Whisper Me This(19)

“Three days in which, I understand, he somehow managed to get her into a bed, despite his significant arthritis and degenerative disc disease. Three days in which he bathed her, spooned water into her mouth, and watched over her.”

“Serial killers have done the same for dead bodies.”

While they are discussing my parents—my mother’s desire to die, my father as a demented killer—the tension and incomprehension within me keeps growing.

“I don’t want her to die,” I blurt out, cutting short the legal discussion.

“Nobody does,” Dr. Margoni says. “Death does not always comply with our wishes. I understand that you must be completely overwhelmed, but we need to decide what to do when she stops breathing. Or when her heart stops beating. She didn’t want any lifesaving measures; she didn’t even want to come to the hospital.”

I look at my father again, asleep, drugged, unaware of us. A thin line of saliva trails from his open mouth, down over his chin. It makes me feel ashamed, like I’m looking at something I shouldn’t see.

Dr. Margoni pats my hand. “This is hard, I know, and very sudden for you. But you need to understand that your mother is not coming back from this. The most you can hope for is that she’ll be able to sit in a wheelchair and stare out the window. Her cognitive function has been destroyed.”

“You don’t know that.” My voice sounds desperate to my own ears. “People come back. There are all those stories. People who are in a coma for, like, years, and then they wake up.”

“Maisey.” She drags the chair sideways so she’s sitting directly in front of me. “Think carefully before you decide. I agree that the decision is going to ultimately be yours, given your father’s current state. But I’d urge you to think of the kind of woman your mother was and what you think she would want.”

This kind, competent doctor wants me to let my mother die. I can feel the pressure, a vise clamping my chest, probing at my brain.

I close my eyes to shut her out, to shut out my father and the cop. My world has turned inside out. I feel like I’m floating above the chair. My butt has no sensation. I need to talk to my mother. I need her to be here to talk to. She can’t die; not now. Not yet.

I know what the doctor wants me to say. What my father wants me to say. Definitely what my mother wants me to say.

For once, I don’t care about what anybody else thinks I should do. I open my eyes and try to make my voice authoritative. It comes out as a pathetic little squeak. “Keep her alive. Whatever that takes. God. She’s too young for this.”

Dr. Margoni rubs the back of her neck. Up close, I can see fine lines around her eyes and dark shadows beneath them. She looks older than I’d originally thought. My age, at least. Maybe more.

“We’ve already started her on antibiotics and oxygen, but I want you to think carefully about the other things. She’s unable to eat, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. If the antibiotics kill the infection and she’s able to keep breathing, she will begin to starve.”

“That’s horrible,” Elle says. “You can’t starve her.”

It’s not right for Elle to be here. She shouldn’t even know about this. But I can’t send her to go stand in the hall.

Dr. Margoni includes her in the conversation as if she has every right to be involved.

“Your grandma is unconscious, so she wouldn’t suffer. However, we can insert a central line into an artery and give her some highly nutritious liquid called total parenteral nutrition. Or we can put a tube in her stomach and feed her that way.”

There are no words for how much my mother would hate this, but even so I say, “Do that, the tube thing. Feed her. Don’t let her starve.”

“And if she should stop breathing? You want us to bring her back? CPR and shock her heart? Intubate her and put her on a breathing machine?”

And there I’m stuck. That’s a call I’m not able to make.

“We really do need a decision,” Dr. Margoni says.

I want to put my fingers in my ears and hum, the way I did when I was a defiant little girl and didn’t want to listen to one of my mother’s lectures.

My stomach twists on itself and begins to rise. I feel acid in my throat. I’m going to puke, all over this nice doctor’s shoes.

“No,” I manage to whisper. “If she . . . if she dies, let her . . . don’t bring her back.”

She pats my hand, approvingly. I’m a good girl again. I’ve complied. Inside, I’m screaming.

No. Don’t let her die. Bring on all the tubes, all the machines, all the treatments. Whatever it takes. Don’t let her go away from me.

Dr. Margoni pushes back her chair and gets to her feet. “Dr. York, the ER doc here this morning, says your father is dehydrated and exhausted. His blood sugars are way too high, and so is his blood pressure. I’d guess he was too distraught by your mother’s condition to eat or take his medicine. Dr. York would like to admit him. Is that a problem with you, Officer?”

“Insufficient evidence to make an arrest,” Mendez says. He gives me a human smile, the kind that makes it hard to hate him, and leaves the room.

A nurse bustles in, a guy this time. “So, we’re going to admit, then? Can I have your signature here?”

He hands me a clipboard and a pen, talking all the while. I nod, numbly, staring at the papers he’s given me. All the words run together into a blur on the page, and I sign without any understanding of what it says.