There was a flood of articles online and in the press about her, talking about her accident in real life and how much she would be missed. The paperwork had come from the producers of the show by then along with the huge severance settlement that Whitney put into a trust account for her and invested with a major brokerage firm. It would give her a real nest egg one day, which might be useful if she could never work again, even as an adult, which was possible. There was no way to know how far her recovery would go.
* * *
—
By mid-September, Emma had been in the hospital for about six weeks. Her improvements had been minimal so far, and her progress was slow. She was steady on her legs, and her motor skills had improved. But her speech and hearing had gone nowhere. Her frustration over her inability to communicate seemed to be getting worse, and led to more violence against Whitney and the nurses. She began to have night terrors, which led her to scream for hours in the middle of the night, and all Whitney could do to calm her was hold her tightly in her arms and wait until they passed. It was impossible to soothe or reason with her when she had them. Whitney wondered if Emma was reliving the accident, or pining for her mother, and Emma had no way to ask questions about Paige in a language all her own. Whitney still hadn’t told her that Paige was dead. It seemed too cruel to do so when she couldn’t talk about it, or express anything she felt. Emma was trapped in a silent tomb of her own.
Whitney hadn’t heard from Chad again after their lunch at La Scala. She had no regrets about the choice she’d made and had lost all respect and affection for him, which made losing him easier, even after five years. He didn’t seem to be missing her either. The only support she was getting was from the two neurologists, Bailey Turner and Amy Clarke, who were guiding her through the difficult process of helping Emma through her recovery from the accident. She still showed marked effects from her frontal lobe injury, all of which affected her ability to communicate. And with impaired vision, she seemed unable to read and focus on the books they showed her, even those for a much younger child. There were so many things she could no longer do that used to be second nature to her. The contrast between then and now was shocking and very sad.
And at the end of September, the neurologist who had taken care of her at Cedars since the accident was suggesting to Whitney that it was time to put Emma in a rehab facility or take her home. The rest of the progress she still had to make would take months or even years, and she couldn’t stay in the hospital for the remainder of her recovery. Whitney discussed it with Bailey when he came to check on Emma one afternoon. He stopped by almost daily, and it was comforting when he appeared. Even Emma seemed to brighten a little when she saw him.
“How am I going to manage her at home?” Whitney asked him in the hallway when they stepped out of the room. She was feeling breathless at the prospect. Sometimes waves of panic washed over her at what she would be facing on her own.
“You don’t have to take her home,” he said gently. He was three years older than Whitney, and had gone to the same medical school at UCLA. He respected Whitney’s courage and her sensible decisions. He had sent her a patient for a psychiatric evaluation a few weeks before, and had been impressed by her report. She was managing to do her work effectively despite the strain she was under in her personal life. “You could put Emma in a facility. There’s one I would recommend for a child her age, although I’ll admit it’s not ideal. She might make better progress at home, with individual therapists and personal care, but she’s not your daughter, and from what you’ve said, you’re not set up for kids at your house.”
“She can’t hear me, she hasn’t regained her language skills yet, she has night terrors, and she gets violent when she can’t communicate. I have no one to take care of her when I go to work. It’s a lot to take on.” Whitney expressed her concerns to him. It had been much easier having her in the ICU at Cedars.
“I understand.” He smiled at Whitney to reassure her. “No one’s pushing her out the door. The medical staff just think that they’ve done as much as they can for her here, and the rest needs to happen at home if she’s going to make progress, which isn’t a sure thing by any means. For one thing, you’d have to hire experienced nurses to take care of her. Two or three nurses, so they can have time off. I don’t think you should try to take care of her on your own. And besides, you have your practice.” He had been honest with her so far, and she was grateful for it. She liked the way he related to Emma. His associate, Amy, was better with adults, as Whitney had been told from the first. But Whitney liked talking to her more clinically. She liked them both. Bailey was more casual and warmer. “Why don’t you start by interviewing some nurses through an agency, and see what turns up?” It seemed a sensible approach, and she called an agency he recommended the next day.
They sent six women to Whitney’s office, and she hated them all. Even though all of them had worked in homes with brain injured patients, mostly from strokes, none had experience with pediatric trauma patients, and they seemed dreary and too old. In some ways, dealing with Emma now was like taking care of a toddler, with her limited skills. She was not the easy, sunny child she had been only two months before, able to entertain herself, almost like a small adult. She had the physical independence of a nine-year-old, and the brain of a much younger child since the accident, and she might act like a three-year-old forever, even once she was an adult. Most of the time, trying to figure out how to deal with her, Whitney felt like she was flying blind, straight into a wall.
The agency sent four more candidates the following week, two of whom seemed like reasonable possibilities when she discussed them with Bailey. One was an older woman who had taken care of a brain injured young woman for seven years until her family finally institutionalized her when she got too aggressive in her late twenties. She sounded enthusiastic about working with Emma. And the other candidate who appealed to Whitney was four years out of nursing school, and had worked with learning-delayed children at a residential facility for two years, and she had an upbeat positive outlook that Whitney liked. She was unfazed by Whitney’s description of Emma’s violent spells when no one could understand the language she was speaking.
Whitney was still debating about hiring both of them, when she went to the ICU to visit Emma one afternoon and discovered a new nurse on the floor posing for a selfie with her, to show her friends. Her excuse to Whitney when she walked in on her was that she and her mother were fans of the show Emma had been on, and she was taking the photo for her. But taking a selfie with her violated the confidentiality of Emma’s situation as a patient, victimizing her in Whitney’s opinion, or exploiting her helpless situation, and was exactly what Whitney wanted to avoid. She reported the incident to the head of the ICU immediately, and that night Whitney realized that it was time to go home, no matter how much it scared her or how unprepared she was. This was all new territory for her.
They had been at the hospital for long enough, and it served no therapeutic purpose now to keep her there. Emma needed a home environment. She needed to get out, live a more normal life, and get some air. The next day, Whitney hired both of the nurses she had liked and spent the weekend trying to figure out how to adapt her house for Emma. She decided to turn her guest room into a bedroom for her, and went to Paige’s house to decide what to bring over. There were books she could no longer read and toys and games she couldn’t play with, like Clue and Monopoly, her chess set, and a backgammon game she’d been learning to play and was good at before. She had dozens of dolls lined up on a shelf. There were photographs of her with the cast of the show and her mother, some posters that Whitney had gotten her, of favorite movie stars and from other shows.
Whitney packed as much of it as she could in boxes and drove it to her house, along with the bedspread from Emma’s bed. She went to IKEA to buy a bookcase and by Sunday night, Emma had a room waiting for her at Whitney’s house. She had briefly considered moving into Paige’s home, for Emma. But she realized that it was Emma’s past and her aunt’s house was her future. So she packed Emma’s favorite possessions and prepared to start a new life with her at her own home. It was where they lived now.
Whitney realized too that she had a job to do at Paige’s. She needed to get rid of her sister’s furniture and clothes, and put the house on the market. She hadn’t had time to deal with it since July, but she knew that it was time. There was no point keeping the house. Even if Emma recovered, she couldn’t live alone for many, many years. Whitney was giving her a home.
Whitney had a meeting with a hospital neurologist and Bailey to decide how to manage Emma’s care at home, and when to make the move. They agreed that the following weekend would be as good a time as any, and for the rest of the week, Whitney lay awake next to Emma every night in her room near the ICU, panicked about how it would go.
Eileen, the older, more experienced nurse, was going to start them off. She had agreed to work four days a week as a live-in. She said she didn’t mind twenty-four-hour duty. And Whitney would be there to help at night. Brett, the younger nurse, would work for three days a week, starting on Friday mornings, and through the weekend. She already had plans about where she was going to take Emma during her days with her, the park, the zoo. They were going to do art projects. And Whitney had bought a new station wagon so the nurses could drive her places if Emma was comfortable going with them and didn’t act out in public, which remained to be seen. So far, she hadn’t ventured past the safe confines of the ICU, and Whitney didn’t want them taking Emma anywhere without her at first, until she saw how they interacted with her, and how Emma responded to them. She still had flare-ups of violent behavior whenever she was frustrated.
Whitney had consulted with Bailey about photographs she had of Paige around the house. She didn’t want to upset Emma, but they also agreed that it might be helpful to jog her memory, and see how she reacted to the images of her mother. At some point, Whitney still had to tackle the terrible news of Paige’s death, whenever Emma was ready for it. Bailey thought it was a good idea to leave the photographs in place. Emma’s new bedroom at her aunt’s house was filled with familiar things, which might jog her memory as well. Whitney wanted her to feel at home, and had filled her bedroom with her favorite things.