Joani pushed through the crowd, bawling openly, her face red and wet, the skin around her eyes peeling from months of nonstop crying. She didn’t try to hide it. It was best that they see her the way she really felt. For her own sake, and for Nella’s sake. Maybe if the judges could see on the TV how much she cried, they’d realize how much she loved Nella. And then they might go easy on Nella.
“Joani, how do you feel?” a journalist asked, shoving a microphone in her face.
“How do you think I feel!” Joani stormed. “I feel like shit! They’ve been starving my sister for five days now. FIVE DAYS. They won’t let her even have a PIECE OF BREAD FOR HER LAST COMMUNION. Or a drop of wine. The cops don’t care about people. They don’t care about protecting people. They’re just there to do their job… which is obey, and get paid for it.”
Joani reached the steps of the hospice. She turned around. The reporters had quieted somewhat so that they could all hear and record what she had to say. She had about ten microphones in her face, and there were about twenty more around her, and twenty news cameras, and at least five people recording her on their phones. “The cops are standing there in the doorway still, preventing me from going in. Or the rest of the family. Only Stupid Steven is allowed in. They’re there to protect him, not Nella.”
Like the cops, Steven was after money. Once Nella died, he would get all her money. And Nadia, one of the nurses attending to Nella, appeared next to Joani to tell the press and the crowd just that.
“Steven calls every half hour asking if Nella is dead yet,” Nadia said, leaning over to speak into the bunch of microphones in front of Joani. The microphones shifted so that she could be heard better.
“Steven asks about her temperature, her blood pressure, everything. He then goes into a big excited… I don’t know… about how he’s gonna buy a car, a house, a boat… he’ll be rich… I risk my job telling you guys this. I know I’m gonna get fired. But I have no choice. My morals told me a long time ago to quit my job at this place. It’s a horrible place. The only reason why I didn’t was to try and help Nella. To testify in her case that she’s being abused. And murdered.”
Nella lay in bed, her eyes sunken, her face pale and bruised-looking.
“It won’t be long now,” one of the nurses attending to her said.
Nella didn’t think it would be long now either. But then, even at the beginning when they’d first taken out her feeding tube… she had thought it was over then too. But then they had put it back in. Now it was out again, and she didn’t think she’d be so lucky this time. She reasoned that luck runs out after a while. It isn’t probable for the same thing to happen twice in a row, she thought. It just isn’t. And the bigger and more miraculous the thing you want is, the less likely you are going to get it. What she wanted, of course, was not to need a feeding tube at all, and to be able to communicate, to tell them she was alive, that she wasn’t in a vegetative state. She was willing to settle for the second bit only. She could handle needing a feeding tube and not being able to talk or walk. Just as long as they knew she was alive. And talked to her. And enjoyed spending time with her.
She should have listened to Mother and Joani when they had told her not to marry Steven! He was bad news, they said. All his girlfriends had been wealthy, and had given him stuff. But he had told Nella that the reason he had left them was because they were rich spoiled brats who wanted more. Now Nella was starting to wonder just who the spoiled brat wanting more was. It seemed more and more as though Steven had chosen them for their wealth.
But why Nella, then? Nella wasn’t wealthy. Neither was her family. She had no rich friends either.
Then, the breakthrough, the epiphany.
Maybe the dehydration was causing her to have some sort of mystical experience.
Or maybe the light really WAS brighter right before it went out. Maybe she was dying– really dying now– and that was why she was able to think so clearly.
He had PUSHED her off that balcony. It had been no accident like she had thought.
He had PUSHED her off the balcony and then she had blacked out, then woken up with him standing over her. She had said, “Help me please.” She had blacked out again and come to in the hospital, unable to move or talk at all this time.
He must have beaten her over the head right after she had passed out.
She was insured. How could she have forgotten? Neither she nor Steven was rich, but he had enough money to take out a life insurance claim on her. He had told her she could cash it in later.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Donald entered the trailer and made a beeline for the sign leaning against the wall that said “Starvation Day”. Then he saw that he wasn’t alone.
“Donald, I hope you don’t mind, but I’m using your kitchen. I’m fixing pasta and sauce for the protesters.”
“This is MY trailer,” Donald said. “Pitch a tent and make it into a kitchen. I have a camping stove; you can use that.”
So Shelby brought the pasta and sauce outside and laid it on one of the buffet tables, then went over to the militia tent to ask them if she could use part of it as a kitchen. But they were already using it as an office, a first aid station and a bedroom.
Shelby went over to the orchestra tent and asked if they could just play their instruments outside in the rain; that she needed that tent to cook in because you can still play musical instruments in the rain, but you can’t cook in the rain. The orchestra people turned to each other, then agreed to let Shelby use the tent.
After crossing out the “5” on the Starvation Day sign and putting a 6 in its place, Donald carried the camping stove over to the former orchestra tent and they set up. Shelby’s sister Roma brought the pots, pans and utensils from Roma’s and Donald’s trailers.
Up until now, it had mostly been cooked food that had been donated by restaurants. But now, Shelby and her friend Krista were cooking noodles, rice, couscous, quinoa and even pancakes made from scratch.
Then, to make matters even better, the people from the coffee shop behind the new kitchen tent brought out an extra one of those coffee dispensers with a spout, for the kitchen tent. They said they would refill it for free whenever it was empty, for as long as this protest went on.
Then the buffet restaurant across the way offered free food to anyone with a press pass. They said they were doing it to encourage the press to cover the story, to save Nella.
“Is the bitch dead yet?” Steven asked an astonished Callie. Callie, a nurse at the hospice, had always thought Steven loved Nella and was just doing what she wanted. But now Steven was standing there with his girlfriend. The girlfriend had told Amy, another nurse, that they’d been together for five months, and then Amy had seen the obituary.
It was Nella’s obituary, and Nella wasn’t even dead yet.
“Nella died peacefully at the Cedarwood Hospice, dressed and made up, surrounded by her family, friends and stuffed animals. She will be missed by her husband Stevie and his fiancee Cathleen, and other friends and relatives.”
“I hope the family hasn’t seen it yet. But they will. I just hope they don’t come here on my shift to bitch about it,” Amy had said. “Cuz then I can’t help them as much.”
So Steven had a fiancee. And he wasn’t even divorced from Nella.
And Nella hadn’t died yet. But there was an obituary for her.
“Who wrote this obituary! Is this a joke?” Callie had stormed.
“Well, it wasn’t written by Steven or Cathleen,” Amy had said. “At least they didn’t submit it to the paper. Someone else must have done it. Maybe to show us that they had her obituary ready. They were anxious to see her go. And maybe the person submitted it to show that, to save her life.”
“Maybe someone just made it up and submitted it,” Callie had said. “Again, to save Nella’s life. If people saw that Stevie had Nella’s obit ready even before he knew what kind of a death she would have– peaceful or not– then maybe they would move to oust Stevie as Nella’s guardian.”
Stevie and Nella were alone in the room.
“I’m gonna be rich,” he whispered into her ear. “I’m gonna spend aaaaaaall the money on a nice wedding for me and Cathleen. We’ll invite her whole extended family, all 500 of them. We’ll fly them in from all over the world. It’ll be so nice, Nell. There’ll be a big cake with big white icing and gold figurines of us kissing on top. Then we’ll go to Europe on a honeymoon and buy a nice house to live in, and a nice car to drive around in. It’ll be paradise, Nella. Aren’t you happy for me?” Stevie smirked. He knew that Nella probably understood what he was saying, but he also knew she couldn’t communicate.
Nella, predictably, got upset and started vocalizing and moving her hands and legs in that wierd way. “Oh, shut up,” Stevie muttered, then out the door he went.
Joani and her daughter Goldah once again pushed through the crowd, this time with bags upon bags of stuff for Nella. Stevie had scarcely bought anything for Nella in the ten years she’d been in the supposed “persistent vegetative state”. But today was special… Nella’s twenty-twenty-third birthday. And she was getting starved to death. What kind of a birthday present was that?
Security at the reception made them take everything out of the bags and then announced that they couldn’t bring the cards from their relatives into the room. Or the candles. Joani understood about the candles; they could start a fire. But the cards? The only danger they posed was to Nella’s ignorance about people that cared about her. But it was Stevie’s orders that no cards were allowed. The reason: “Well, if he let everyone bring cards and flowers, there would be no space in the room for anyone to come in.”
Stevie knew Nella was cognizant, and he was trying to kill her psychologically as well, to speed up her death.
Finally, they got to Nella’s room. They hadn’t wanted to risk fighting over the cards and getting kicked out. Time with Nella was precious. She was dying right before their eyes. They would just tell her that there had been twenty cards from her relatives on both sides.
And there they saw it. And felt it. The thermostat was up all the way, and the thick blankets covered Nella up to the neck. Joani screamed and ran toward Nella, ripping the blankets off her only to discover that she was wearing a thick woolen turtleneck sweater and a pair of cordouroy pants, and sweating profusely.
And there were cards all around the room.
While Joani continued her screaming fit and Callie and Amy, who had just come in to start their shift, came running in to change Nella’s clothes, Goldah turned down the thermostat and looked around at the cards. She read one she saw that she found pretty. It had actual dried roses behind plastic on the front.
Dear Steven, I am so sorry you had to go through this. I hope all is well and you win the case. Regards, Dylan and Hannie.
Goldah thought nothing of it. It was just one bad one. She found an interesting one that said GET WELL on it and opened it up.
Dear Steve, I’m so sorry you have the flu and got punched besides. Please get a flu shot every year from now on. I hope this business with Nella ends soon so that you can go home and have a wonderful life with Cathleen. Love, Sheridan
Goldah threw the card on the floor in disgust.
She picked up one that said “To Nella”. Finally, one addressed to the REAL deserver of support.
Godspeed, Nella. You are free now. Come to my house before you go, to say goodbye to us. We’ll feel your presence.
Goldah was horrified. She was even more horrified when she saw that the card was dated May 23, 2014. It was only May 15, 2014, right now. They were planning for her death.
What were these damn things doing in Nella’s room!!!
Callie, Amy and Joani were bathing Nella in cool water. Goldah knew they were busy, but she couldn’t contain herself. She opened her mouth to scream. Then, forgetting what she could possibly scream, she had an idea. Grabbing the paper and pen on the desk that Steven used to write replies to the cards, she wrote down everything that she had just witnessed, from them trying to sweat her remaining water out of her to Steven banning all cards from the room except for the ones that declared support for Nella’s death.
Steven wasn’t fucking GOD. Why did he have so much power? Just because he was Nella’s guardian didn’t mean she didn’t have any rights and he had the right to kill her and psychologically abuse her. Or to decide what was psychologically abusive and what wasn’t. But wait. That was a moot point. He was trying (and on a side note, succeeding) to make the world think Nella was a vegetable. And there is no such thing as abuse of a vegetable.
Goldah could see their reasoning. Steven had banned this or that from Nella’s room so that he himself could have some peace while “saying goodbye” to Nella. Because after all, Nella didn’t and couldn’t care what was in that room anyway. She was a vegetable. She didn’t know who or where she was. She didn’t know she was blinking, smiling, crying, laughing, looking around. This was all assumed just because she didn’t talk. And because her husband said so, of course.
“Let’s go to Pizza Hut,” Amy said to Callie as their shift ended.
“I’m sorry,” Callie said, “but I can’t eat or even take a drop of water while that poor girl is starving and dying of thirst in there!” Callie snapped.
“Sorry, Cal; you don’t have to eat. Maybe you can come to my place instead. We can all go there, and talk about Nella and what to do. That would probly be more appropriate.”
Nadia came storming up the hallway. Callie and Amy jumped in alarm. What was happening now? Had Stevie done something else? Callie, Amy, Nadia, another good nurse named Torrey, and Nella’s family (besides her husband and his family) were all on edge.
“Oh my God, Nadia, what’s wrong?” Callie said.
“Nella’s moaning! Her eyes are darting around! She’s awake, she’s aware, and she doesn’t want to die!”
“What’s new?” Amy said. “She was always awake, aware, and not wanting to die.”
“But now she’s in pain,” Nadia said. “And Mr. Tulloch won’t let us give her medicine or nothing. Because it would require water to administer.”
Mr. Tulloch was the head of the hospice.
“We have to do something!” Callie whispered.
“But what?”
“So what if we lose our jobs! We have to help this poor girl!” Callie hissed.
“If we lose our jobs,” Amy said, “then we won’t be able to help her any more.”
“Fair enough. But what do we do?” Callie replied.
“We cause a diversion and get some water in to her,” Nadia said.
“I’ll do the diversion,” Torrey said, coming up behind them. Luckily there was nobody else in the hallway or around the nurses’ station; because Nadia, Amy and Callie hadn’t been paying attention to who might be listening in.
“Let’s go to my place and discuss,” Amy said as the new nurses began to come in.
Shelby saw immediately that more people were coming now that more food was being served, and probably because now, free coffee was being served too.
People who didn’t care about Nella and weren’t part of the protest were coming just to freeload. But that was okay. The more, the merrier. The bigger the crowd, the more attention they would get. And they could pass the pamphlets out to the freeloaders to maybe get them to care and actively join the protest.
Shelby looked admiringly at a copy of the pamphlet Krista had made that was pinned to the bulletin board in the kitchen tent. It listed all the things a person suffering from dehydration goes through. It really was a horrific death. Why did Steven, a registered nurse, not understand that? There was no answer, because he did understand that. Euphoria, my foot, Shelby thought. Starvation and dehydration don’t cause euphoria. They are not peaceful ways to go. There is nothing pleasant about being thirsty, and hungry, and then come the worse side effects.
Nobody in the protest even had to say that Steve was trying to kill his wife. They all knew they were in agreement about that.
“I’m so tired,” Steven said to Cathleen across the kitchen table. “I wish they would just shut up and go away.”
There was so much noise outside that Steven could barely hear the doorbell. At first Steven thought it was just one of the crazies ringing the bell, then he remembered that his police protection wouldn’t let any of them near the door, thankfully.
“I’ll get it,” Cathleen said, jumping up. Looking through the peephole, Cathleen saw that it was a man with flowers.
“These are for Steven Buchanan,” the man said.
“Thank you,” Cathleen said before opening the door.
“Cathleen, Cathleen!” the crazies were shouting, waving their phones (which were on “record”), holding them up, trying to get attention, trying to get their phones to capture what she was saying.
“How does it feel to be a wife-killer’s mistress?” someone shouted.
Cathleen slammed the door, threw both the bolts, looked down at the flowers and saw that they said “To Steven, from Nella”.
As the protesters sang Happy Birthday to Nella hoping Nella would hear from her hospice room, Krista cut the cake. She didn’t differentiate who she gave the pieces too, though she knew who was a true protester, who was a friend or relative of Nella’s, who was a freeloader, who was a reporter for their cause and who was a reporter against their cause. She wanted the people to all think that Nella’s supporters were good, gracious people. She also used the opportunity to start conversations about Nella with the ones she thought needed to get more involved in saving Nella, including the freeloaders and the people who were for Nella’s death.
Then a man introduced himself as Nella’s uncle. He showed Krista his ID. Indeed, it had the last name Huntington, Nella’s maiden name. His first name was Hollis.
“I want to know what I can do to help,” Hollis said. “I drove down from New York when I heard from Joani that no cards were allowed in Nella’s room except the ones from the people wanting her dead. That is gross abuse! It’s outrageous!”
“Oh my God, is that true?” Krista was horrified. “Did you tell the press yet?”
“I just got here.”
“Well, go tell the press, then come back and help me cut the cake, and we’ll talk about what you can do. I’m so glad you came!”
“Haaaaapyyyy biiiiiirthdaaaaay deeeear Neeeellaaaaa, haaaapy biiirthday toooo yooooou!”
Nella turned her head to the window as fast as she could, which was pretty slowly.
Someone shouted through a bullhorn, “Starvation day seven!”
She tried to concentrate on that instead of on Steven and his horrible girlfriend and Steven’s lawyers sitting right there in her room talking about what the quickest way to kill her would be. There was nothing she could do about it. She might as well focus on the protesters.
Then, over the hospice intercom: “Lockdown. Lockdown.”
This could be good or bad. Good, because people might be trying to get in here and get her out. Bad, because the hospice appeared to be able to lock down and keep them out. She’d just have to see which way it went.
Then the loud slamming of a door. And footsteps getting louder. “Help!” came a voice from far away. “Help; I’ve been shot!”
It hadn’t been a door slamming. It had been something even better… a gunshot.
The door splintered as it crashed in, and then there was her uncle Hollis, standing on the door which was laying on the floor. He entered the room and more people pushed in behind him.
Steven yanked out his pistol. Steven was the only one allowed a gun in her room. His charm allowed him to get away with murder. Literally. Please, no. Please, don’t. But he does.
Hollis’s hands flew to the bloody hole in his chest and he collapsed. He, unlike the others, was not wearing any armor.
There was a flurry of activity. Twenty people were in the small room.
“Which one’s Steven?”
“Just shoot em all.”
“But they could be friendlies.”
“They’re not. They’re not allowed to—”
Nella knew what that person was saying. Her family weren’t allowed to visit her at the same time as Steven and Cathleen and Steven’s lawyers.
“Nella, we’re here!”
“Where’s Nella?”
“Nella!”
“Nella! Nella!”
“I brought you some water, Nella!”
BANG! BANG!
The officer outside Nella’s door had shot one of them and been shot himself.
“POLICE!”
“FREEZE!”
More shots. They embedded themselves in people’s helmets and bullet-proof vests.
“Cummon, Nella, let’s go. Up you get.” Nella was suddenly hoisted into the air by a friendly man, then suddenly plunked down behind the bed as bullets flew their way and the man had to duck behind the bed to avoid getting it in the face.
Steven had fired a few more shots. Now, he fired another one… behind him, right into the wall Nella had been laying in front of a moment before, when she had still been in bed. Indeed, Steven hadn’t turned around to see the man lifting Nella out of bed. He thought she was still there. His pistol then jammed, and he got his head lopped off from behind. And he had used his last bullet to try to kill her.
The proud, arrogant bastard.
“There’s something woefully ironic about death threats from people who are part of the pro-life movement,” Cathleen’s mother Dinah said to her husband and Steven’s parents as the four sat around Steven’s kitchen table. Steven and Cathleen weren’t back yet, and their parents were getting worried.
The crowds were still chanting outside. The hate mail had stopped, at least. It was the post office’s problem now. They had asked the post office to hold their mail for them, telling them that they were going on vacation. But now the post office knew the truth.
Steve’s father Nicholas’s phone rang. It was the post office.
“What would you like us to do with your mail? You have a whole room full of letters and packages. Are you going to pick it up, or can we forward it to you? We can also send it back.”
“Send it back,” Nick said.
“Oh, wait—” no can-do, sorry. It’s from all different people so we can’t send it back.”
“Then throw it in the fucking recycling bin,” Nick exclaimed.
“All of it?”
“Yes, please! If someone I know wrote to me, I can call them and ask.”
“What about the packages?”
“You’d better call the police,” Nick said, calming down a little. “There could be anything in those packages. Don’t open them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Nella couldn’t believe she was still alive.
She was laying on the floor amidst the bodies of Steven and his two lawyers and his girlfriend Cathleen. The man who had picked her up crouched behind the bed, his hands in the air.
“Sir, you’re under arrest. Do you know your rights?”
“I have the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. I’ve got an attorney, and I’m remaining silent.”
“Fine, sir,” the cop said, cuffing the man’s hands together. “Now get up.”
There were paramedics and nurses in the room checking the people on the ground for signs of life. The surviving militia members had been arrested and led out to the police van. And there Nella lay on the floor, hungry and thirsty as ever, but with relief washing over her.
Downstairs, ten-year-old Griffin Porter had just been arrested for sneaking into the hospice stairwell with a jug of water while the police and SWAT team were distracted with the protesters outside and the militia incident upstairs.
Evan Waite was standing on top of his trailer next to the militia tent, giving an impassioned speech as the crowd around him nodded and clapped and cheered and shouted “Praise the Lord!”
Shelby’s hands shook as she ladled soup into the bowl of a woman dressed in white robes carrying a wooden cross the size of her entire body on her back.
Krista served up the last piece of cake and sat down. Hollis wasn’t back yet and she was starting to worry. None of the people being marched into the police van looked like him, and he had gone in there with no armor on; there hadn’t been enough to go around. He hadn’t trusted anyone else to use his shotgun and give it back. His plan had been to be the first in there and shoot the cop at Nella’s door. Every gun counted, and he wanted to see Nella before the others came to help him and he wouldn’t be allowed in.
The elementary and high school nearby had rerouted their school buses, and kids walking home had to push through the crowd, which was too big to walk around. It spanned across the entire street from one end of the schoolyard to the other and beyond.
“Krista!”
Krista's and Shelby’s friend Helga was out of breath and sobbing. “Krista, I was out back. I saw them taking Hollis’s body away. He was covered up, but I heard them ID him. Oh, my God. Oh, my fucking God.”
Krista swayed on the spot. This wasn’t unexpected, but it was the straw that was about to break the camel’s back. She expected to pass out. But worse happened: more bad news.
“The militia are all dead except ten of them,” Helga said. “Oh, Krista, you have to come back here! This way,” she said, yanking Krista toward the rose garden. They walked through the rose garden, where dying people sat in their wheelchairs with their families and friends and staff members. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” an old lady in a wheelchair said. “I’d join in if I didn’t feel too under the weather today.” Krista looked closer and saw that the woman had a feeding tube herself. Even though she was dying, the tube hadn’t been removed. She was still getting food, and would until she herself decided not to eat, or until she died.
They got to the chain-link fence that divided the rose garden and the back parking lot. “Cummon,” Helga said, climbing up.
“Why?” Krista said.
Something whizzed through the air and Helga suddenly fell off the fence.
“You alright? What was that?” Krista was on the fence by now, climbing up herself.
Another thing whizzed through the air. It was the last thing Krista heard.
The president, the governor, the judges, the juries and even three of the five doctors who had examined Nella had all declared that Nella was brain dead, but that wasn’t even Nella’s diagnosis; it was Persistent Vegetative State. That diagnosis itself was wrong, and dehumanizing to boot, but all this just proved the incompetence of all those people. Steven himself must have been pretty stupid too, because he said she was both in a persistent vegetative state and brain dead, and you can’t be both at once. But the left-wing media and the liberal judges pounced on Steven’s “diagnosis”. And Nella’s family now knew for a fact that medical professionals all over were talking about this, outraged. They had gotten many letters from such professionals, and from people in worse shape than Nella who had been rehabilitated.
Joani had been there! She had seen and heard Nella acting “alive”. She had said “Mom” and “Dad” and “help” and “pain” and “no” and “yes”! Stevie and his lawyers had claimed they had edited the video of Nella to look like Nella was responsive when she wasn’t. But Stevie had edited his own video of Nella.
So into it the activists were that few of them were watching the news, and not all of them noticed that the SWAT team, who had been there for days, had had to actually do something.
So loud they were that none of them heard Samira, a woman who had been serving food with Shelby whom Shelby had sent to look for Krista and Helga, run screaming out of the rose garden. Only a few of them saw the SWAT team evacuating the dying people and their families and staff from the rose garden, and them and the paramedics removing the two bodies. But Samira told Shelby, who told Donald, who went straight to Evan Waite and his followers (who had taken over the militia tent and also now had their own big tent next to Evan’s trailer) and told them.
A woman whispered something in Evan’s ear and Evan looked stunned, then yelled into his microphone, “Hold on… I JUST GOT SOME NEWS! The lady here just told me something. And it’s not good news.”
The people listening and praying in and around Evan’s tents looked up.
“The militia failed in their task. The SWAT team entered Nella’s room and picked most of them off. Ten of them were arrested. We do not know yet what happened to Nella.”
One woman looked horrified. “The MILITIA went up to Nella’s ROOM? Evan, why didn’t you tell us they were planning something like that!”
Others were speculating. And since most of the people gathered around Evan were his supporters, it went mostly like this:
“Oh my God, I hope she’s alright!”
“Did they get her out?”
“Where did they move her to, if she’s still alive?”
“She’d better be still alive!”
“Death to liberals!”
“They’d better be feeding her!”
“I doubt it.”
A siren was wailing. Oh, no, no, no, the woman who had looked horrified thought. Not more violence! What was happening now!
But then she heard the cheers. She looked up in time to see an ambulance. People were throwing flowers on it and at it and down in front of it, wearing genuine, colossal grins.
The hospice was a crime scene, so Nella was back in the hospital. Steven was dead! If she could have sang, she would have. But her uncle Hollis was also dead. This was sobering, but her mourning was delayed by the urgency of her own situation.
The doctor came into her room. A gentle, kind, friendly-looking man. She got a good vibe from him right away.
“Hello, Mrs. Buchanan!”
My last name is Huntington! she wanted to scream. Don’t you be calling me by my slave name!
He was all smiles. “I’m Dr. Bancroft. I’m going to be your doctor while you’re in here. I’ve just been talking to your family. They aren’t allowed in here, sadly, but they called. Since this is an emergency case and no consent is required because by the time I could have gotten it it might have been too late, nothing is stopping me from reinserting your feeding tube, so that will be done today, okay?”
Nella got water that night. Starvation Day 7 turned into Salvation Day 1.
She got food the next morning.
“They never even did proper brain scans! They said that since PVS is behaviorally defined and diagnosed, that was enough! I never believed in that bullcrap! People can look one way and be thinking or feeling a different way. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that when one looks happy, they might actually be sad, or that when one looks asleep, they might be awake, or that when one seems vegetative to some people they might be alive!” Craig Huntington raged and stormed and brandished the latest newspaper as he paced up and down the living room in their parents’ house. Craig was Nella’s brother.
“Craig, nobody is vegetative,” Mrs. Huntington said. “It is impossible for a person to be a vegetable. We have minds. We have brains. We have souls.”
“Don’t preach to the choir, Mom,” Craig said. “I didn’t mean that anyone was vegetative. I meant that some people seem like there is such a thing when—”
“I know. But they don’t need to do brain scans on us, now, to prove we’re human, do they? Nella talked and smiled and laughed. Yet they still want her to pass a test to prove she should have human rights.”
“It’s so ridiculous!” Joani chimed in. “It’s like they’re deciding for Nella that her life isn’t a good one. Or can’t be.”
Cousin Rolf ran into the house yelling. “They just replaced Stevie as Nella’s guardian with his brother Mac! They said Mac was a close brother-in-law to Nella! They never hung out!”
“Drop the knife. You’re under arrest for violating a court order.”
“The court order didn’t apply to me. I’m a third party doctor.”
Clatterclatter! The scalpel fell to the floor.
Click. On went the handcuffs.
Four floors down…
Click. BANG!
Looks like there is no more intact brain left to autopsy, to find out just how conscious she actually was.
“Now why would he shoot Nella! Now he’ll go to prison for taking the law into his own hands.”
“He’ll get off easy,” Cousin Tam said. “See?”
They all looked. On the TV, a man in the street being asked his opinion by reporters was saying, “That guy’s a hero. If she was even aware, she was suffering. He’s put an end to that, and now the taxpayers won’t be footing the bill for her futile torture any more.”
“The taxpayers weren’t footing the bill!” Joani screamed. “We were! The people who donated to us were! Sun Life was for a while!” Sun Life was Nella’s former employer.
“Even Steve was for a while to cover up the fact that he wanted her dead,” Cousin Tam said.
They were still looking at the TV. Suddenly, Cousin Syd shouted, “Hey, I’ve seen that cop before! He was standing outside Nella’s door! He and Steven were always talking about how Nella was a waste of resources.”
Then Cousin Tam grinned.
“Tam, WHY ARE YOU SMILING?”
“It’s foul play. They might go easy on Ricky, but they’ll take back all the settlements Stevie got, that are now Mac’s, and he won’t get any insurance. And he already spent the money, so they’ll take all his stuff. And now since it’s second-hand, it won’t be worth as much. And he won’t be able to pay it all. And he’ll go to jail.”
“No, sorry, they can’t take his personal effects,” Uncle Rice said. “They’ll just sue him and he’ll declare bankruptcy.”
“We need to stop him from doing that!” Tam cried.
“How, though?” Syd wondered.
“Come on, we can’t let his happen again, to someone else!” Tam said.
Then cheers on the TV.
“…a bunch of protesters have just trampled new guardian Mac Buchanan and his bodyguards to death outside the hospice… it’s looking bloody out here…”
Joani swallowed her antidepressant pills and gulped down her coffee.
She needed a ne beginning, a place where she could make a difference in Nella’s honor without anyone judging her.
She looked online.
And found the International Incident Insitgation Initiative.
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