The light seemed unnecessarily bright. Rooms like these never seemed to be designed for comfort, which was like adding insult to injury. Or should it be injury to insult, in this case?
"They could at least put some comfortable chairs in here..."
The thought came randomly and with immediate regret. With everything that is going on and the discussion about to take place, how could Allison be thinking about her own comfort?
Allison had spent almost every night in the hospital since David had been admitted. She had put her whole life on hold, but then David was her whole life and he was lying unconscious in the next room.
Allison was sitting in a small conference room in the Intensive Care Unit of Mercy Hospital. There was a large table in the middle of the room that was too big for the small room. Trying to walk around the table was awkward, especially when there were too many people in the room. And there were always too many people in the room, Allison had discovered.
Today there was David's main doctor, a resident assigned to David's main doctor, the Chief of the ICU, a nurse coordinator and a man that was part of the hospital's administration. Allison was alone on her side of the table. David was an only child and his parents had already passed away; David had signed a medical power of attorney naming Allison as his decision maker, otherwise she would not have had a legal right to be there, either. David literally had no one else.
David's primary doctor was going of the history of his case in mind-numbing detail. Allison had to force herself to listen to all of the painful details that she had just so recently lived through.
"...Early on there were some signs that David might recover. In the first 48 hours he seemed to have some response to stimuli - voices, particularly," the doctor said, "In fact, the response was so strong that his respirations and heart rate rose to a dangerous level and we were forced to sedate him for his own safety..."
Allison had been sure that David would wake up. She sat at his bedside in those first days and talked to him and it seemed as though he could hear her. She wanted him to wake up so badly so she could tell him how mad she was at him for putting her through this. But he never woke up and she became less sure it would happen every day. Her early anger and frustration melted into dispair.
"...Later, as David became less responsive and faded deeper into his coma, we attempted the radical procedure of administering small electro shocks..."
The memory of the electro shocks caused Allison's eyes to well with tears. They had explained to her (as the doctor was now explaining to the room) that at that point there was nothing physically wrong with David except the brain trauma he had experienced. The electro shock was not a danger to his life, but there was a chance that it could draw David out of the coma. The doctor had described it as "rebooting" David's brain. Allison was uncomfortable with the idea, but in her desperation she consented. Allison tried to watch the procedure, but she had to look away as soon as they administred the shock. The electricity caused David's body to convulse involuntarily and, although there was no sign that he was feeling any pain, it hurt Allison to watch.
"So," the doctor said, choosing his words carefully as he came to his conclusion, "David has been in a persistent vegitative state for more than nine months now. He only survives because of the feeding tube. He has stabilized in his condition and may remain this way for a week, a year or five years. We can keep him alive, but it is our medical conclusion that he will not recover to any meaningful level of consciousness."
Everyone was looking at Allison. She was looking down at her hands, trying to hold back tears, but she knew they all had a look of pity on her face. She had seen that look a lot in recent days. She hated that look - it is amazing how much pity and disdain look alike in the face of a stranger.
She knew what David would want. This was the whole reason they had signed those damned Living Wills in the first place - and even if they hadn't discussed it, didn't the circumstances make it perfectly clear what he would want? But how could she say the words that would end the life of the man she loved?
She wished for a moment that she could just go back a year and do everything over, make everything be different. Then she felt a small twinge of anger: how could he put her in this situation? He did this; he chose this; he put the gun to his own head and pulled the trigger. She wasn't making a decision for him; he had already made the decision.
"What do I need to sign?" she asked, in a quiet, defeated voice.
Allison had to sign a huge stack of documents: consents, releases, indemnifications, organ donor documents. Then they gave her five minutes to be alone with David. She didn't really want it, though. She had been alone with him for the last nine months. Only now, at the end, she realized that he was already gone. He had been gone from her even before he'd pulled the trigger. He was gone when he had decided to pull the trigger.
They asked if she wanted to stay with him in his last moments. She declined. She left the room and the hospital more at peace than she had been since well before the shooting. The man she loved was gone, but she knew now that he had stopped being the man she loved a long time ago.
*****************************
Thank you for reading Empty Space. The first episode of my next story posted simultaneously with this post; you can find it here: Hard at Work. Please also check out The Hub, which is the central location for all of my writing. Thank you again for reading.
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