Page 143 of Seven Letters

It was utterly daft, but she felt as if Sarah had come to say goodbye.

Mia sat up straight to watch the bird fly off, and felt warmth spread over her. The newspaper at her feet caught her eye. It was folded over, but she could see Sarah’s mouth smiling at her from the main photo. She reached down and picked it up.

When she unfolded it, she gasped. It was a photo of Sarah and Adam, taken at Cousin Julie’s wedding last year. Sarah was absolutely radiant, stunning in a yellow silk dress, her gorgeous hair loose and wavy about her shoulders. She was laughing, and Adam was gazing at her with nothing short of adoration.

Mia closed her eyes against the hot tears. She didn’t want to, but she started to read.

An impossible choice

Johnny Hegarty

On 15 April, Sarah Brown collapsed at her home. She was thirty-four years old, healthy and pregnant with a yearned-for baby boy. Sarah never woke up again.

She was rushed to hospital, where the medical team worked hard to find out the cause of her collapse. After three days of tests and waiting, they advised Sarah’s family that she had suffered a severe brain injury and would never survive off life support.

Sarah was my sister-in-law. I had known her for almost twenty years and she had been one of my best friends for all that time. She was an adored sister, daughter, wife and mother, and the family was utterly devastated by this news. The only tiny sliver of hope lay in Sarah’s womb, where her then fourteen-week-old foetus still showed a heartbeat. Sarah had gone through years of anguish trying to conceive this baby, and we knew she would fight for it with every breath in her body. She couldn’t fight any more, so we had to do it for her.

Sarah was put on a ventilator and somehow, against all the odds, the baby continued to survive.

The experts told us that the baby would most likely die too … but he still had a heartbeat. There was the slimmest chance that he might survive. What else could a loving family do but take that chance?

Yes, it meant Sarah became an incubator and we could not give her a dignified death and burial, but we weighed up the situation and decided to give her little boy, Ben, that chance.

But how could he survive? How could a baby survive in a dead woman’s body? She was brain dead, but not physically dead. She was warm to the touch, no corpse-like pallor. She looked like Sarah.

But was it right? Was it ethical to keep a dead woman alive for this purpose?

We listened to the experts; we got second and third opinions. We researched, we read medical papers, we trawled theinternet until our eyes bled. We talked, we argued. We agreed and then we disagreed. We wept, we prayed, we begged for a miracle.

Some may sit in judgement of us and our decision, but this was an unprecedented case. There was no ‘how to’ guide that we could consult. The doctors couldn’t advise us based on past experience – no, we were very much on our own, trying to do the right thing in a gruelling situation where there was no right decision, and where there could be no good outcome. No matter what we did, Sarah would be lost to us forever.

We came together, we pulled apart, but we found our way back. In the end, it was the innocence of Sarah’s seven-year-old daughter who pulled us back. She made us see sense. She showed us how much we need to stick together and not allow grief, anger, frustration and heartbreak to tear us apart.

In the end, there was only one decision. Sarah’s body began to fall apart. The baby could not survive. I cannot begin to describe the horrors we witnessed.

And yet, turning off the ventilator was not a decision that came easily. When it comes to the death of a loved one, the hardest part is letting them go. The desire to hold on to them is so strong, it can obliterate all other thought. But we came to understand that the only kindness we could show Sarah was to let her go, to give her our blessing to leave us.

On 7 May, we stood around her bed as the doctor switched off the ventilator. Sarah’s husband showed incredible courage in making that final call. It fell to him and, in the end, he shouldered that burden with compassion.

When the machine clicked off, we fell into a silence that drowned us. That clicking and whirring had been the soundtrack of our grief, and when it stopped, the silence was deafening. I don’t think any of us will ever fully recover from that silence. We can’t, because we loved Sarah so much.

I wouldn’t wish this experience on anyone else. It was cruel and random and devastating. Sarah leaves behind a little girlwho adored her mother, who is bereft without her. It will be a long road to recovery.

As a family, we faced an unthinkable dilemma: accept Sarah’s death, and allow her unborn baby to die with her; or keep Sarah alive, even as her body began to decompose, in order to give her unborn baby its minuscule chance of survival. We may be judged for our actions, but we did our best. We honoured Sarah by respecting her deepest wish to give birth to Ben. Finally, we honoured our beloved Sarah by letting her rest in peace.

Sarah Brown and Ben Brown, 7 May 2018, RIP.

Mia bowed her head and cried. Her shoulders shook as the grief cut through her. She looked up at the garden. The thrush was still in the willow tree, gazing at her. She suddenly jumped up from her chair and ran. She ran through the kitchen, where a startled Riley called, ‘What are you doing?’ She didn’t answer her. She ran down the hall, yanked open the front door, and ran outside in her dressing-gown and slippers.

She had to find him.

She ran into the park and looked around frantically. There he was, ahead of her, walking towards the pond.

She ran, feeling her legs shake as she pushed them on. When she reached him, she tried to call his name, but only a sob escaped.

He turned around. Mia fell into her husband’s arms.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Mia sobbed. ‘It’s exactly how it was.’ She gasped for breath. ‘You didn’t hang Adam out to dry,’ she said. ‘It was just us, the family, and it was her. It was Sarah. Oh, God, I’m sorry, Johnny.’

---