Holding Silvan by Monica Wesolowska Page B

fitting into the arc of medical history; we simply have a feeling between us and are hoping we will have the language to express it.
    Sister C leads us there from Silvan’s room, David, David’s father Larry, and me. David wants Larry there as a third, calmer witness to the proceedings. Sister C has lost her soothing tone in favor of a lighthearted efficiency. As she leads us into the bowels of the building, she banters about the latest improvements to the hospital. She leads us down corridors and into elevators and eventually into a large, windowless room. Despite fluorescent lighting, the room recedes before us into gloom. In front of us: three empty chairs. Seated around the conference table beyond our chairs, maybe twenty people, though it seems like more. We recognize almost no one. There is Silvan’s sweet nurse Kerry, and an intern we know, Sister C, and of course, Dr. Z. The rest are a blur of suits and skirts. They are all silent, waiting.
    The director of the ethics committee is a familiar-looking, older woman with graying, tousled hair. That helps. She invites us
to sit. Friendly but businesslike, she introduces herself and asks everyone else at the table to introduce themselves one by one.
    David has a pen and paper with which he draws a diagram of the table, where each person sits, who each person is – Dr. Z, Nurse Kerry, a medical ethicist, legal counsel, a lay person whose child once died in this hospital. David is still convinced that this will be a grueling debate and that he will need to know who his allies are, who his enemies.
    I, on the other hand, am beginning to believe Dr. Z that this is for us. Considering my love for Silvan, it seems impossible that they will disagree. The night before, rounding the corner to our street after leaving Silvan at the hospital for the night, I felt my love for him rearing up inside of me on its hind legs like a bear with claws extended. No one can force me to make my baby suffer life.
    Introductions over, it is our turn.
    Despite his preparations, David is without a speech. He turns to me. “Do you want to start?” Yes! With that beast of love reared up inside me, I say, “No one in this room could want to feed my son as much as I do.” In my breasts, I feel stirring whatever milk remains.
    Now what? I think.
    I have to stop and catch my breath, blow my nose. On the other side of David, Larry realizes he will not be the calm witness after all. Like everyone else, he will later tell me, he is tearing up. But at the time, I’m unaware of other people’s emotions. I am aware only of my own words, that cocoon I need to weave around my son.
    Without a speech prepared, I tilt between instinct and intellect. At last, I go with intellect. “ What we don’t know, however, is if he could eat if he tried. He seems to be sucking, but we don’t know if he can coordinate sucking with swallowing and gagging. So it’s possible he could choke and die. Or, if he can’t protect his airway, that he’ll get pneumonia and die. Or that he’ll only be able to eat enough to prolong his starvation, which I
think would be worse. And somewhere down the road, even if he can learn to eat, we’ll have to make another decision. What if he gets pneumonia, or if his seizures return, or he stops breathing again? Where’s the line? When’s enough? So far he hasn’t even known the discomfort of eating, gagging, gas, poopy diapers. All he’s known in life is love. Since he came into the world through love, since he’s been surrounded by it, I’d like him to leave knowing nothing else but love…”
    Go on , I think, go on . I feel as though I’ve only made an introduction here, given the background. My voice has ended on an uptone, expecting more facts, more persuasive logic, something to come out, but then I hear my final word: love.
    It is not everything, of course. I feel deceptive for not having