“Bitch!” she shouted as Whitney stared at her, and then Emma sat down on the bed, grinning, pleased with herself. “Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!” Emma repeated with determination, and Whitney started to laugh. They had just had another breakthrough, and any word was fine with her! She nodded at Emma, gave her a thumbs-up, and Emma gave her a high five. She had just remembered another word. It was another victory for their team. Whitney couldn’t wait to repeat it to Bailey the next day. At least they could share a good laugh. Emma looked at Whitney gratefully. She had saved her again.
Chapter 7
After Whitney found Eileen the nurse restraining Emma, with a hand over her mouth, and fired her on the spot, she contacted Brett, the younger nurse she was planning to use three days a week. She asked her if she would consider working a five-day week, and Whitney was going to take care of Emma herself without nursing help on the weekends. Brett was thrilled with the extra two days of work, didn’t mind living in, and on her first day with Emma, Whitney found them baking cookies, while Brett showed Emma how to apply the colored sprinkles. She didn’t need language to figure out how to do it, and Brett was patient as she demonstrated it to her, and then waved Emma toward the pans she had spread out on the kitchen counter. Emma looked very pleased with herself when they were finished. Brett had a million ideas for projects she wanted to do with her, and they were off to a good start. Whitney felt like she was running a school now, and in a way she was.
Whitney reported to Bailey about the incident with Eileen holding Emma down with a hand over her mouth, and firing her on the spot, and Emma managing to say another word, which happened to be “bitch.” Bailey laughed out loud.
“That’s very common with frontal lobe injuries,” he said to Whitney and had warned her about it before. “It disinhibits them, and we get some very interesting language from the adults, and even some kids, depending on what they’ve heard at home. We hear everything from racial slurs to propositions. Some of the old guys get really salty and hit on the nurses.”
“Emma was very pleased with herself after she said it. My sister was pretty liberal with her mouth around Emma. We may hear something worse if she really starts talking,” she said, and they both laughed. Then he thanked her for dinner the night before.
“That was fun. Let’s do it again. I’ll bring you food next time,” he offered, and she liked the feeling that they had become friends. The only adults she talked to these days were her patients, and she couldn’t let her hair down with them.
She enjoyed Amy Clarke’s visits too. She was a little more serious and intellectual than Bailey, who was warmer and more informal. He was still amazed that Whitney and her late sister’s mother was Elizabeth Winston. She had been a legend, an icon, and it seemed tragic that she had died so young, and of such an unfortunate illness. Now Paige had died young too. Bailey was impressed that Whitney was carrying all the burdens of Emma’s situation on her own shoulders. She was doing a great job with her niece, encouraging Emma’s recovery in every way she could. It was her mission in life now, the way Paige’s had been Emma’s TV career. Whitney just wanted to get Emma healthy again and her brain functioning normally, whatever it took.
She had begun reading about brain injuries in the medical journals she subscribed to and was becoming very knowledgeable on the subject. She had serious questions about what part of the damage was psychiatric from trauma and which component was purely physical. There were conflicting opinions on the subject among professionals in the field. Whitney had a theory that Emma’s inability to speak was as much due to the psychological trauma she’d been through as the damage to the frontal lobe of her brain. She wondered if Emma would eventually recall the accident itself, and if she did, would she then be able to speak again? She was convinced the two were related. But Emma still had no recollection of it. It led Whitney to believe that she must have lost consciousness very quickly when she hit her head, so it was anyone’s guess as to what she had seen, how traumatic it had been, and precisely what her silence was due to. Whitney was still trying to unlock that door, particularly after Emma had said her first two words. But Emma was still speaking gibberish all the time, as though it were a real language.
As soon as Emma appeared to be comfortable with Brett, Whitney decided to confront the task of emptying Paige’s house. She took three days off from work to go through everything Paige had left behind. She wasn’t a tidy housekeeper, and there were closets full of old albums, clippings about their mother, fan mail to Emma from the show, and letters from old friends, including several from Emma’s biological father, which Whitney thought she might want one day. She boxed up all the papers and sent them to a storage unit she had had since her father’s death. It was filled with boxes of her mother’s contracts, and those of some of his other famous clients. She sent Paige’s papers to the same place.
She packed up Paige’s clothes to send to a resale store, including some of their mother’s old furs, which were very glamorous and nothing Whitney would ever use. Paige had saved them to wear to award ceremonies she attended, and she intended to wear one of their mother’s old white mink coats if Emma was ever nominated for an Emmy, or even an Oscar one day. Paige was sentimental about that kind of thing, and Whitney was always more discreet and simply dressed. She didn’t have the grandiose pretensions of her younger sister, or the taste for reincarnating Old Hollywood. Paige wanted everyone to know she was Liz Winston’s daughter. Whitney usually tried to hide it, and avoided bringing attention to herself.
She had a local auction house come out and look at Paige’s furniture, none of which was of any value. She donated all the kitchen equipment, the pots and pans she didn’t need herself. Whitney didn’t like her sister’s taste in art, so she gave that to the auction house too, and she gave away Emma’s baby toys and equipment, like a broken high chair and the stroller Emma hadn’t used in years.
By the end of three days, the house had been stripped, and she had signed a listing agreement with a realtor. Paige had left no will, but Whitney was going to put the proceeds from the house and anything else in Emma’s trust account, along with the salary she had made, and the recent payment from the producers and the network when they’d bought her out of her contract for the show. Emma would have a very respectable amount in her account when she was old enough to have access to it, and hopefully the amount would have grown from the investments in her portfolio by then. The only things that Whitney kept of her sister’s were a sapphire bracelet and ring that had been their mother’s. She was going to give them to Emma one day.
As she looked around the house once it was empty, Whitney felt a wave of sadness wash over her. It was all such a waste. If Paige had paid attention and driven more carefully with her seatbelt on, and Emma’s in the backseat, none of this would have been necessary. She would have been alive to continue driving Emma’s career, whatever Whitney thought of it, and Emma wouldn’t have a brain injury that might hamper her forever and destroy the future Paige had wanted so badly for her. It made Whitney angry all over again as she drove away.
An industrial cleaning service was coming the next day, and then a stager to put in generic rented furniture to make the house sell better than it would have with Paige’s slightly battered mismatched pieces. Whitney had agreed on a price with the realtor. It was a cute house, with two bedrooms and a sunny kitchen that needed new appliances, but was otherwise okay. Paige had bought it when their father died, two years before she had Emma, who had lived there all nine years of her life. Whitney wondered if Emma would miss it, if she remembered it one day. But she didn’t want to wait to sell it. It made no sense to keep it for Emma to use later. She was better off having the money invested. Paige hadn’t been in love with the house either. It was just convenient, on a street at the edge of Beverly Hills, and had been a good buy at the time, since it was part of an old lady’s estate, whose children didn’t want it either. Paige had always talked about fixing it up, but she never did. She didn’t really care, and decorating wasn’t her thing.
When she got home, Whitney found Brett and Emma doing an art project on Whitney’s smoked glass dining room table. Emma was drawing tall trees with birds and butterflies in them, and children playing underneath. She seemed to be enjoying herself. Brett was very creative with her, and she was letting Emma use her iPad. Emma handled it hesitantly at first, and then seemed to be remembering how to use it, as Brett pointed to it and reminded her each step of the way. It gave Whitney an idea as she watched them, and she spoke to Brett as she put away the art supplies that she had brought with her.
“Why can’t we teach her sign language, since she can’t hear or speak? She could communicate with us that way.” Emma was still having trouble reading, and remembering how to do it. It seemed to take a great deal of concentration and sometimes she just looked baffled, put the iPad down, and walked away. Brett had used applications on the iPad for young children that were all pictures instead of text, including some fashion options that Emma had caught on to quickly. Both Whitney and Brett kept trying to find ways to reach out to Emma.
“Sign language might be a little too stimulating for her brain at first, but we can try it,” Brett said thoughtfully. “It would be fantastic if we could find a way for her to communicate with us.”
“There’s a school for the deaf. I’ll call them,” Whitney said and then went to take a bath, after clearing Paige’s house all day. She was still angry at her sister for being negligent with her daughter’s safety. It was so typical of Paige to do something stupid, and this time it had cost her her life and her daughter’s future, which made it the ultimate stupidity, and no one could undo it. At least not so far.
She felt better when she put on clean jeans and a T-shirt, and had dinner with Emma and Brett a little while later. She’d worked hard clearing Paige’s house, and it gave her a sense of closure. It reminded her that she still had to bury her ashes at her parents’ grave site at the cemetery. She hadn’t felt up to dealing with it yet, but she was planning to. Brett went to her room after she put Emma to bed, and Whitney went to bed herself with a book about children and traumatic brain injuries that Bailey had given her. The house was quiet and peaceful, and Whitney was surprised when Bailey called her. She told him she was reading the book and they agreed that it was excellent.