“I agree,” he said. “None of it’s fair. And because I’ve seen so many unfair things in life, I’ve come to realize that while we can’t expect fairness, we can expect mercy. And right now the merciful thing to do is to accept the results of the tests and turn off the machines.”
The doctor took a step toward Erin. “Erin, please believe us. Technology is what’s keeping your sister breathing.” The lamps light sent silver reflections off his hair. “You know, it used to be that doctors declared a man dead when he stopped breathing. And then we decided, ‘No. He’s not dead until his heart stops.’ But we learned how to start hearts again, and we learned to build a machine to breathe for him. So we had to change the way we determine dead. Brain activity is our standard today.”
“And donating organs is about the only good thing that can come out of something like Amy’s death,” Mr. Fogerty added.
Erin turned pleading eyes to her parents. “You can’t let them do that. You just can’t let them turn Amy off and then give her away in pieces.”
“Stop it!” Mr. Bennett cried. “Is that what you think we’re doing? I’d cut off my arm if I thought I could change what’s happened to Amy. I’d donate any organ I had, if I thought it would save her. I’m her father, for God’s sake. I gave her life. She’s half of me.” Tears glistened in his eyes.
Erin felt cold and numb, and a lump in her throat felt the size of an iceberg. She recalled a movie she’d seen in which a giant computer had become “human” and tried to take over, and after much combat had been turned off. Its lights went out one by one as it begged for another chance. What if Amy was like that? Dependent on the machines, crying to get out of the arena where she was trapped between life and death? “Labs make mistakes on tests,” she said.
Dr. DuPree shook his head. “Not this time. I’m declaring her brain dead, Erin. And once death is declared, and the family agrees to donate a victim’s organs, we can’t turn off the machines.” His voice was tender and compassionate. “We must maintain her bodily functions if were going to take her up to surgery and retrieve her organs for donor transplantation.”
“Retrieve?” Erin said the word bitterly. “Is that what you call killing somebody so you can take their organs?”
“Erin!” her father said sharply. “That’s uncalled for and not the point of this discussion at all.”
By now Erin felt sick to her stomach and so icy cold that her teeth were chattering. “Why should I believe you? First you ask if you can put a ‘Do not resuscitate’ order on her chart, and now you want to ‘retrieve’ her organs. Why can’t you just keep her alive until the great world of technology finds some way of making her better?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Dr. DuPree told her. “Once brain death occurs, the body begins to deteriorate in spite of the machines. We have only a few days at the outside if her organs are going to be viable for transplantation.”
“That’s why I’m here, Erin,” Mr. Fogerty explained. “I want to answer any questions you might have about organ donation.”
She glared at him, suddenly furious at this stranger. “Well, I don’t have any questions. You aren’t going to cut up Amy.”
“Theres no disfigurement, Erin,” Mr. Fogerty said. “Shell look the same as she does now.”
“Is that why you were in ICU the night they brought Amy up? What do you do, Mr. Fogerty, hang around the halls waiting for someone to be declared brain dead so you can move in and take their organs?”
“Erin! Stop it!” Mrs. Bennett cried, rising to her feet. “They’re just trying to help.”
“I won’t stop it,” Erin yelled. “I won’t, because I’m the only one who can keep them from taking Amy into surgery for dismantling.” Her anger kept boiling, and all she wanted to do was hurt all of them.
Dr. DuPree and Mr. Fogerty didn’t flinch. She hated them most of all. “I don’t agree to ‘organ retrieval,” she said hotly, spitting the words like venom. “You’ll have to find somebody else to give away.”
Mr. Bennett sat back down heavily, reminding Erin of a balloon that had lost all of its air. “You’re just upset. You don’t know what you’re saying.” He looked to Dr. DuPree. “Give us some time together.”
The men left, and Erin faced her parents. “Don’t try to talk me out of it,” she warned. “I’m not going to change my mind.”
Her mother was crying openly. “Do you think we want to do this? For the love of heaven, Erin, just think! Amy’s dead, and nothing’s going to change that. But we have the chance to make something good come from it.” She fumbled in her purse for either a tissue or a cigarette.
“Leave her alone, Marian,” her father interrupted on Erin’s behalf. “Its too much for her right now. Just let her think about it.”
Erin bit her lip until it bled. There was nothing to think about. She wouldn’t change her mind. Her mother sagged down into the chair and buried her face in her hands, and her father put his arm around her shoulders. Erin felt left out and utterly alone. “I’m going home,” she said. “And I’m going to bed. I’ll come back up in the morning and check on my sister. Maybe something will have changed by then.”
Erin left them. All the way home she silently warred with herself, her parents, the doctors. She couldn’t believe that they were giving up. That they were turning Amy over to some faceless program that would take her apart and send her away to be placed inside somebody else. In spite of knowing Beth and how much it meant to her family to receive a new kidney, this was different. This involved her sister, and Erin didn’t want to donate her organs like money to a charity. And deep down she clung to the hope that as long as she said no, some miracle might happen, and Amy would begin to rally—that all the tests would be wrong, and that Amy really was alive.
Inside her house she flipped on all the lights because the place seemed so empty, but even the blaze of lamps couldn’t disperse the gloom.
Her mind felt numb. She thought about calling Shara but realized she couldn’t talk about it. There was no one for her to turn to about this. Erin headed for her bedroom, got as far as Amy’s door, and stopped. She reached out and grasped the knob, turned it, and stepped inside.
It didn’t look like Amy’s room. It was too neat and orderly, everything stacked and in its place. Slowly Erin walked around, visualizing it as it would be if Amy were home. “The bed would be unmade,” she said aloud.
Erin pulled back the covers and tossed the pillows. “And there would be clothes all over.” She went to the closet, tugged things off hangers, and heaped them onto the tumbled bedcovers. “And there’d be stuff sticking out of drawers,” she said, pulling sweaters and lingerie so that they spilled out of the drawers.
“And Amy wouldn’t approve of all these dumb papers in all these dumb stacks.” She grabbed up a handful and flung them in the air and stood while they rained down on her like giant pieces of confetti.
“Her makeup would be all over the vanity table.” Erin opened bottles of foundation and perfume and compacts of eye shadow and powder and blusher. She scattered some crumpled tissues and smeared one with Amy’s favorite shade of lipstick.
Erin caught sight of the photos edging the mirror frame, Travis grinning out at her. She pulled the photo from its place and studied it. Memories from weeks before came back to her.
Amy asking her to work for her at the boutique. “Pretty please. I’ll be your best friend.”
Amy talking about the concert. “I came up with an alternate plan. I told Travis you’d go with him.”
Amy at her birthday party saying, “Life isn’t fair,” and “I’ll never be late again. Promise.”
“I hate you too, Travis,” Erin told the photograph. She picked up Amy’s eyeliner and drew a pointed beard on Travis’s chin and horns coming out of his head. She wanted to tell him about Amy and what the doctors wanted to do with her. She wanted to see the expression on his face when she told him, “They say she’s dead, and they’d like to cut out her heart and give it awa
y. You know, for the good of humanity.”
Suddenly she decided that that’s exactly what she would do. Saturday night when he came home from taking Cindy to the dance, she’d be waiting for him. She’d tell him, and then she’d throw the teddy bear at him and suggest that maybe Cindy would like it for her collection. After all, how many people could say they owned a stuffed animal that once belonged to a brain-dead girl?
Chapter Fifteen
The next morning at the breakfast table, Erin and her parents sat in a strained and total silence. Erin assumed they hadn’t seen Amy’s room and was a little disappointed. She wanted a fight—they were all acting too polite and reserved to each other, and she guessed their strategy at once. Leave Erin alone. Give her plenty of space. Sooner or later she’ll come around.
Erin sipped orange juice without tasting it and swore she wouldn’t change her mind—ever.
“I’m going into the boutique for a while,” Mrs. Bennett announced. “I’ve got to focus on something else.”
“And I’m going by Briarwood,” Mr. Bennett said. “I’ve got a hundred papers to grade, and since it’s Saturday, there won’t be any interruptions.”
“I’m going up to the hospital.” Erin’s words were crisp and delivered like a dare.
“We’ll go by tonight,” her father said, clearing his throat and avoiding Erin’s eyes. Erin left without even saying good-bye.
In Neuro-ICU the day shift greeted Erin as usual, but she sensed something different in their attitudes. They were nurses, and their profession was for the living, and Amy was, well, somewhere in between. Inside the cubicle where Amy lay, Becky was checking her vitals. Erin asked, “If she isn’t alive, why do you bother?”
Becky removed the blood pressure cuff and hung it on the wall. “We want to maintain proper body temperature and keep her oxygenated.”
“Why?” Erin asked sharply. She felt as if they were maintaining Amy for some scientific experiment.
Becky stared straight at her, and for a moment Erin thought she saw the nurses eyes glistening. “She’s a person to me, Erin. A human being who I know was loved because your family has shown their love every minute Amy’s been in this room. I didn’t know her, but I care about her.”
Erin almost unraveled on the spot. Ever since the organ-donor possiblity was mentioned, she’d regarded the medical staff as enemies. She didn’t trust them anymore. “I’ll be back,” she muttered, and fled out of the unit. In the hallway she collided with Shara.
“Whoa! Hey, Erin. I’ve been looking for you.” Shara eyed her narrowly. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” Erin sniffed, clinging to Shara’s arm. The appearance of her friend, wearing her familiar trench coat, seemed magical, and Erin realized just how badly she needed an ally. “It’s been a rough night, that’s all.”
“Want to sit in the waiting room and tell me about it?”
They settled in the sunlit room, which was now almost empty. Only emergency surgeries were performed on Saturday, so unless you were waiting for an extremely critical patient, there was no reason to hang around. Erin plucke’d at an armrest. “Th-they say Amy’s …” Erin couldn’t get the words out.
Shara touched her arm. “I know.”
“How?”
“Rank has its privileges. My dads on staff here, remember? He checks on Amy every day for me.”
Erin dropped her head wearily against the back of the chair. Knowing that Shara had been checking on Amy’s case all along comforted her. “So you know they want us to donate Amy’s organs.”
“Asking is SOP—standard operating procedure. There are plenty of people who need transplants, and not enough people donating their organs to go around.”
“I think it’s ghoulish. How can they ask such a thing? Especially when the tests might be wrong and Amy might suddenly start to improve. If they just give her enough time, I know she’ll wake up from her coma.”
Shara jammed her hands into the pockets of her trench coat and tugged it tighter. “You up for a little tour?” Shara asked.
“Tour of what?”
“Come with me. You’ll see.”
Curious, Erin tagged after Shara to the elevators, which they rode down to the fifth floor. When the doors opened, they stepped out into a corridor painted pink and blue with nursery pictures stenciled on the walls. “This way,” Shara said.
They rounded a corner and faced long horizontal windows that looked into a room filled with row after row of Lucite bassinets of newborn babies. Nurses in gowns, gloves, and masks changed diapers, wrapped and rewrapped blankets, and juggled crying infants.
“Babies?” Erin asked, dumbfounded.
“Cute, huh? I used to come here a lot when I was growing up. Daddy seemed to always have to deliver a baby in the middle of the night, so Mom and I would come and have breakfast with him. He was always so busy that if we didn’t meet him here, whole weeks would go by without us having a single meal together.” Shara pressed her nose to the glass and pointed to one baby whose tiny face was puckered with a cry. In the next cart another slept, oblivious to the noise. “Anyway, while we waited for him, I’d stand here and watch the babies. They were like living dolls, and I always wished I could hold them.”
Erin watched the infants with their eyes scrunched shut and their mouths shaped like rosebuds and their hands balled into doll-sized fists, until she felt a softening sensation inside her. “Bet it’s loud in there.”
“You need earplugs.”
“Okay, you’re right, Shara, they’re cute. So what?”
“Let’s go around the corner.” Shara took her to another window, but the babies in this room were different from the others. They were wired to machines and monitors, some so small that they could fit inside a grown mans hand. Ventilator tubes snaking out of their mouths were held fast by crisscrosses of white tape. The walls of their chests rose and fell rapidly, little stocking hats covered hairless heads, and their skin was so thin that Erin could see their veins and count their ribs. “Neonatal-ICU,” Shara explained.
“I–I’ve never seen anything so tiny,” Erin whispered, mesmerized by the scraps of human life attached to tubes and wires.
“They’re able to save more and more of the ones born prematurely,” Shara said matter-of-factly. “It’s a good thing,” she added, “but I wonder, is it the right thing?”
“What d’you mean?”
“Dad and I talk about it a lot. He’s delivered some babies who are so premature that there’s no way they can make it. And if by some miracle they do, they’re so physically or mentally damaged that their whole life is spent in an institution.”
“But they’re alive.”
“That’s true. Daddy says that a doctor takes an oath to heal and restore and to relieve suffering.” Shara looked Erin in the eye. “At the very least he’s to do no harm. But still, I wonder—just because medicine can do something, should it be done?”
Vaguely Erin caught on to what Shara was implying. “Medicine’s created a monster, right? We have the means to heal, but not the wisdom. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Something like that. What wisdom is there in keeping a person alive above all other considerations? Why should doctors keep restarting someone’s heart if he’s never going to get well?”
Erin’s own heart thudded. “Or why not turn off the machines on a person who—according to all the tests—is brain dead?” She spoke caustically, raising her shield of anger to protect herself from her best friend’s words. “If this is a lesson in how I ought to okay the hospital’s game plan for Amy—”
Shara grabbed Erin’s arm. “No way. But I’ve seen my dad work and worry over babies like these when there’s no hope for them. But because he’s delivered them, he feels responsible for keeping them alive.” She stared hard at one baby in a corner of the room whose legs and arms were no bigger around than the width of two adult fingers.
“Dad says that God made us to live with dignity. Instead, medicine and science
get all caught up in the technicalities … in the heroic measures. We put all our efforts into keeping a person alive at any cost. It’s as if winning the battle is more important than the person.”
Erin mulled over Shara’s words. She’d known Shara for years. They’d talked on the phone about a million silly things, but she’d never realized what her friend thought about things as serious as they were discussing now. She pressed her fingers into her eyelids and softly said, “Shara, I hear what you’re saying. But I can’t give up on my sister. I just can’t!”
Shara sighed. “No one’s saying you should give up as long as there’s hope.”
“But I can’t give up my hope just because of some stupid tests. You said yourself that they make advancements and breakthroughs in medicine every day. Maybe there’ll be one tomorrow that’ll help Amy. If they take her now and remove her organs, then what hope will she have?”
Very gently Shara told her, “Erin, it’s not going to work that way for Amy. There’s no cavalry coming in medical breakthroughs to save her.”
“Unexplained things happen every day. Something still could happen to bring her back.”
“They can’t keep her on machines much beyond tomorrow,” Shara said. “I’ve asked my dad to explain what happens. Once brain activity ceases …” She left her sentence unfinished.
Unable to respond, Erin studied the infants connected to the equipment. She understood the medical consequences of Amy’s condition: without brain activity, the body simply wasted away. She cleared her throat and pressed the palms of her hands against the glass. “Crazy, isn’t it? Their brains are working fine. It’s their bodies that are struggling.”
Erin stepped away from the window and turned toward Shara. “Thanks, Shara. Thanks for bringing me here and thanks for being my friend. I—I’ll think about everything you’ve said.”
They stood together in an intimate silence. Finally Shara broke it. “Look, I’ve got to be going. The dance is tonight.”