The End of Forever (12 page)

“Donors are dead people.”

“That’s true, and—”

“Amy’s not dead,” Erin interrupted. “I’ve just come from her room.”

Mr. Fogerty glanced quickly at the Bennetts. Dr.
DuPree came forward and leaned across the table. His voice was gentle as he told her, “Her pupils are fixed and dilated. The results of her EEG show that she’s had no brain activity for about six hours.”

Erin’s gaze flew to her mother, who lifted a trembling chin. Erin took a step backward. Dr. DuPree continued. “We’ve run many tests, Erin. Blood-flow studies to the cerebral area, CAT scans—the newest, the best tests—and they all indicate that Amy is brain dead.”

“Dr. DuPree has determined that there’s absolutely no hope of recovery,” Mr. Fogerty said very gently. “Now it’s time to consider your alternatives. And donating Amy’s organs is one of them.”

Stupefied, Erin sputtered, “So that’s what this is all about? You want to use her organs, and you need our permission?”

“The entire family has to be in agreement,” Mr. Fogerty said.

Mrs. Bennett said, “You seemed pleased for your friend Beth’s mother when she got news about her kidney transplant.” Her face looked haggard and haunted, and Erin recalled how pretty her mother liked to keep herself.

“Th-that was different. The guy was already dead.”

“Erin,” her father spoke so quietly that she had to strain toward him. “So is Amy.”

The room was silent. Erin heard the sound of her own blood rushing to her ears. “I don’t believe you.” But the look on her parents’ faces took away her assurance.
“I was just in her room, and I know she’s alive.”

“If we unhooked her from the ventilator, she’d stop breathing in minutes, and all her organs would begin to fail,” the doctor said.

So that was the way it was, Erin thought. Amy was supposed to be dead, but without the machines her organs would be no good to them. She jutted her chin. “Well, I don’t agree about donating her organs.”

“Why?” her mother asked. “Shouldn’t
something
positive come out of this hell? To help balance what’s happened to Amy? Someone can’t run out to buy sodas and just die! It makes no sense.”

Erin felt as if she’d been slapped.
She
had let Amy go buy the sodas. Erin laced her fingers and cupped her hands demurely in front of her. “As long as the machines are doing their job, then maybe she can get better. But if you turn off the machines, then she’ll die for sure.”

“Haven’t you heard a thing we’ve said, Erin?” Mrs. Bennett’s voice sounded as tight as a wire. “Amy
is
dead.”

Mr. Bennett silenced his wife and went to stand in front of Erin. “Baby, listen to me. Don’t you think this is the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make? Kids are supposed to outlive their parents, not the other way around.”

His face was contorted with pain, and Erin felt panic inside herself. She wanted to smooth it away for him. She wanted him to smooth it away for her. “It’s not fair,” she whispered through trembling lips.

“I agree,” he said. “None of it’s fair. And because I’ve seen so many unfair things in life, I’ve come to realize that while we can’t expect fairness, we can expect mercy. And right now the merciful thing to do is to accept the results of the tests and turn off the machines.”

The doctor took a step toward Erin. “Erin, please believe us. Technology is what’s keeping your sister breathing.” The lamps light sent silver reflections off his hair. “You know, it used to be that doctors declared a man dead when he stopped breathing. And then we decided, ‘No. He’s not dead until his heart stops.’ But we learned how to start hearts again, and we learned to build a machine to breathe for him. So we had to change the way we determine dead. Brain activity is our standard today.”

“And donating organs is about the only good thing that can come out of something like Amy’s death,” Mr. Fogerty added.

Erin turned pleading eyes to her parents. “You can’t let them do that. You just can’t let them turn Amy off and then give her away in pieces.”

“Stop it!” Mr. Bennett cried. “Is that what you think we’re doing? I’d cut off my arm if I thought I could change what’s happened to Amy. I’d donate any organ I had, if I thought it would save her. I’m her father, for God’s sake. I gave her life. She’s half of me.” Tears glistened in his eyes.

Erin felt cold and numb, and a lump in her throat felt the size of an iceberg. She recalled a movie she’d seen in which a giant computer had become “human”
and tried to take over, and after much combat had been turned off. Its lights went out one by one as it begged for another chance. What if Amy was like that? Dependent on the machines, crying to get out of the arena where she was trapped between life and death? “Labs make mistakes on tests,” she said.

Dr. DuPree shook his head. “Not this time. I’m declaring her brain dead, Erin. And once death is declared, and the family agrees to donate a victim’s organs, we can’t turn off the machines.” His voice was tender and compassionate. “We must maintain her bodily functions if were going to take her up to surgery and retrieve her organs for donor transplantation.”

“Retrieve?” Erin said the word bitterly. “Is that what you call killing somebody so you can take their organs?”

“Erin!” her father said sharply. “That’s uncalled for and not the point of this discussion at all.”

By now Erin felt sick to her stomach and so icy cold that her teeth were chattering. “Why should I believe you? First you ask if you can put a ‘Do not resuscitate’ order on her chart, and now you want to ‘retrieve’ her organs. Why can’t you just keep her alive until the great world of technology finds some way of making her better?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Dr. DuPree told her. “Once brain death occurs, the body begins to deteriorate in spite of the machines. We have only a few days at the outside if her organs are going to be viable for transplantation.”

“That’s why I’m here, Erin,” Mr. Fogerty explained.
“I want to answer any questions you might have about organ donation.”

She glared at him, suddenly furious at this stranger. “Well, I don’t have any questions. You aren’t going to cut up Amy.”

“Theres no disfigurement, Erin,” Mr. Fogerty said. “Shell look the same as she does now.”

“Is that why you were in ICU the night they brought Amy up? What do you do, Mr. Fogerty, hang around the halls waiting for someone to be declared brain dead so you can move in and take their organs?”

“Erin! Stop it!” Mrs. Bennett cried, rising to her feet. “They’re just trying to help.”

“I won’t stop it,” Erin yelled. “I won’t, because I’m the only one who can keep them from taking Amy into surgery for dismantling.” Her anger kept boiling, and all she wanted to do was hurt all of them.

Dr. DuPree and Mr. Fogerty didn’t flinch. She hated them most of all. “I don’t agree to ‘organ retrieval,” she said hotly, spitting the words like venom. “You’ll have to find somebody else to give away.”

Mr. Bennett sat back down heavily, reminding Erin of a balloon that had lost all of its air. “You’re just upset. You don’t know what you’re saying.” He looked to Dr. DuPree. “Give us some time together.”

The men left, and Erin faced her parents. “Don’t try to talk me out of it,” she warned. “I’m not going to change my mind.”

Her mother was crying openly. “Do you think we
want
to do this? For the love of heaven, Erin, just
think!
Amy’s dead, and nothing’s going to change that.
But we have the chance to make something good come from it.” She fumbled in her purse for either a tissue or a cigarette.

“Leave her alone, Marian,” her father interrupted on Erin’s behalf. “Its too much for her right now. Just let her think about it.”

Erin bit her lip until it bled. There was nothing to think about. She wouldn’t change her mind. Her mother sagged down into the chair and buried her face in her hands, and her father put his arm around her shoulders. Erin felt left out and utterly alone. “I’m going home,” she said. “And I’m going to bed. I’ll come back up in the morning and check on my sister. Maybe something will have changed by then.”

Erin left them. All the way home she silently warred with herself, her parents, the doctors. She couldn’t believe that they were giving up. That they were turning Amy over to some faceless program that would take her apart and send her away to be placed inside somebody else. In spite of knowing Beth and how much it meant to her family to receive a new kidney, this was different. This involved her sister, and Erin didn’t want to donate her organs like money to a charity. And deep down she clung to the hope that as long as she said no, some miracle might happen, and Amy would begin to rally—that all the tests would be wrong, and that Amy really was alive.

Inside her house she flipped on all the lights because the place seemed so empty, but even the blaze of lamps couldn’t disperse the gloom.

Her mind felt numb. She thought about calling Shara but realized she couldn’t talk about it. There was no one for her to turn to about this. Erin headed for her bedroom, got as far as Amy’s door, and stopped. She reached out and grasped the knob, turned it, and stepped inside.

It didn’t look like Amy’s room. It was too neat and orderly, everything stacked and in its place. Slowly Erin walked around, visualizing it as it would be if Amy were home. “The bed would be unmade,” she said aloud.

Erin pulled back the covers and tossed the pillows. “And there would be clothes all over.” She went to the closet, tugged things off hangers, and heaped them onto the tumbled bedcovers. “And there’d be stuff sticking out of drawers,” she said, pulling sweaters and lingerie so that they spilled out of the drawers.

“And Amy wouldn’t approve of all these dumb papers in all these dumb stacks.” She grabbed up a handful and flung them in the air and stood while they rained down on her like giant pieces of confetti.

“Her makeup would be all over the vanity table.” Erin opened bottles of foundation and perfume and compacts of eye shadow and powder and blusher. She scattered some crumpled tissues and smeared one with Amy’s favorite shade of lipstick.

Erin caught sight of the photos edging the mirror frame, Travis grinning out at her. She pulled the photo from its place and studied it. Memories from weeks before came back to her.

Amy asking her to work for her at the boutique.
“Pretty please. I’ll be your best friend.”

Amy talking about the concert.
“I came up with an alternate plan. I told Travis you’d go with him.”

Amy at her birthday party saying,
“Life isn’t fair,”
and
“I’ll never be late again. Promise.”

“I hate you too, Travis,” Erin told the photograph. She picked up Amy’s eyeliner and drew a pointed beard on Travis’s chin and horns coming out of his head. She wanted to tell him about Amy and what the doctors wanted to do with her. She wanted to see the expression on his face when she told him, “They say she’s dead, and they’d like to cut out her heart and give it away. You know, for the good of humanity.”

Suddenly she decided that that’s exactly what she would do. Saturday night when he came home from taking Cindy to the dance, she’d be waiting for him. She’d tell him, and then she’d throw the teddy bear at him and suggest that maybe Cindy would like it for her collection. After all, how many people could say they owned a stuffed animal that once belonged to a brain-dead girl?

The next morning at the breakfast table, Erin and her parents sat in a strained and total silence. Erin assumed they hadn’t seen Amy’s room and was a little disappointed. She wanted a fight—they were all acting too polite and reserved to each other, and she guessed their strategy at once.
Leave Erin alone. Give her plenty of space. Sooner or later she’ll come around.

Erin sipped orange juice without tasting it and swore she wouldn’t change her mind—ever.

“I’m going into the boutique for a while,” Mrs. Bennett announced. “I’ve got to focus on something else.”

“And I’m going by Briarwood,” Mr. Bennett said. “I’ve got a hundred papers to grade, and since it’s Saturday, there won’t be any interruptions.”

“I’m going up to the hospital.” Erin’s words were crisp and delivered like a dare.

“We’ll go by tonight,” her father said, clearing his throat and avoiding Erin’s eyes. Erin left without even saying good-bye.

In Neuro-ICU the day shift greeted Erin as usual, but she sensed something different in their attitudes.
They were nurses, and their profession was for the living, and Amy was, well, somewhere in between. Inside the cubicle where Amy lay, Becky was checking her vitals. Erin asked, “If she isn’t alive, why do you bother?”

Becky removed the blood pressure cuff and hung it on the wall. “We want to maintain proper body temperature and keep her oxygenated.”

“Why?” Erin asked sharply. She felt as if they were maintaining Amy for some scientific experiment.

Becky stared straight at her, and for a moment Erin thought she saw the nurses eyes glistening. “She’s a
person
to me, Erin. A human being who I know was loved because your family has shown their love every minute Amy’s been in this room. I didn’t know her, but I care about her.”