2022 WATTYS SHORTLISTED || After being forced into a marriage by her devoutly religious parents, Aspen's husband is diagnosed with a life-limiting illness, and she must find her purpose as well as fight feelings for her husband's nurse. || Aspen Wat...
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T W O D A Y S L A T E R
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"Listen, Joel, I know this isn't probably an amazing time, but I think we need to discuss... this," I pipe up a couple of days later.
It's been just over a week since his diagnosis, and it's been simmering between us like a boiling pot waiting for its pasta to be put in.
"Discuss what?"
"Well, you've been getting stronger, right? And well, now there's less stress on you and me, I think we need to discuss what we do about... Gabriel." I sigh after I say it. I regret it immediately, but it needs to be discussed.
"There's nothing to talk about, Aspen. He can't be tested until he's eighteen anyway. He is no longer our child, legally. We don't have that option. There is no discussion to be had."
The thing about Joel right now is that he's on a good run. He's been more like himself in the past couple of days with the new drug in his system: he's joking again, he's smiling, and he's demanding more food. There's even been a discussion of him maybe coming home soon.
But we both know this is a conversation that needs to be had, and this will kick in his bravado. He's usually a laid-back man, but on the topic of Huntington's Disease, Joel will always be the closed-off, controlled man.
His hand furls into a fist on the blanket, and his blue eyes ice over.
Whether we are his legal parents or not, Gabriel is our biological son. Our son who he could pass this disease on to, and now is the best time to have this conversation. Whether he likes it or not.
"Do you not think we owe it to him as his biological parents to at least try to tell them? Contact the social worker and tell her and then it's up to them to do what they legally think best?" I point out.
"No."
His lips purse and his jaw locks. He may be more like himself than before, but maybe I misjudged this.
"Joel—"
"Aspen, what good could come of it? Those poor adoptive parents live in fear for the next sixteen years, in case he has it. They can't do anything about it. It's not like he has an extra limb or an extra organ they could cut out and fix. This is something he won't know until he's eighteen and that's up to him, not anyone else," Joel snaps.
The white wall to my right has a smear on it. It's black; looks like a permanent marker. I wonder if that was a patient or a nurse or doctor that made it. I wonder if it was an accident.
The smear gets worse when the tears build up and up in my eyes, like a bath that's been forgotten about. They overflow and leak down my cheeks.
"My choice as his biological father is to leave it the hell—"
