Melvin Levy called Whitney, wanting to set up a photo op and even an interview with Emma, which was unimaginable in the condition she was in. Whitney didn’t want to admit the details to him of how damaged she was, but said that an interview was unthinkable. Emma was out of the coma, but she bore no resemblance to the child she had been before the accident. They would have been terrified if they’d seen her, and there was no way she could return to the show in her current state, which Whitney chose not to explain to him. She didn’t want it appearing on the news that Emma Watts was now severely brain damaged, possibly forever. She didn’t want anyone saying that about her, and it was too soon to know how much of the damage would last, and for how long.
The two specialists who came to see her, Drs. Turner and Clarke, were slightly older than Whitney, serious clinicians who shared a practice. They were gentle and sympathetic and explained the effects of the accident in detail. As the referring neurologist had said, Whitney found Bailey Turner warm and easy to talk to, Amy Clarke more matter of fact, but both were intelligent, kind, and helpful. Bailey Turner was more optimistic and hopeful, and particularly nice to Whitney. They reassured her that everything Emma was experiencing was normal, even if upsetting. Whitney’s big question was how long it was likely to stay that way, and if Emma would eventually recover normal speech and hearing. There were no answers to those questions. Only time would tell, Emma was constantly frustrated when no one understood her, and often would throw things and have tantrums as a result.
“Can we teach her to speak again?” Whitney asked Dr. Turner after his initial evaluation. She was looking desperate, and he tried to reassure her. He was impressed by her devotion to her niece.
“Yes, but not this soon. We need to give her brain a chance to settle down, before we begin stimulating it. If we start too soon, we’ll only confuse her more.” He was a smart, sensible person with a kind manner. Nothing presenting in the case surprised him or indicated to him that Emma could not improve over time. How much time no one knew. He tried to break the news as gently as he could, while Whitney ignored how attractive he was. She couldn’t think about that now. He was a fellow physician and she needed his help. He was tall and athletic looking, with dark brown eyes and hair as dark as hers. Amy Clarke was a pretty, petite blonde.
“Do you think she can read?” Whitney wanted to know. They tried some experiments with paper and pen, and Emma had no idea what they were doing. Another eye exam confirmed that she had blurred vision, and she clearly had no memory of how to read or what the letters were. It was obvious that she couldn’t hear them. Emma had returned to the land of the living, but she had come back in a hermetically sealed world which included no language anyone but Emma herself understood, no ability to hear them or read simple phrases, and she didn’t recognize Whitney. Her mind was a slate that had been wiped clean and everything familiar to her was gone. It left Whitney feeling panicked and heartbroken for her. If it stayed that way, it would be a tragedy. The bright, bold, clever, brilliant little precocious child who had dazzled everyone who met her and had been the star of a TV show no longer existed. In her place was one very frightened, lonely, isolated, brain-damaged little girl.
Whitney cried when she told Chad about it, when he called again. He was back in San Francisco by then, and he felt desperately sorry for both of them, the woman he knew and the little girl who was trapped in a silent world without words or language or the ability to hear. He offered to come to L.A. to spend a weekend with her, and Whitney explained to him that much as she’d like that, she had no time to see him right now. She couldn’t leave Emma alone for a minute. Emma was the limit of her world. Whitney hadn’t gone back to work yet, and she lived in a sea of CT scans, MRIs, and EEGs and felt like she was drowning. She had no time for anything else. Whatever Paige had done that night had cost her her life, and nearly Emma’s, and now Whitney’s life was altered forever. She hated her sister for it at times and cried for her at others. Her own emotions seemed as confused as Emma’s, and as conflicted.
She wondered if she and Chad would ever see each other again, and he wondered the same thing as he hung up after their call. She had become exactly what they both knew he couldn’t handle and didn’t want, a woman with deep family attachments and obligations. She spent all her time at the hospital, in the private room they had moved Emma to from the ICU. It felt like a prison cell. Whitney felt like she was trapped on a desert island, and it looked like she and Emma were going to be there forever. It was too soon for her to go home, and she wasn’t ready for rehab.
It was terrifying, as they sat in Emma’s room, staring at each other in silence, tears rolling down their cheeks, as nurses came and went to check on her. Whitney went to Emma and put her arms around her, trying to comfort her, and Emma slapped Whitney across the face as hard as she could with a look of fury in her eyes. It was the only thing she knew to do. The Emma Whitney knew was gone now, and the one that was left was trapped in lonely isolation in a silent world. Whitney’s cheek was still stinging as she left the room to go for a walk and get some air, while a nurse stayed with Emma. When she came back, they’d try again until some form of communication finally got through. It was all Whitney could do, as tears of frustration rolled down her cheeks again. The future was looking very bleak.
Emma turned her face to the wall and cried with a look of rage on her face. The nurses warned Whitney that Emma could become dangerous as a result of the brain injury. That was typical from frontal lobe damage too. They said that psychotic behaviors were normal, as a result of losing her inhibitions from the injury. No part of the original Emma remained from before the accident. A stranger had taken her place. Whitney had to make the best of it, no matter how hard, upsetting, and frightening it was. There was no way she could explain it to Chad. She knew he wouldn’t want to hear it. She had never felt so alone in her life.
Chapter 4
Four weeks after the accident, on the date Whitney had been planning to return anyway, it was a relief when she went back to her practice. The big difference was that she only went back part-time. She resumed seeing her most seriously ill patients and her long-term ones, but she had to ask the psychiatrist who had taken over her practice in August to continue seeing the others. She didn’t want to leave Emma for too many hours, and tried to be back at the hospital by two P.M. every day. She was also acutely aware that they couldn’t leave Emma in a hospital forever once her body recovered, which it hadn’t fully yet.
Whitney had to refuse to take any new patients for the time being. She was trying to reduce her time in the office by half and spend the rest of it with Emma. She spent hours with her every day and was still sleeping with her at night, or lying awake and worrying about her. Whitney hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in just over a month, since the accident.
Emma’s private room was still adjacent to the ICU, but the hospital neurologist in charge of her case reminded Whitney that they would have to make other arrangements for her eventually. The physical damage from the accident was severe, but none of it was life threatening now except for the occasional deregulation of her heart, which was also less acute. What they were left with was the evidence of the brain injury, which hadn’t abated yet, the lack of speech, the obvious memory lapses which were still huge, her inability to hear or communicate. Her arm was healing, the bruises on her face were gone, but her brain was continuing to refuse to function normally. Her reactions were still those of a three-year-old, and not a warm cuddly one. Emma was angry, aggressive, and acting out most of the time. She had rages and tantrums, tried to hurt people, and had knocked several of the nurses down. In her madness, she was strong, unusually so for her size, and it sometimes took two adults to control her.
“Do you think it’s frustration from not being able to speak that leads to her outbursts?” Whitney asked Bailey Turner when he dropped by. He was her chief interpreter of what they were seeing, most of which was a mystery to Whitney. He spent hours explaining it all to her, with endless patience. He said most of Emma’s violent reactions were a result of the frontal lobe damage she had sustained, and typical of her injury too. It made caring for Emma that much more difficult, and she had injured Whitney several times. Whitney had bruises on her face and cuts and scratches on her hands and arms from the many times Emma had hit her with her fists or assaulted her with an object near at hand. She hit Whitney whenever she could, and sometimes drew blood. Whitney was patient with her but it was upsetting and disheartening. She lashed out at the nurses too and was a handful to manage. It made the prospect of taking her home frightening. Whitney wasn’t sure how she would manage and was in no rush to try. She was afraid to be alone with her. The ICU nurses were there to help her, but once home alone with her, Whitney knew that Emma could injure her aunt, or herself. Whitney was no match for the tiny elfin child when she was acting out and at her worst.
“You can’t do it alone,” Bailey Turner said quietly. He was the constant deliverer of bad news with as much grace and compassion as he could muster. His work partner, Amy Clarke, tended to be harsher and more blunt, although Whitney liked her too. Amy never sugarcoated anything, and often told Whitney the harsh truth, more so than Bailey, who had a softer heart and liked Whitney.
They were using three different kinds of sedation to calm Emma in the hospital, but they didn’t want to turn her into a zombie either, at home or in the ICU, and the right dosage was still in question. “You can’t keep her in the hospital forever either. This isn’t a holding tank for brain injured kids. You could put her in a rehab for a while,” Bailey said, watching the despair in Whitney’s eyes. She wanted to be there for Emma, but there was also only so much she could do, and some days, despite her own experience as a physician, Whitney was overwhelmed. Putting her in a rehab facility felt like a defeat to Whitney and there was always the risk of exposure to the press.
Bailey Turner was trying to help Whitney devise a living plan that would work for her, in their circumstances. She needed to be able to keep Emma safe if she was going to bring her home, and the violence she was demonstrating was making the future even more complicated. “We can continue to sedate her to a moderate degree when she goes home, but you don’t want her sleeping all the time either. Let’s try to stabilize her further before we talk about her going home,” Bailey suggested and Whitney nodded, slightly relieved at the reprieve, and wondering when that would be. So far, there was no immediate plan for her to leave the hospital, and she still had many obstacles to overcome before she did, things like hearing and speech. But what if all her faculties never returned? Emma was nine years old now and a lot smaller than Whitney, but what would happen at twelve and fourteen and eighteen, when her violent outbursts, if she was still having them, would pose a real threat?