They had dinner together in the kitchen with Eileen, and then Whitney bathed her in her big marble bathtub, and Emma splashed happily and chattered in her gibberish but didn’t seem to expect Whitney to respond. Then Whitney put her to bed. She had been tense for a good part of the day, fearing something would go wrong, but on the whole, she thought it had gone well. It was stressful having Emma home and being responsible for her on her own, but it also seemed more natural to be there.
Everything was peaceful until two in the morning when Whitney heard a bloodcurdling scream and rushed into the next bedroom, and found Emma hysterical with one of her night terrors. Nothing Whitney could do would console her. She just continued to scream with her eyes wide open, until she finally wore herself out two hours later, curled up in a ball, and went to sleep, and Whitney went back to her own room, and lay awake for a long time, wondering if life would ever be normal again, and if Emma would ever recover from the accident and the injury to her brain. She had no more answers to the question now that they were at home. All she could do was wait and hope.
Chapter 6
The next morning on her way to breakfast in her nightgown, Emma stopped in the living room and stood in front of the framed photograph of her mother again. She picked it up and walked into the kitchen with it, and sat it in front of her plate where she could look at it intently. She made no sound and didn’t look at Whitney. She just kept looking at the photograph of Paige in a bathing suit and a big sunhat on the beach at Malibu, at a house she’d rented two years before.
Emma ate her breakfast, sitting next to Whitney, and took the photograph with her when she left the kitchen and went back to her room. Eileen was doing the dishes to be helpful when Whitney went back upstairs to dress and checked on Emma in her bedroom. She was standing in the middle of the room, staring at the photograph, and suddenly her eyes flew wide and she looked at Whitney and pointed at the image with a desperate expression. Whitney knew instantly that she had remembered who the woman was, and now she wanted to know the answer to the question Whitney had feared for almost three months. She pointed to the photograph again and again and held it up to Whitney’s face, making grunting sounds and speaking in the language that had no meaning.
Whitney nodded to show her she had understood.
“I know, baby, I know…that’s your mom.” She knew that Emma couldn’t hear her, but the expression on Whitney’s face showed that she knew, as she put her arms around her and held her, wanting to give her whatever comfort she could, even without words.
Emma pulled away from her and put the photograph back in Whitney’s face, with a frantic look that expressed what she wanted to know. She remembered Paige now and wanted to know where she was. Whitney could feel her pain viscerally. Neither of them needed words to express what they felt. Emma was beginning to make small shrieking sounds, as Whitney nodded. Emma’s grunts grew louder and more insistent, and suddenly their eyes met and Whitney shook her head, which conveyed to Emma what she couldn’t say in words. She just kept shaking her head and holding her, and then she made a gesture as though saying that Paige was asleep. And as soon as she did, Emma let out an anguished scream. She had understood Whitney’s meaning and collapsed to the floor at her feet, rocking back and forth and clutching the photograph to her as she threw her head back and cried inconsolably. Whitney sank onto the floor with her, and this time Emma let her hold her as they rocked back and forth on the floor, and after a while, Emma just lay there crying silently, too exhausted to move. They were both crying, and Whitney felt as though her sister had just died all over again. Emma lay there for a long time, and didn’t attempt to move, still holding the photograph. Whitney was still with her when Eileen came to tell her that Dr. Turner was on the phone. She asked her to have him call her cellphone, which he did a minute later. She didn’t want to leave Emma alone, not now after she had just learned that her mother had not survived the accident.
“Good morning, how did last night go?” Bailey asked in a cheerful voice that seemed too loud in her ears, even though Emma couldn’t hear it. She was crooning softly at the photograph, and still lying on the floor.
“Okay, I guess,” Whitney responded. “She had a night terror. And I think we had a breakthrough just now, and not an easy one,” Whitney said as she kept an eye on Emma next to her.
“What happened?” He sounded concerned but not panicked, since Whitney sounded calm.
“She’s been walking around with her mother’s picture all morning. She brought it to the breakfast table and set it in front of her. I don’t think she recognized it, but there must have been something familiar about it, and all of a sudden, when we got back to her room, it clicked. She started looking frantic, and kept staring at me, and I understood, and shook my head a bunch of times and showed her by resting my head on my hands that Paige was sleeping. She let out a hideous scream, and she’s been crying for the last half hour. She’s better now. She’s lying next to me at my feet, holding the photograph. I think she understands now that Paige is dead.” It was the moment Whitney had dreaded since the accident, and now Emma knew what had happened, and that Paige was never coming back.
“That’s liable to unblock some other things. It’s a biggie. I’m relieved it happened now that you’re home. I think she was ready for it, which is why her mind let her recognize her mother. How does she seem now?”
“Exhausted. And to be honest, so am I.”
“I’d like to come by and observe her today for a while, if that’s all right with you. I want to see if any of her other behaviors have progressed as a result. This really is a major breakthrough for her, and we might be able to build on this in some way.” It made sense to Whitney as a clinician herself, but the moment had been agonizing and she felt drained.
“You can come over whenever you want,” she said, sounding tired.
“I’d like to see if we can unlock some other doors for her, though not too fast. She went over a big hurdle today. It sounds like you handled it perfectly.” He was always generous with his praise, and impressed by Whitney’s mothering skills, especially for a woman with no children, dealing with an extremely difficult situation.
“I don’t know how you figure that, I’m flying blind most of the time,” Whitney said humbly.
“You do a lot better than you realize. This is an almost textbook case of frontal lobe brain injury, with nearly every symptom it presents, and you’ve handled it perfectly every step of the way.” She had the advantage of being a doctor, but he could tell this came straight from the heart. In his opinion, you couldn’t fake good parenting.
“Well, she’s not talking yet, and she’s still speaking her own language. She can’t read and she can’t hear me, so I’m not sure what part of this you think I’m handling so well.”
“The night terrors, the aggressive outbursts. You just managed to convey to her that her mother is dead when her memory loosened up. You got her home in one piece. You’ve hung in for three months of an incredibly stressful situation with a child who isn’t your own. Give yourself some credit. No one said this was going to be easy. She’s come a long way and so have you.”
“I feel like she’s not even halfway there yet, there is so much progress she still needs to make.” Whitney sounded discouraged. It had been a hard morning.
“Give it time. When she starts speaking again, everything will be a lot easier.”
“How long do you think that will take?” Whitney wanted answers and there were none.
“No one knows. We just have to wait and see. If it’s okay with you, I’ll come by this afternoon.”
“That’s fine. I think we’re just going to stick around here today. I don’t want to traumatize her with another ride in the car.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” he agreed with her. “I’ll come by around three.” They hung up then and when Whitney looked down at Emma again, she was asleep on the floor, cradling the photograph of her mother in her arms, with Paige’s face in the image close to hers. It was a heart-rending sight, watching Emma there. She understood now what she had lost, and for the thousandth time, her aunt’s heart went out to her. Whitney had never loved anyone so much in her life, not even Paige when she was alive.
* * *
—
Emma was playing in her room when Bailey came by to see them that afternoon. He stopped and watched her from the doorway and Emma ignored him. He was a familiar sight by now, part of the furniture in the hospital, as far as she was concerned, and she didn’t seem surprised to see him at home, nor appear to care.
Whitney said she had been subdued all day after her discovery of the morning about her mother. She had gone all over the house, looking at other photographs, and found three more of her mother and had taken them to her room, and set them on the table next to her bed, where she could see them. It was obvious that she remembered who her mother was now. And she had pointed at Whitney when she found photographs of her and Whitney nodded. Emma had done very little speaking in her own language that afternoon. She had been mostly silent and had reorganized the photographs of Paige several times, until she had them the way she wanted them.
Whitney and Bailey were speaking quietly in the doorway to Emma’s room, when she turned to them with an intense look, as though she had something important to say to them. They stopped talking and waited while Emma pursed her lips together and pressed hard as though it took a superhuman effort, and with all the strength she had she let out a sound and she almost shouted the word “Mom,” and then repeated it again and again….“Mom…Mom!…Mom!…MOM! MOMMMM!” She couldn’t stop saying it once she started, and there were tears running down Whitney’s cheeks as she nodded and spoke to her.
“That’s right….That’s your mom….Mom,” Whitney said as Emma continued to repeat it, and Whitney looked at Bailey. “Oh my God, she spoke…she said a word.” He was beaming and Whitney laughed through her tears.