“I know that this is difficult.” Donna stood next to me as we watched LC lying helpless in his bed, tied to God knows how many different tubes and machines. It had been days with no real progress, and I felt like as hard as I was fighting to keep it together, I was slowly going out of my mind.
“You do? You know what it’s like to watch your husband of over thirty years lie in a coma and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it?” I snarled at her, tired of every damn body trying to tell me that they knew how I felt. As far as I was concerned, unless they were standing in my shoes, no one understood a damn thing. Hell, I couldn’t be sure that I even knew how I felt sometimes. My feelings were coming like tiny hurricanes of emotion, catching me off guard. I should have felt bad that Donna was bearing the brunt of my frustration, but I was too damn tired to care.
“Chippy, you know that’s not how I meant it,” Donna apologized as best she could. “LC is important to me too.”
“Yes, he’s important to a lot of people,” I replied, hearing the hostility in my voice. It wasn’t her fault, but I just couldn’t deal with people talking about LC as if he were public property, like some reality show star that everybody felt the need to spout opinions about all the time. Right now, my kids were about all I could handle outside of my husband, but I knew that didn’t matter to Donna. She had appointed herself as LC’s watchdog, and she wasn’t going anywhere.
“I heard what the doctor said. Maybe it’s time you let him go,” she whispered, laying a comforting hand on my shoulder—except that it wasn’t comforting in the least.
“So now you’re trying to tell me to pull the plug too? To kill my husband?”
“Chippy, he just doesn’t seem to be here anymore. Not in the way he would want to be. Do you think LC even hears us? Does he know that you’ve been here nonstop, pleading and praying for him to wake up?”
I stepped back to put some distance between me and Donna as I reached out and pushed the call button above LC’s bed.
A nurse’s voice came over the speaker. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, I need to see Dr. Whitmore as soon as possible.”
“I’ll let him know,” she replied, hanging up.
“So, does this mean you’re going to do it?” Donna asked. In spite of everything she’d just been advising, she seemed surprised. “Is that why you’re requesting the doctor?”
I turned to face her, trying to calm myself down before I spoke. She had known LC a long time, but I was his wife, and I didn’t see myself asking for her opinion. Before I went nuts on her, though, I reminded myself that she was a friend and we had already shared so much pain together.
“I’m not sure exactly what I plan to do, but if—and that’s a big if—”
“Mrs. Duncan.”
I stopped speaking when Dr. Whitmore entered the room with his clipboard in hand, ready to console me with his charming bedside manner.
“Thank you for coming.” I spoke, my relaxed tone concealing the emotional storm raging inside of me.
He glanced from me to Donna, unsure if he should proceed.
“You can talk in front of her.”
“Have you made a decision about what you’re going to do? Like I said, after discussing your husband’s condition with his team, we’re not sure it’s beneficial to keep him on the machines.” He used that “doctor voice” that let you know that his opinion mattered more than yours, while pretending to leave room in case you thought differently.
“I have made one major decision.” I waited for him to lift his eyes from whatever he was reading on his clipboard. I needed his full attention, not just the half-assed kind reserved for relatives of hopeless patients. He noticed that I had stopped speaking and looked up at me expectantly.