Home > Silent Night(10)

Silent Night(10)
Author: Danielle Steel

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Bailey would say simply when Whitney brought up the distant future. “We’re not there yet. Right now she’s a nine-year-old kid who was in a car accident four weeks ago. A lot can change in the next few months, or even weeks.” His partner, Amy Clarke, agreed with him, although she was less optimistic than Bailey. She wanted Whitney to be prepared for the possibility that Emma might not improve at all, and might never regain her full faculties or memory. But both specialists thought it was unlikely that she would stay as severe as she was now. “You’re seeing the worst of it. And the restoration of language will help a lot.” For now, whenever Whitney or the nurses didn’t understand Emma’s garbled speech, she eventually got frustrated and tried to hit someone, usually her aunt. Whitney had bruises everywhere to show for it and had been bitten several times. Bailey was very kind and patient with Emma about it, and Whitney assumed he must have children of his own. She asked him about it once, and he said he had figured out years before that his feeling for children was clinical not personal. He had never wanted kids, but he loved his work.

Emma hadn’t asked for her mother yet, or if she had, they hadn’t understood it, and all her anger seemed to focus on her aunt, as though it was Whitney’s fault that Emma’s private language was impossible to decipher.

She was having a particularly bad day, and had bitten one of the nurses, when Melvin Levy called Whitney on her cellphone and she left the room to talk to him. The show was about to start filming again after their summer hiatus, and he needed to know where things stood, so they could adjust the scripts accordingly and figure out when she could start filming again. He expected them to know by now. They hadn’t spoken in two weeks, and if anything, as she got stronger, Emma seemed to be worse. She was regressing in age and her brain was still severely impaired. Whitney tried to find the right words to tell him, without being too explicit.

“How is she now?” he asked with a tone of deep concern. They were all worried about her, and heartbroken over what had happened, but he had a hit show to keep on the air, ratings to worry about, and sponsors and a network to satisfy. “We can shoot around her for a while longer,” he explained to Whitney, “but we can’t do it forever. It all depends on how long she’ll be out. We can keep the fans happy with some interviews and write her absence into the show. But we can’t make it work for a whole season.” Emma was in the first few episodes of the new season, but after that they would be stuck, particularly if she was still a long way from being able to come back. “Can we shoot some videos of her now and get them on social media, to keep everyone happy?” he asked hopefully as Whitney tried to decide how much to tell him. She didn’t want Emma labeled as brain damaged forever, particularly if she recovered eventually. This wasn’t about her career, it was about her life.

“I’m sorry, Melvin, you can’t video her, or photograph her.” Emma didn’t even look the same, her expressions had changed, and she either seemed angry or blank, which altered the look of her features. “There’s no way that she could handle it. She’s still too injured from the accident. She’s got a long way to go.”

“I was afraid of that,” he said sadly. “I was hoping she had youth on her side.”

“She does, but she has a brain injury and has suffered trauma to some very important functions. At best, she won’t be able to work for months,” if she ever can again, or should, she didn’t add. Even if Emma recovered, Whitney couldn’t see the wisdom of letting her overtax herself. And for now it was out of the question. She couldn’t even speak intelligibly, let alone act on a show or do an interview. She was going to have to learn to speak all over again, which could take months or even years. And for now, she was no longer mentally nine years old, let alone the whiz kid she’d been before.

“We’re going to have a meeting about it tomorrow,” Melvin told her in a subdued voice. “I’ll get back to you with what the network decides. We’d like to come and visit her. The whole cast feels terrible about what happened.”

“I appreciate it,” Whitney said sadly. “It’s not possible to visit her yet.” Whitney didn’t want them seeing her in the condition she was in, deaf, unable to speak, violent with frustration much of the time. It wasn’t fair to Emma to let them come, and she wouldn’t recognize them.

“I understand,” he said, but he didn’t. How could he? How could anyone imagine the difference between what she had been barely more than a month before and what she was now? It was shocking. “You don’t think you’re being overprotective, do you?” he asked, clutching at a last ray of hope, and Whitney’s voice was raw with emotion when she answered.

“No, I’m not. I wish I were.”

“We could shoot her on a reduced schedule until she recovers fully,” he offered.

“She still has a long way to go,” Whitney said softly, and he hesitated for a moment.

“Tell me honestly, just between us and not officially, is she going to be okay? In the long run, I mean.” Whitney wasn’t sure what to answer, the truth was too terrifying.

“I don’t know. I want to think so. I don’t think anyone can tell yet. She could get there eventually, but she may not. The brain is a delicate mechanism, it’s impossible to say how far she can come, if at all.”

He had tears in his eyes when he nodded. “It’s going to be a tragedy if that little girl doesn’t recover fully. You do everything you can for her,” he said in a gruff voice. “We’re all rooting for her.”

“So am I,” Whitney promised him, “believe me, so am I.” She had never been a fan of Emma’s career, but she agreed with the producer, if Emma stayed like this, it would be a tragedy, he was right.

“I’ll call you when I know something,” he promised. “And let me know if there’s anything we can do for her. Anything she wants.”

A huge bunch of heart-shaped balloons arrived for her that afternoon with a giant card signed by the entire cast and crew, with photographs of them glued to the card. Emma loved the balloons, but she looked blank when Whitney pointed to the names and photographs on the card, as though she hadn’t seen any of them before. Whitney tied the bouquet to the foot of her bed, and Emma lay there, staring at them for hours. Whitney wondered what was going through her head but there was no way to know. There was no clue in her eyes.

Melvin Levy didn’t call Whitney back for three days. The meetings they’d had, trying to decide what to do about Emma, had been arduous and painful for everyone. Their final decision, with the network’s insistence, was to write her out of the show. They couldn’t wait any longer, and they bitterly regretted the outcome after everything she had gone through. Melvin was in tears over it when he called Whitney back. They were offering her a settlement that would have knocked Paige right out of her chair if she’d been alive to hear it. It would pay for Emma’s college education many times over and provide a comfortable life for her for a long time, while she recovered. They were offering it in gratitude for her outstanding performances on the show, and out of sympathy for all she’d lost.

“That’s incredibly generous,” Whitney said with tears in her eyes too. “My sister would have been deeply grateful.”

“I wish she were still alive,” he said sadly. “I wish they’d had their seatbelts on. I don’t know what happened or why they didn’t,” he added, moved to tears again.

“We’ll never know,” Whitney said quietly. She had her own issues about it and waves of anger at Paige. The thought haunted her constantly, every night. Why were neither of them wearing seatbelts?

“Emma hasn’t said anything to you about the accident? Does she remember it?” he asked, concerned.

“She doesn’t speak of it,” Whitney said simply, not willing to tell him that Emma couldn’t speak at all.

“I’ll send you the paperwork,” he said somberly. “Legal will draw it up in a day or two. I really hate to see them write her off the show. I put up a good argument, but maybe it’s better for her this way, to heal from the accident and start fresh when she’s ready to go back to work, on another show. We’ll miss her. Give her our love,” he said, and Whitney hung up and contemplated the vast amount they were going to pay Emma as compensation for losing her place on The Clan. Paige had managed Emma’s trust account from the show responsibly, and still had some of their parents’ money left, but it was nothing compared to what Emma would have now. She would have real security one day, and Whitney wondered if she would ever be well enough to use it. It made Whitney sad thinking about it, and she was profoundly moved by how generous they had been. Their main sponsor had even added a sizable bonus in gratitude and as a gesture of goodwill. Whitney was still mulling it over when Chad called her later that day to check in. He’d been good about it since he got back, and made an effort to call her. He said he was coming to L.A. for meetings and wanted to have lunch with Whitney.

“I can’t stay, but I’d love to see you before I fly back to San Francisco.” He sounded serious and sympathetic. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m doing what I have to. I’m still at the hospital with Emma every night.”

“When do you think she’ll be going home? She must be better by now.”

Whitney sighed deeply, she didn’t want to lie to him or raise false hopes. “Unfortunately, she’s not. This is a big deal. I don’t know when she’ll get better, or if she will.”

“I guess you won’t be able to keep her at home then, when she leaves the hospital. There must be rehabs for brain injured kids. She can probably go straight there.” He was speaking purely practically, without considering the emotional issues involved, and the fact that Emma was only nine years old and had lost her mother, had no father, and only her aunt now. “I was hoping we could catch a weekend in New York in a few weeks, since we got shortchanged on the boat this summer. How does that sound?”

   
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