Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

‘Sure, but –’
‘But if we don’t have faith that he can feel better, even get better, then how is
he supposed to keep the faith that good things might happen?’
Nathan put his mug on the table. He looked straight into my eyes.
‘Lou. He’s not going to get better.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I do. Unless there is some massive breakthrough in stem cell research, Will is
looking at another decade in that chair. Minimum. He knows it, even if his folks
don’t want to admit it. And this is half the trouble. She wants to keep him alive
at any cost. Mr T thinks there is a point where we have to let him decide.’
‘Of course he gets to decide, Nathan. But he has to see what his actual choices
are.’
‘He’s a bright guy. He knows exactly what his choices are.’
My voice lifted in the little room. ‘No. You’re wrong. You tell me he was in
the same place before I came. You tell me he hasn’t changed his outlook even a
little bit just through me being here.’
‘I can’t see inside his head, Lou.’
‘You know I’ve changed the way he thinks.’
‘No, I know that he will do pretty much anything to make you happy.’
I stared at him. ‘You think he’s going through the motions just to keep me
happy?’ I felt furious with Nathan, furious with them all. ‘So if you don’t believe
any of this can do any good, why were you going to come at all? Why did you
even want to come on this trip? Just a nice holiday, was it?’
‘No. I want him to live.’
‘But –’
‘But I want him to live if he wants to live. If he doesn’t, then by forcing him
to carry on, you, me – no matter how much we love him – we become just
another shitty bunch of people taking away his choices.’
Nathan’s words reverberated into the silence. I wiped a solitary tear from my
cheek and tried to make my heart rate return to normal. Nathan, apparently
embarrassed by my tears, scratched absently at his neck, and then, after a
minute, silently handed me a piece of kitchen roll.
‘I can’t just let it happen, Nathan.’
He said nothing.