Chapter Seventeen #2
He looked away from the robot to meet my eyes again.
His were full. Mine too. “Maybe it would have. She stopped … The side effects were … It made her so sick, so much sicker, and we thought … We didn’t know what to think.
We didn’t know. How could we? But we thought, why take a drug to get well that makes you sicker?
We thought, why waste whatever time she had?
Whatever time we had. She dropped out of the trial so at least we could go sit on a bench and watch kids trick-or-treat and talk about the costumes we’d make for ours when we had them, when she got better. It wasn’t much but …”
“But it was a lot.” I knew. I remembered.
Those feints at normalcy in the middle of the misery and the chaos and the unknown were a balm.
On good days, when I could, Roger and I would go to the grocery store.
Pretend that I had an appetite. Or that he did.
Pretend I was using the shopping cart to hold food rather than as a walker.
Those were full days, brimming. Not like busy; like complete.
“Not enough,” he said.
“It’s never enough.”
“Maybe not, but some not enough is more than others. It’s not fair.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not.”
“We guessed wrong,” he whispered.
“You did the best you could with the information you had at—”
“No. No!” He raised his voice. “Sometimes you guess wrong. Sure, fine. The queue that looks shortest is actually the slowest one. The shoes that seemed comfortable in the shop rub blisters when you get them home. Maybe even bigger things than that are still okay. You take a job because you like the principal, and she gets promoted to the district over the summer. You recarpet the whole house then find you’re allergic to the fibers.
But this? We guessed what the drugs might do wasn’t worth the side effects they were definitely causing.
We guessed it wasn’t going to buy her enough time to make it worth ruining the time she had.
But we were wrong. We guessed wrong. And it cost us—it cost her—everything. ”
“You didn’t guess wrong. You guessed right. You heard Dr. Kim. They killed the drug. It didn’t work. It wasn’t safe.”
“No! Don’t you get it? We’re why they think that.
They killed it because of us. Because of people like us who said the side effects were too terrible.
Which means her death is on my head. But so are so many other people’s.
If we hadn’t complained, maybe they’d have let the trial go ahead, maybe they’d have put the drug on the market. ”
“So you spared patients that pain.”
“Or I robbed them of time. More time.”
“It’s not worth it.”
“Easy for you to say. It saved your life.”
“Maybe.”
“Are you telling me you’re dead?” Sarcastic but not joking. “Magic? A figment of my imagination? Because that at least would explain some things.”
The streetlights ticked on, and the little ghosts started heading home, to be replaced by bigger ones.
“I’m saying who knows what worked for me and didn’t for Louisa.
Most people who had what we had didn’t make it back then.
Lots still don’t. Maybe it was something I did that she didn’t or something she did that I didn’t.
But probably it was nothing but luck, good luck and bad luck, neither earned, neither deserved, just the way it is. ”
“I don’t want to live in that world,” he said.
“No one does. It’s not like there’s a choice.”
“Quite.” He wiped his eyes. “That’s what I was trying to say at supper.”
“What do you mean?”
“Protocol 183 stole my love.”
“It’s awful.” I tried to take his hand, but he pulled it away.
“But it also saved my love. It did both. At the same time, though I didn’t know it for forty years.”
I felt this in my chest.
“This”—he searched and landed on—“execrable drug destroys life—destroys lives—but apparently it also creates them. How can we forsake that?”
“Forsake?”
“Perhaps this Blankman is overstating the risks. Perhaps he’s fabricating them wholesale even.
But what if he’s not? It may be he hasn’t a clue what he’s on about, but surely his medical experience and expertise far exceeds Maisie and Dot’s or Darcy and Alice’s or yours and mine.
I don’t know, and nor do you, but I do know this: I won’t guess.
Not again. This, right here, this is what you chose and we didn’t.
This is the side effect that came with more life: more life.
This is why you’re still here and she’s not. This is why.”
I took a shaking breath, let it out slowly. “I’m sorry for Louisa, and I’m sorry for you. It’s okay to wish it had gone the other way, that she was the one who was saved.” Instead of me, I didn’t add. “I don’t begrudge you that, but—”
“That’s not what I’m saying. It’s not true. And it’s certainly not my point.”
“What is your point?”
“You chose this. This is what you chose forty years ago. It’s been waiting all this time. You chose life. Here it is.”
“I was lucky. And I’m grateful. But not dying doesn’t mean my life is in arrears.”
“I’m not saying you owe anyone. I’m saying choosing anything other than life will kill you. Of course it will. That’s what life means.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
He looked at me. Sad? Pitying? Sorry? All of those, maybe. “You already took your chances. You took your chances, and you won. You can’t press that luck. You gambled, and you won the biggest prize there is. You can’t throw it away on a procedure your doctor says isn’t safe. You can’t. I can’t.”
“I think Maisie and Dot are right,” I tried to say lightly. “Dr. Blankman’s just a little out of touch. It’s not—”
But he didn’t let me finish. “I can’t choose death again, not knowing what I know now, not living what I’ve lived. I choose life.”
“It’s not your choice.”
“Maybe not,” said Moth. “But maybe it’s not yours either.”