Life Support

by Robert Whitlow

Alexia leaned over to Rena.

  “Do you know Dr. Weatherman?”

  Rena shook her head. “No, I never met him. Ezra is giving me so many dirty looks that I can’t follow the testimony. Can you ask the judge to tell him to keep his eyes to himself?”

  Alexia wouldn’t be drawn into a petty battle on the sidelines. “No. Just don’t look over at him,” she whispered.

  “Did Dr. Weatherman concur with your interpretation of the test data you’ve discussed today?” Pinchot asked.

  “Not completely, but he has not spent as much time working in this area as I have.”

  “But didn’t you state earlier that the numbers were absolute?”

  “Yes.”

  “So can different neurologists reach different conclusions using the same data?”

  “To a certain degree, but usually not in a significant way.”

  “Did Dr. Weatherman conclude that Baxter Richardson is in a persistent vegetative state?”

  Alexia held her breath. Unless he had a copy of the memo, Pinchot was on thin ice.

  “Not initially,” the doctor admitted. “But later he modified his position. We often challenge one another during staffing meetings. It’s a valuable way to make sure that we’re not overlooking something.”

  Pinchot picked up a sheet of paper from his table. Alexia was sure it had to be the memo.

  “Did Dr. Weatherman prepare a subsequent memo changing his opinion?”

  “If he did, I haven’t seen it.”

  Pinchot dropped the sheet back onto the table and looked at the judge.

  “That’s all from this witness.”

  Pleased that she didn’t have to do any damage control, Alexia quickly moved to close the door for further questions.

  “Your Honor,” she said, “to avoid being redundant, we have nothing to add to the testimony offered by Dr. Draughton on direct examination.”

  “Very well. Call your next witness.”

  Alexia touched Rena on the arm.

  “Rena Richardson.”

  Alexia had seen Rena exhibit a broad range of moods, and as her client walked to the witness stand, she wondered which Rena Richardson would testify. Seated close to Judge Holcomb, her client looked young and vulnerable.

  “Please state your name,” Alexia said.

  “Rena Richardson,” she said in a steady voice.

  Alexia didn’t jump directly to the accident at the waterfall. She spent time painting a picture of Rena and Baxter’s short life together. She paused at their meeting with the former Leggitt & Freeman lawyer whose failure to cancel Ezra’s power of attorney had created the mess that brought them to the courtroom.

  “How many meetings did you have with Mr. Lipscomb?”

  “Two.”

  “What did you discuss at each one?”

  “First, we talked about our wills. That took up most of the time. Then he told us we needed to consider signing papers that gave instructions about our medical care in case we were in an accident or had a serious illness. He gave us forms to take home and read.”

  “Did both of you read them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you and your husband discuss the documents Mr. Lipscomb prepared?”

  Pinchot stood up. “Objection as hearsay, Your Honor.”

  Alexia stepped forward to respond. “Mr. Baxter is unable to testify because he is in a coma. We have the documents signed by Mr. and Mrs. Richardson to tender into evidence as proof of their decision. This testimony is offered as proof that they were signed voluntarily by Mr. Richardson with full understanding of their contents.”

  “What are the documents?” the judge asked.

  “A declaration of desire for a natural death and a health care power of attorney granting authority to Mrs. Richardson.”

  The judge looked at Pinchot. “Have you seen the forms she mentioned?”

  “Yes, but the health care power of attorney is subordinate to the durable power of attorney held by my client.”

  “I’m aware of the issue. At this time, all I want to know is whether there is going to be any objection to admitting the documents mentioned by Ms. Lindale into evidence?”

  “I would like to reserve my objections until after I conduct my cross-examination.” “Then I’ll let the witness answer the question and give it the weight I deem appropriate. Proceed.”

  Alexia looked at Rena. “Go ahead,” she said.

  “I forgot the question,” Rena said meekly.

  It was a nice touch and added to Rena’s air of innocence. Alexia repeated the question, and Rena sat up straighter in the witness chair.

  “Yes, we talked about the different places to check on the forms and what it meant. We decided that we didn’t want to be kept alive with machines and tubes. Both of us believed the same way.”

  Rena stopped and touched her right eye with a tissue she’d wadded up in her hand. “Of course,” she continued, “we had no idea what would happen a few months later.”

  “I know it is difficult, but please tell the judge how Baxter was injured.”

  Alexia and Rena had discussed how to handle the sensitive issue of the events at Double-Barrel Falls without revealing Baxter’s conduct. Alexia told her client to keep it simple and avoid details other than the facts surrounding the hike and that Baxter fell to the rocks below.

  Rena paused again before answering. As she did, the back door of the courtroom opened. Alexia didn’t turn around until she saw the look on Rena’s face. All the color drained from her client’s cheeks. Glancing over her shoulder, Alexia saw the scarred visage of Detective Giles Porter. The detective sat down on the back row and folded his arms across his chest.

  Rena held out her hand and pointed. “Get him out of here!” she cried out.

  Startled, the judge looked toward the back of the room. “Sir, who are you and what is your business here?”

  The detective rose to his feet and introduced himself. “I have an interest in this matter since I was the one who found Mrs. Richardson and told her that her husband was alive. It was my understanding that this was an open hearing.”

  Alexia spoke. “Your Honor, there has been a history of intimidation of my client by Detective Porter, and I ask that he be banned from the courtroom during her testimony.”

  The judge looked skeptically at Alexia. “Intimidation? Are there any criminal charges pending against your client?”

  “No. But there was a confrontation at the ICU waiting room at the hospital, and I told Detective Porter that any further contact with my client would have to go through me.”

  Ken Pinchot stood up. “The respondent has no objection to the detective remaining in the courtroom.”

  “But there is no reason for him to be here,” Alexia insisted. “He is not going to be a witness for either side.”

  The judge gave Alexia a hard look. “And I haven’t heard a legitimate reason to exclude him. Continue with the testimony.”

  There was a wild look in Rena’s eyes, and Alexia made a quick decision. She deleted every question related to what happened at the waterfall. Picking up the declaration of desire for a natural death and health care power of attorney, she approached the witness.

  “Are these the documents your husband signed during your second visit to the lawyer’s office?”

  Rena looked down at the signatures.

  “Yes.”

  Alexia stayed right in front of her so that Porter was shielded from Rena’s view.

  “As the holder of the health care power of attorney, what would you like the judge to do?”

  Rena answered in such a low voice that even Alexia couldn’t clearly understand her.

  “Speak louder,” the judge commanded.

  Rena kept her head down. “I think he wants to die.”

  It was a terrible, ineffective answer. Alexia felt a rush of anger and adrenaline. Quickly, she regrouped and offered Rena a chance to rehabilitate her answer by giving the correct response in a follow-up question.
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  “Why do you think your husband would want to be freed from the machines that are artificially keeping him alive?”

  Rena looked up at Alexia without answering. The silence lasted for several awkward seconds.

  “Because it’s wrong to make him keep on suffering.”

  Alexia wanted to keep going but didn’t have the confidence Rena would go with her. Wary of what might happen next, she retreated.

  “Your witness,” she said.

  Ken Pinchot sprang up like a leopard that had its prey cornered in a hopeless situation. Alexia saw the fire flash across Ken’s eyes and, for the first time in her career, prayed for a witness.

  “Ms. Richardson, before Detective Porter came into the courtroom, were you about to tell us what caused the injuries to your husband?”

  Alexia stood. “Objection, Your Honor. The issue is not how Mr. Richardson was injured but whether it is appropriate to continue extraordinary life-sustaining measures.”

  The judge held up her hand and stared hard at both lawyers before answering.

  “Counsel will note that there aren’t any jurors in this courtroom, and I am not interested in listening to you joust and spar this afternoon. My responsibility is to make a very serious, life-and-death decision because the family of this unfortunate young man has been unable to do so. From this point forward, I only want to hear testimony directly related to the issue I have to decide. If the testimony wavers from that goal, it will not be tolerated. Is that clear?”

  Pinchot didn’t back down.

  “But the motivation of Mrs. Richardson in wanting to terminate her husband’s life support would have a bearing on whether—”

  “No, it won’t!” the judge interrupted. “My only interest is the medical question and the legal documents related to it.”

  “May I make an offer of proof for the record?” Pinchot asked.

  “Yes, if you keep it brief.”

  Pinchot then told in his own words what he believed his cross-examination of Rena would have revealed if the judge had allowed him to ask his questions. It was a way of preserving the record in case there was an appeal to determine whether Judge Holcomb incorrectly limited the testimony.

  “We believe Mrs. Richardson wants to use the medical power of attorney to terminate her husband’s life so that she can collect the inheritance provided in her husband’s last will and testament. Finally, the court observed the effect upon Mrs. Richardson of Detective Porter’s entrance into the courtroom. There are serious questions about the petitioner’s potential culpability in the injuries suffered by her husband.”

  Alexia kept her eyes glued to Rena while Pinchot talked. Her client’s face changed shades from rage red to ghostly white. Alexia felt the urge to reel her in.

  When Pinchot paused, Alexia stood. “Your Honor, if there are not going to be any questions for my client, may she come down from the witness stand?”

  “Mr. Pinchot, are you going to have any cross-examination of the witness within the guidelines I’ve set?” the judge asked.

  Pinchot glared at Rena for several seconds. Alexia held her breath. Based on Rena’s outbursts in the ICU, there was no predicting her client’s response to the pressure of the moment. As Alexia watched, it appeared that Rena was looking strangely past Pinchot and focusing on someone else in the room. Suspecting Detective Porter had moved to a different seat, Alexia turned slightly, but there was no one in the area where Rena was staring.

  “Not if you allow me the right to recall her as an adverse witness during the presentation of my case,” Pinchot said.

  Judge Holcomb didn’t hide her exasperation. Pinchot was clearly trying to bait the judge into making errors that he could argue to a higher court.

  “Ask your questions now,” the judge replied in a steely voice that hardened the lilt of her southern accent.

  Pinchot bowed slightly. “No questions.”

  Rena came down from the witness stand and joined Alexia. The lawyer could see beads of perspiration on her client’s upper lip. There was still a glazed look in Rena’s eyes. Alexia leaned forward and picked up the documents to tender into evidence.

  “He was here,” Rena whispered.

  “I know,” Alexia said, thinking she was referring to Detective Porter. “He’s at the back of the courtroom.”

  Rena shook her head, “No, Baxter.”

  “What?” Alexia asked.

  “He was standing behind the other lawyer.”

  The pressure of the courtroom affected people differently, but a visual hallucination was a new manifestation to Alexia. She stared incredulously at Rena and groped for a response.

  “Uh, close your eyes,” she said. “Maybe he’ll go away.”

  “Oh, he’s gone. It’s okay. I’m fine now.”

  The judge spoke out, “Proceed, Ms. Lindale.”

  Alexia abandoned her surreal conversation with Rena. “Your Honor, I resubmit petitioner’s exhibits one and two—the declaration of desire for a natural death and the health care power of attorney.”

  “Subject to my offer of proof, respondent has no objection,” Pinchot replied.

  “Admitted,” the judge said. “Call your next witness.”

  “That’s all for the petitioner,” Alexia said.

  “Very well. Court will be in recess for ten minutes before the respondent presents his case.”

  Ted Morgan had spent a busy morning building a deck onto the back of a house not far from the church. The hammering and sawing had occupied his attention, and he didn’t think about Alexia’s hearing until he stopped for lunch shortly before one o’clock. While munching an apple and standing at his kitchen window, he let his mind return to their phone conversation the previous evening. A sense of heaviness settled on him.

  Ted had been with people who made the difficult decision to terminate life support. He agreed with the writer of Ecclesiastes that there was a time to die. In some instances, the continuation of extraordinary means of life support prolonged the suffering of both the dying and the living. But there was no cookie-cutter answer. Each situation carried the responsibility of seeking God’s heart and mind.

  The heaviness Ted felt when thinking about Alexia and Baxter Richardson lingered while he finished his apple. He considered going to the church to play the piano, but the idea didn’t fit his mood. He spoke a short prayer for direction. Nothing came, and he decided to go for a walk through the cemetery. He stepped outside into the backyard. Several ocean-born clouds drifted across the sky and cast shadows like great ships as they passed overhead.

  The graveyard was not a morbid place for Ted. The epitaphs chiseled on some of the gravestones were words of triumph and hope that brought encouragement from the past to the present. Walking slowly along the rows of ancient and modern markers brought order to his thoughts. He occasionally turned in the direction of the cemetery as a place of revelation.

  The oldest graves were near the church, and only a few remained visible. In most areas it took no more than ten or fifteen steps to leave one century and enter another. Most of the earliest tombstones, from as far back as the 1700s, were broken pieces of nameless marble with the identity of those memorialized lost to anonymity. But some markers remained, and Ted stopped at the grave of a man named Archibald Murphy who lived from 1726 until 1798. His life spanned the birth of a nation, and the inscription on the narrow gravestone proclaimed, He believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

  Ted prayed, “Lord, I believe you will intervene in this situation and ask for your righteousness to be revealed.”

  He walked on. The 1800s covered a broader and more ragged expanse of territory. Several people who died before the Civil War had been buried so far from the church that their plots weren’t encompassed within the bounds of the rest of the cemetery until the late 1900s. It puzzled Ted why the distant grave sites were chosen. Perhaps even in death, the deceased refused to be reconciled with their neighbors. Whatever the reason, the unwritten stories of a
single graveyard could fill a thousand books.

  He stopped before a small tombstone topped with a tiny lamb. It marked the grave of an infant girl named Maybeth Wells who had died two days after her birth in January 1851. The inscription on the marker read: A rose taken to heaven before she bloomed on earth. There was no obvious connection between Maybeth Wells and Baxter Richardson, but when he saw the inscription, Ted knew how to pray.

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  Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labour and to wait.

  HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

  Rena hesitantly glanced over her shoulder. Giles Porter was no longer in the courtroom. She turned to Alexia who was rearranging papers on the table.

  “I’m going to splash some water on my face,” she said.

  “That’s a good idea,” Alexia replied without looking up from her notes. “You need to clear your mind. I’m going to try to ask Drs. Kolb and Berman a few questions before the judge returns.”

  Rena saw that her father-in-law was in a huddle with Ken Pinchot and Dr. Kolb. The other two doctors were casually sitting next to one another talking. No one paid any attention to her as she walked down the aisle and pushed open the large wooden door at the rear of the courtroom.

  The hallway was empty, and Rena was able to breathe. Her chest hurt, and she could feel a tension headache beginning to form at the base of her skull. The ordeal on the witness stand had been worse than she imagined. Twice a scream had clawed its way up her throat and demanded to be released through her lips. Once when Detective Porter appeared at the back of the courtroom and again when Pinchot blamed her for Baxter’s accident. Each time Rena grimly clamped her teeth shut and kept the outburst imprisoned. But it had not been easy, and she was exhausted. One slip and she would be destroyed.

  The sudden appearance of Baxter standing on the other side of the courtroom had not triggered the overwhelming fear of her husband’s first few manifestations. Baxter was detached, casually watching the events unfold that would determine whether he lived or died. He didn’t seem to care. Forcing herself to look in his eyes, Rena saw that the malevolent glare from the backseat of the SUV had been replaced by a hint of pity. He left quietly when she glanced at Alexia.