Emily spoke. The last time she smiled or reached for my hand. If I’d known it was the last time, would I have remembered? Would I have held onto it? I’m sure I would have, but, as it is, I can’t remember any of it at all.
It all happened so gradually, an erosion of ability, of possibility, that I was desperate not to acknowledge. When she first started slurring words at only three years old—well, she was young, and children developed at different stages. Then she started stumbling, and having terrible joint pain, as well as migraines. For that whole year, Emily was in and out of preschool, going for tests, scans, therapies. For that whole year, I held on to the hope that this could be solved.
Then, just after her fourth birthday, when we took her to Cape Cod for a week of sun-soaked days on the beach, she had her first grand mal seizure. I think I knew then that we’d entered new territory, an unknown shore, and there was no going back.
A nurse looks up from her station and smiles at me, the curve of her lips fleeting and sympathetic. An aide is pushing a trolley slowly down the hallway; I hear its wheel squeak, and from another room I hear a mother’s murmured voice, the ensuing silence. This is a ward of children who are in similar states to Emily, children with neurological conditions, diagnosed or not, that are serious, untreatable, and in many cases terminal.
Children in comas, temporary or not; children with brain damage of varying degrees; children, like Emily, who have moved from a coma into a state of unresponsive wakefulness, the more hopeless scenario, as I have come to discover, because it signifies, as Dr. Brown pointed out, minimal brain activity. The scenario where you wonder if they’re awake, because they’re breathing, chest rising, eyes opening and closing, and when you squeeze their hands, sometimes they squeeze back. It’s not very much to pin your hopes on, but you do. Of course you do. You pin them all.
Although, the truth is, I don’t know the conditions of the other children on this ward anymore. I stopped chatting to the other parents a while back, because I just couldn’t. I don’t think they could either. We all have enough sorrow in our lives already; we don’t need the burden of bearing someone else’s, not even for a five-minute conversation.
Now I breathe in deeply the smell I’ve become so used to—antiseptic and stale at the same time. I know this place—the bright lights, the murmured voices, the heavy doors, the sunlight that streams through the window and yet feels so far away, the view of the parking lot, the people moving below, some with balloons, others with wheelchairs, everyone living out their hopes and griefs on a silent, sober stage.
Now, as I come into the room, she lies in bed, her eyes closed, her breathing regular. Sometimes her eyes are open, and it almost feels as if she can see me. Her gaze will track to the door and back, almost as if she’s trying to tell me something. What if she is?
She has been able to breathe on her own since she recovered from the chest infection, and besides the monitor registering her heartbeat and the feeding tube, she looks normal, a word I’ve started to hate. What is normal? Who gets to decide that?
“Hello, my darling girl.” I keep my voice cheerful even though sometimes it feels like the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
I move around the room, touching her shoulder, adjusting the blinds, twitching a bedsheet. Anything to feel busy and useful, to lend a bizarre sort of normalcy to this situation.
Looking at her now, if you didn’t know any better, you’d think she was just sleeping. You’d think she’d wake up any minute, blinking sleepily like I try so hard not to imagine, smile at me and mumble something. Hello, Mommy. Or even I’m thirsty. Or maybe where am I? I’m not picky about what she might say. I’m not picky at all.
But that hasn’t happened, and it’s hard to hold onto the hope that it might, even as I guard against wanting something impossible. Sometimes I think I’m not being fair to Emily, to keep my expectations low. Shouldn’t we want the absolute best for our children? Shouldn’t we do everything we can to give it to them? 
Or is it about this, sitting quietly next to a girl who might never truly wake up, and talking about all the things she might miss, but just can’t tell us so? The most recent studies have shown that patients in this state might actually be more conscious than we realize, something that is both wonderful and terrifying.
Might, James said, with such awful emphasis. You can’t trust these studies, Rachel. You can’t pin all your hopes on them, on one research experiment that tells you what you want to hear, when there are so many others with different results.
But then what can you trust? Where do you find hope?
I take Emily’s limp hand in my own; it is small and warm and so terribly lifeless. I can’t let them do this. I can’t let them give up on her. If they stop looking for a diagnosis, they’ll never find a cure. If they write her off as someone who is only going to get worse, there’s no way she’ll ever get better. I’m not willing to consign my only child to being dismissed and then dying. I’m not ready, and surely, surely, neither is she.
Gently, I squeeze Emily’s fingers. It doesn’t always happen, but sometimes I feel something back, a light pressure, a barely-there squeeze. I thought I was imagining it at first, wishful thinking, but then Dr. Brown told me that patients like Emily can exhibit natural reflexes. He was quick to tell me it was nothing more than that, gently warning me that it didn’t mean anything.
But if it was just a reflex, why doesn’t it happen every time? Despite his well-intentioned warnings, I chose not to believe him. It’s more than a reflex to me.
And so, I squeeze her fingers again, gently, like a question. Are you there, baby girl? Is some part of you still with me, still holding on?
I hold my breath and wait, pray, hope, and like the tiny miracle I know it is, after a few endless seconds, she squeezes back.
One line. One damn, damning line. I push my high-heeled foot down on the pedal to lift the lid of the bin, wrap the test in toilet paper and throw it away. Then I leave the toilet stall at work and wash my hands, gazing firmly at my reflection—highlighted hair, blue eyes, determined smile that drops as soon as I look away. Yes, this is me.
A woman I know vaguely from another department comes into the bathroom, giving me a friendly smile, and I force my lips upwards again, an act of sheer will. I am fine.
Briskly I dry my hands and turn away from the sink. My heels click on the tile floor, a pleasing sound. I straighten my shoulders, lift my chin. I am fine.
This is the fifth pregnancy test I’ve taken. The fifth time I’ve let myself hope just a little, because my period is a day late and that twinge in my midsection