Scott Turow - Personal injuries

"And in the middle of this shitstorm, my mother-in-law arrives," Robbie told Evon in the car. "She flew in from Florida for the weekend, and you know, you'd think family would make it better, but we just can't wait for her to leave. Betty walks through the door and she's crying and she doesn't stop for two days. She hangs on me and says, `Robert, Robert, I want to help, but this tears me up so bad, I just can't stand to see it.' She's that kind. If she's not lookin, it'll go away. Christ."

When they reached the house, Robbie turned to Evon.

"Just come inside for one second, will you? Tell her the voice box sounds good. Do you mind? Betty went to pieces every time Rainey tried to talk to her."

Evon was less frightened than last time. But the sense of the breach between this house and the rest of the world remained appalling. Once over the threshold, you dived off the edge of a cliff. Far above, in the daylight, the healthy danced to the tune of their small delights, but down here, amid darkness and sewer smells, the base, dogged game of survival was being played out with every breath its own struggle.

"Touch her," Robbie whispered before they entered the room. "She likes to be touched. Take her hand when you say hi."

At the thought, Evon felt a stricken quiver. She was already worried that her presence might provoke another sad scene between Robbie and his wife, but he had plunged around the corner into the equipment-crowded room where Rainey was attended by her caregiver.

"Say hello, boys and girls." He kissed his wife. He was a song-and-dance man now, bright as a new penny.

These days, Rainey slept in a water bed, where she rested more comfortably. Beside it roosted a mess of pill bottles-antispasmodics, sleep aids-and an electric Barcalounger that she used as a day chair. She looked drained among her bedcovers, which remained oddly undisturbed over her. Evon approached slowly and gripped Rainey's cold hand. There was a desiccated feel to the skin. The flesh had almost no tone; she could squeeze to the bones amid the softness.

"How. Are. You?" said the boy robot who was Rainey Feaver now.

Evon carried on. What a great improvement! Things would be so much easier. But there was no mistaking what had gone on here over the weekend, and it was neither machinery nor even the appearance of Rainey's inept mother that had caused the disruption. The end was beginning. When Evon had met Rainey, less than three months ago, she could not imagine how a human being could get any worse, but Lorraine had. You could somehow see vitality withdrawing from this body, as from a fallen leaf. Bobbie's increasingly frank remarks had given Evon an intimation of the hugeness of what lay ahead. Rainey's upper body was losing strength with alarming speed. She had only three fingers that moved on her left hand. Far worse, the muscles that supported her breathing would soon no longer function.

Some ALS patients let go at that point. But ventilation was an option. A machine could inflate Rainey's lungs for her; there was even a portable device that could be carried on her wheelchair so she would not be immobilized. But it remained a momentous decision. Once Rainey was ventilated, there was no logical stopping point. She could go on for quite some time, awaiting the opportunistic infection that eventually claimed most ventilated patients, living beyond the time when even the remotest voluntary impulses could stir her body. ALS patients had been known to end up entirely inert, with gauze patches over their unblinking eyes and attendants applying wetting solution every five minutes, to prevent the agony that would result if the tender membranes of the cornea became air-dried. These people existed-seeing, smelling, hearing, suffering-with no means of communication of any kind.

Rainey and Robbie had agreed to take it a step at a time. He had asked her to live; he wanted her life to continue and said so plainly, so emphatically that no one could imagine it as some ultimate chivalry meant to remove from her the burden of clinging selfishly to life. At some point soon she would have to decide whether she was willing to oblige him.

For the present, Robbie characteristically accentuated the positive.

"She can talk on the phone. She hasn't been able to talk the phone for more than a month. Who'd you call?" "Tired," the voice answered. "Too. Tired. My Mother. Wore Me Out."

"Yeah," Robbie said.

They spoke about the spring, now arriving. Evon leaned Rainey's way to take in the apple tree visible from her window, a pillowy mass of pinkish blooms. Yet Rainey was any exhausted. and even after a few minutes. Evon felt she'd overstayed. Rainey lifted the fingers on the one hand that freely moved as a goodbye.

"I'm going to show Evon out. Then we can do your massage, and maybe get through Act IV." On the winding stairs, Robbie explained that he rubbed down Rainey every night as a matter of ritual,-then read to her, sometimes for hours. "When I pick, I like plays. You know. I get to ham it up. Read all the parts. Right now, we're nearly done with A Midsummer Night's Dream. Then she'll choose something."

"Isn't that Shakespeare?" asked Evon.

"You don't think there's room for Shakespeare in my common little mind?"

"I didn't mean that."

"Yes you did. Hey, listen, we've done all the classic comedies in the last year. Tartuffe. The Importance of Being Earnest. The Man Who Came to Dinner. We're having a great time. You know, sometimes she likes a break, so I'll read her a novel. She likes all the law guys." He showed her the next one they'd take up, Mitigating Circumstances, which was on a table downstairs. His mother-in-law, with her fatal touch, had brought a number of books that neither Rainey nor he much cared for, self-help guides, even a couple of picture books of far-off places written for juveniles.

"I just wish she wasn't such a dip. I mean, I like Betty. Not a mean bone in her body. Just this poor girl from the South End who thought she'd like the fast life and married this complete loser who happens to be Lorraine's father. Now, this guy. J, e, r, k. His picture's in the dictionary next to the word. Really. He's got a boat. Supposedly, he sells real estate. But his whole life is this fucking boat. The fish he caught, the dames he screwed there, the six days straight he was drunk at sea. If it doesn't happen on water, it doesn't count with him.

"Anyway, he marries Betty cause it's the kind of girl his mom wanted him to bring home. And then, you know, he drinks. Well, she drinks, too. They drink together. Picture the house: it reeks of cigarette smoke and spilled beer. They have the kid. And he says, This ain't for me. Betty eventually remarries. Which is good. But Lorraine sort of gets lost in the shuffle. She's living with three other kids, but the stepdad doesn't like to ante up for anything. He wants Neptune to come ashore and pay a bill now and then. So there's a lot of tension and crap. I don't know. Betty did her best. She says she did, anyway. Isn't that what they always say? Not that it did much for her daughter.

"Rainey was actually sort of in trouble when I met her," Robbie said. They had reached the foyer. There was an enormous chandelier above the circular stairs, five feet across, with a million baubles. The floor was Carrara marble, the walls were mirrored. The affected grandeur seemed almost painful at the moment, in its sheer inadequacy to make any real difference.

"I mean, I didn't know it at first. It was back in the days. I'm living it up on the Street of Dreams. Morty's been married since childhood and I'm like, They'll never catch me. Ho, ho, ho. I dig the routine. I work my ass off. I try cases. Then I go down there and get slightly sloshed every night and, the general trend, laid. It's A-OK. I see one girl. I see another girl. I'm thirty-four or what, and you can't say I've really been steady with anybody, not more than three or four months' worth, since junior high.