or where she was, or the name of anyone who comes to visit her. She’s what they call a ‘living vegetable,’ and I want you to see how she’s kept alive.” Nora ushered him into the room where, in a bed lined with many wires and transparent tubes running down from a complicated gantry, Mrs. Carlson, pallid and passive and tormented by bedsores, spent her unheeding existence. It was both a miracle and a travesty of modern medicine. She was kept alive without her brain or nervous system sending signals for the various body functions; they were discharged according to the dictates of medicines or pumps or the slow drainage of chemicals into and out of her body.
Nora commented, in a voice carefully devoid of inflection: “We are absolutely committed by law and the customs of humanity and the Hippocratic oath to keep her alive as long as we can, and medicine comes up with one miracle solution after another to do this. Her physician, you’ll meet him, Dr. Ambedkar, an Indian Indian, is first-class. He’s engineered the devices that keep her going and I suspect he thinks of her as his masterpiece.”
“And what has it cost so far?”
“Counting everything, outside costs and ours and the doctors’, she has to have several of them, around two hundred thousand dollars.”
“You certainly don’t approve of a scene like this, do you?”
“I’m a licensed agent of the government with a sworn obligation to keep her and all the others alive, and let me give you some stern advice, Doctor, don’t you by word or deed or even a hint go against the legal rules or you could destroy both yourself and the Palms. Our responsibility is to keep them alive.”
“But isn’t there something called a living will? Gives the doctors the legal right to terminate cases like this?”
“There is. But she didn’t sign one. And even when they do we often find that because of some slip or other the courts find them not legal at all. We’re on very tricky ground here, Dr. Zorn, and don’t allow yourself to be thrown by it. Anyway, you have nothing to say about the problems on this floor. Only Dr. Farquhar can give orders, and he’s extremely careful about preserving life. So do not try to interfere. Only disaster can come from that.”
These two compassionate officials who understood the moral aspects of what they were discussing had conducted their analysis while standing on opposite sides of Mrs. Carlson’s gantried bed, but she did not hear their arguments, even though they concerned her welfare, nor had she heard anything for the past fifteen months, a hostage to the miracle of modern medicine.
—
During his third week on the job, Dr. Zorn had two conspicuous successes, which gave him the confidence to tell Miss Foxworth: “We may be able to turn the corner,” only to have her warn: “Each of your predecessors told me the same thing at some early stage in his regime, only to see the brief success crumble into dust.”
“But these two events prove that I can sell rooms.” He had, by accident, come upon Ken Krenek when the latter was ineffectually trying to convince two elderly couples from Indiana that the Palms was the place for them. Zorn, in passing, saw the glazed looks in the eyes of the Hoosiers and realized that they were soon going to terminate their inspection. Quietly he inserted himself into the quintet, told the visitors how much he had enjoyed the beauty of Indianawhen he worked in nearby Chicago, and subtly brought in the names of Ambassador St. Près and Senator Raborn: “On the floor of the United States Senate, Raborn was a lion of rectitude and the sponsor of many fine laws. He and his wife occupy the suite next to the one you’re considering, Mr. Evans. If he chanced to come by he’d tell you what a fine place the Palms is.”
“Do those two men actually live here? Permanently?”
“Indeed they do,” Andy said, his brick-red hair glistening in the sunlight and his round face a wreath of smiles.
Nora commented, in a voice carefully devoid of inflection: “We are absolutely committed by law and the customs of humanity and the Hippocratic oath to keep her alive as long as we can, and medicine comes up with one miracle solution after another to do this. Her physician, you’ll meet him, Dr. Ambedkar, an Indian Indian, is first-class. He’s engineered the devices that keep her going and I suspect he thinks of her as his masterpiece.”
“And what has it cost so far?”
“Counting everything, outside costs and ours and the doctors’, she has to have several of them, around two hundred thousand dollars.”
“You certainly don’t approve of a scene like this, do you?”
“I’m a licensed agent of the government with a sworn obligation to keep her and all the others alive, and let me give you some stern advice, Doctor, don’t you by word or deed or even a hint go against the legal rules or you could destroy both yourself and the Palms. Our responsibility is to keep them alive.”
“But isn’t there something called a living will? Gives the doctors the legal right to terminate cases like this?”
“There is. But she didn’t sign one. And even when they do we often find that because of some slip or other the courts find them not legal at all. We’re on very tricky ground here, Dr. Zorn, and don’t allow yourself to be thrown by it. Anyway, you have nothing to say about the problems on this floor. Only Dr. Farquhar can give orders, and he’s extremely careful about preserving life. So do not try to interfere. Only disaster can come from that.”
These two compassionate officials who understood the moral aspects of what they were discussing had conducted their analysis while standing on opposite sides of Mrs. Carlson’s gantried bed, but she did not hear their arguments, even though they concerned her welfare, nor had she heard anything for the past fifteen months, a hostage to the miracle of modern medicine.
—
During his third week on the job, Dr. Zorn had two conspicuous successes, which gave him the confidence to tell Miss Foxworth: “We may be able to turn the corner,” only to have her warn: “Each of your predecessors told me the same thing at some early stage in his regime, only to see the brief success crumble into dust.”
“But these two events prove that I can sell rooms.” He had, by accident, come upon Ken Krenek when the latter was ineffectually trying to convince two elderly couples from Indiana that the Palms was the place for them. Zorn, in passing, saw the glazed looks in the eyes of the Hoosiers and realized that they were soon going to terminate their inspection. Quietly he inserted himself into the quintet, told the visitors how much he had enjoyed the beauty of Indianawhen he worked in nearby Chicago, and subtly brought in the names of Ambassador St. Près and Senator Raborn: “On the floor of the United States Senate, Raborn was a lion of rectitude and the sponsor of many fine laws. He and his wife occupy the suite next to the one you’re considering, Mr. Evans. If he chanced to come by he’d tell you what a fine place the Palms is.”
“Do those two men actually live here? Permanently?”
“Indeed they do,” Andy said, his brick-red hair glistening in the sunlight and his round face a wreath of smiles.
Similar Books
