‘What’s happening?’ Lydia asked, her eyes darting between Anita and the consultant.
‘As I was saying to Anita,’ the consultant began, ‘it’s very hard to give updates or advice in these situations. You want an indication as to whether Theo is going to wake up and when, but it’s really impossible to say.’
Lydia braced herself for a more lengthy discourse and this time Anita reached out and clutched her hand. Lydia let her do it, an unspoken gesture that they were in this together.
‘Every brain is different,’ the consultant continued. He went on to explain the length of time patients may spend in a coma, signs they were coming out of it, and what the machines, wires and bleeping were doing for Theo as he lay there. Anita asked about outcomes: what happened when the patient came out of a coma? Would they be the same person? Would they remember what had happened? Would they ever walk, talk, sing, laugh, and do everything else again as they’d done before?
The consultant took the questions in his stride. He was probably used to all this, not like them. ‘Theo’s operation went well and we fixed the ruptured blood vessel in his brain. But the truth is, I could repeat statistics to you, I could give examples of best-case scenarios and worst-case scenarios, but Theo is his own person. His case is his case, we can’t reliably measure it against others.’
He took a deep breath, and then he hit them with it.
‘After a brain injury a person may never be the same again.’
Anita pulled a tissue from the pocket of her cardigan and blew her nose loudly, sniffed. Lydia couldn’t move, she couldn’t take in what this doctor was saying. Theo was alive, looked for all intents and purposes to be sleeping, how could henotever be the man he was before?
The consultant’s voice softened again. ‘As time goes on we need to think about possible outcomes and what they would mean for Theo.’
Lydia found her voice. ‘What do you mean exactly?’
‘I know this is a very difficult question, for both of you.’ Lydia and Anita looked at him. ‘But I have to ask. Has Theo made a living will?’
Anita didn’t seem to have any idea what he was on about. As far as she was concerned it was yet another piece of jargon to be thrown at them.
The consultant went on. ‘Or has he appointed anyone to make decisions on his behalf? In the event he was ever in this kind of situation.’ His focus was more on Lydia, she noticed, perhaps because she was Theo’s generation, or maybe because he knew how Anita was about to react.
Lydia had a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach, because a couple of years ago she and Theo had watched a documentary about an individual’s right to die. Disturbing in its content and a reminder of a journalistic article she’d once had to write about euthanasia, Lydia hadn’t wanted to watch it. She was the glass half-full type, the eternal optimist in their household. Theo was a realist and frequently said to her, as he had that night when she’d walked away to pour a large glass of wine in the kitchen, ‘Just because you’re not watching doesn’t mean it’s not happening.’ She’d gone back to the lounge room and curled up next to him on the sofa, handing him one of the two glasses of wine she was carrying.
‘It’s real life, these things happen,’ he’d said matter-of-factly.
‘I know, but I prefer not to watch it or think about it. I know it happens, but where you’ll switch the television off and forget about it in five minutes, I’ll most likely dream about these people and lay awake night after night thinking about what I’ve seen.’
Lydia endured the last fifteen minutes of the program, which featured a man who’d woken from a coma after years and years and had eventually gone home, where he was cared for by his parents. He was confined to a bed, had minimal speech and his every need was tended to by those who loved him. It broke Lydia’s heart to see the pictures of the man he’d been before and the man he was afterwards.
Lydia took possession of the remote control and flicked over toEscape to the Country. ‘Oh, Cornwall…this is more like it…what a gorgeous cottage.’
‘Lydia…’ Theo nudged her.
‘I’m not turning it over.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘But…’
He looked her in the eye and said, ‘Promise me, if anything like that ever happens to me, you’ll pull the plug.’
‘You sicko.’
‘I mean it. I’m not trying to be funny. I wouldn’t want to live like that, not ever. I wouldn’t want you, my family or anyone else having to look after me. It’s an existence, not a life.’
‘Theo, I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Some people put it in their will. It’s called a living will.’
She raised a quizzical eyebrow.
He laughed. ‘So you really can switch off when you’re not interested in a program.’
‘Sure can.’
