The Conference
"What we would do," said the first female Resident, "is give her plenty of morphine so she won't feel anything then turn off the respirator. She will just drift off."
There it was: the option nobody wanted to speak but all knew was coming and was, in fact, the decision we all knew would result from the meeting. It had to come from the doctor because none of the people around the table in the conference room at Harborview could say the words.
The betrayal was complete. Not by those around the table but by Debbie's own body: a treason that began when she was merely 18 years old and will end in a day or so when we gather around her bed once again to part ways on this earth.
Debbie did nothing to deserve this fate but living and dying seem to have no connection to personal worth. Fifty-three years is far too few and while everyone who knows her will miss her terribly nobody will miss seeing her suffer, seeing her struggle with daily pain, seeing her body break down and unable to perform the simplest tasks. Today she lies in ICU, bloated from the fluids pressed into her system to support her falling blood pressure, fluids that are not exiting because of kidney failure.
And so, when the doctor placed the final option before us Debbie's father, Dwight, managed choke out, "That's what she would want." Heads nodded around the table in uniform agreement. Let her go, let her have some peace at long, long last. That she does deserve.