THIRTY-SEVEN

Dave looked very uncomfortable. “I should have told you right away.”

“Told me what?”

He told me to sit down. “Emma first joined the mission six months ago. She had just found out that her leukemia had returned after a year in remission. The prognosis was not good.”

My mind reeled. “What do you mean, not good?”

He didn’t say. “After many weeks of prayer and discussion with me and some very good doctors, she decided that she didn’t want to undergo any more treatments. Instead, she put her trust in God and faith.”

Now I was on overload. “What does that mean? Are you helping her die?”

“No,” Dave said. “On the contrary, I believe I’m helping her live. I’m helping her free herself from the torture of treatment. And every day, she seems more alive. More committed. She grows stronger, she looks healthier. She says she’s never felt better in her life.”

There were so many things wrong with this. “You’re encouraging this?” To me, it sounded more like suicide.

He grabbed me by the arm and forced me to sit down. “She thought you might see it that way. But no matter how you feel about faith, it’s a viable choice. It is her choice. She decided to live the life she was given with dignity, and we have to respect that.”

This would be fine for an old person, but we were talking about Emma. She was seventeen. She had her whole life in front of her. “What about her parents? Don’t tell me they gave her the green light to kill herself, too.” Then I figured it out. “Did you come here so that I could make her better? When were you going to tell me that? How long were you going to wait?”

He didn’t answer my questions directly. “When I was invited to come here, of course—the first thing I thought of was that I wanted you to meet her. And not just because I thought you might help her. I thought you’d be good for each other. And then we got the news about Abe. And we began to wonder. And hope. I was sure that providence had brought her to you. And then more miracles happened. You started to trust me. Brian walked. You came here on your own.”

I couldn’t understand how he could play games with Emma’s life. “And what were you going to do when I couldn’t make her better?”

He shook his head. “That was never a consideration. She believes that God has a plan. She isn’t looking for guarantees.”

“And now?”

He grabbed his Bible and said nothing for a long time. “I think this is a test. Brian and his mother are God’s way of testing me. If I can stay strong, she will be fine. She will get better. We just have to stay strong.”

If there were another glass bowl, I would throw it at him. He was acting like me, believing that this was about him as much as it was about her. “Dave, you have to make Emma go to a doctor.”

He went to the door and opened it. “Go home, Janine. That is not going to happen. Emma will not go back to the hospital. She wants no more painful treatments.” He told me that, now that I knew, I had to be discreet. “You can’t tell anyone what you know. She’s in hiding, Janine. She didn’t run away from her parents just to go back into that hell.”