Overkill(10)

“Back to the directives,” he said. “As it turned out, Rebecca skipped the attorney meeting. I went through with it, had all my directives signed, notarized, the whole business. The attorney sent me home with a standard form for her to fill out. I went over it with her, explained the basics, then talked her through each point and stressed their importance.”

“Why were all the sections pertaining to life-sustaining measures crossed out?”

“She called it the ‘sad stuff’ and refused to discuss it. I kept after her to reconsider, but ultimately I let it go. Dumb, I know, but I was more worried about something traumatic happening to me, not her.

“She said she wanted to appoint me her agent, and I said fine. Only later did I learn that she’d added the ‘otherwise’ provision, appointing me her agent forever and ever. She had two of her airheaded friends witness it. I can envision them having a good laugh over her enslaving me.”

Kate Lennon didn’t laugh. In a most serious voice, she said, “Rebecca might have taken it more seriously if she’d known that Eban Clarke was in her future.”





Chapter 4





As though the mention of his name had created an ill wind, the breeze picked up and swirled around them. It rustled the enclosing wall’s clinging ivy, tinged now with the russet color of the season. Kate Lennon reached down into her bag and came up with a scarf, which she artfully knotted around her neck.

Zach said, “If you’re cold, we can go inside.”

“Thank you, but I’m fine.” She made a steeple of her fingers and held them against her chin. “Tell me how you felt when you heard about Rebecca.”

“Jesus. Bad. I saw it on TV while sitting at a poolside bar. It had been years since our divorce. I hadn’t seen her except in the media when one of her exploits made the tabloids, but that news flash hit me like a two-by-four.

“I didn’t love her anymore, couldn’t remember why I ever thought I did, and looked back on our time together as a disaster I’d somehow survived. But still. She’d been my wife. Her life was hanging in the balance. So yeah, it came as an awful shock. I was trying to wrap my mind around it, thinking what a horrible fucking thing to have happened to her. Then, within a few minutes of hearing about it, I got the call.”

“Who called?”

“Someone at Emory. She introduced herself and said… Well, I don’t remember exactly what she said, but I got the message, and I remembered that fucking POA, and it felt like a dump truck–load of shit had landed on me.” He met her gaze. “It still feels like that.”

She didn’t comment.

He picked up the lid of his coffee cup and began fiddling with it. “Pardon my language.”

“I’m not that prissy.”

He bent the plastic cap, then dropped it onto the table. “No, I don’t think you’re prissy at all.”

His snide undertone caused her to frown. “I’m on your side, Mr. Bridger.”

“Really? Be sure to give me a high sign when we get to that part.”

She ignored that. “Doug Pratt brought a copy of Rebecca’s medical POA with him to the hospital.”

“With all those clauses about life support marked out. I remember thinking that Rebecca was never happier than when causing an uproar, and that she was still at it. Sounds horrible, I know.”

Kate Lennon made a forgiving gesture.

“They put her in a drug-induced coma, to let her brain rest, they said. They hooked her up to a machine to assist in her heart and lung function. They said they’d wait a few days to take her off the machines and bring her out of the coma, then reassess the damage.

“During those days, Doug and Mary and the Right to Lifers, who were picketing outside the hospital, cited that the reason Rebecca had marked through those clauses was obvious, and that I was obligated to abide by her wishes and take whatever measures were necessary to prolong her life. But the doctors brought up what they called ‘substituted judgment.’ That’s what—”

“What in your best judgment Rebecca would have really wanted, despite her leaving no directives.”

“Right. They described to me what life would be like for her if she survived at all, but, in the same breath, stressed keeping her on life support long enough for the organ banks to determine who on their lists got what before they let her die. Every time that was mentioned, Mary went into hysterics and resorted to begging me not to ‘kill her daughter.’ Chaplains came around periodically to pray over Rebecca’s soul and my decision. And then—”

He broke off, looked down at the bent lid, and scooted it a few inches away from where he’d dropped it.

“And then… what?”

He dug his thumb and middle finger into his eye sockets and shook his head slightly.

“Then what?”

He lowered his hand from his eyes. “The media. You wouldn’t believe how vicious it got. Not a grain of respect or sensitivity or conscience. An ongoing mad clamor for the goriest information, the tastiest tidbit of gossip.

“Despite Doug’s animosity toward me, I felt bad for Mary and him. They had to have heard all the malicious things being said about Rebecca, about her partying lifestyle, her reputed drug and alcohol abuse, her promiscuity. They had unbendable religious convictions. Hearing all the trash talked about their only child had to have been hell for them.”