Kate Wilhelm - Clear And Convincing Proof

“He’ll try to get the power of acceptance changed, but it will take time, and if the judge doesn’t agree to the change, David McIvey will end up in charge.”

More and more often during the past few years Thomas Kelso had found himself pondering the unanswerable questions that he should have put behind him as a youth. When did life begin and, more important these past months, when did it end? Joyce McIvey had been brain-dead for forty-eight hours when they disconnected her life support; her body had resisted death for another forty-eight hours. When did she die? Brain-dead? Heart-dead? Which was the final death? When? If there was a soul, when did it depart? At the funeral service for Joyce, sitting apart from the family, he had regarded them soberly: David with his pretty little wife on one side of him, his two children on the other, Lorraine, his first wife, at the end of the row. The two wives and the grandchildren had all wept for Joyce, but David had been like a statue among them, untouchable, unmovable, remote.

Thomas had heard the story of how David had signed the order to discontinue life support for his mother, and then had gone straight into surgery. Had his hand trembled, his vision blurred?

Thomas felt he could almost understand David, not entirely, but somewhat. His mother had had a good life and had lived to be eighty with no major health problems. She had been happy most of her life, and her end had been merciful. A fulfilled life. An enviable one. David was merely accepting of the fact of death, and perhaps even grateful that it had been merciful. He was a scientist, a doctor. He understood and accepted death in a way that a layperson could not.

But he should weep for his mother, Thomas added to himself. He should not order her death one minute and draw blood with his scalpel the next.

He did not go to the cemetery, or to David’s house after the funeral. Instead, he went home, but his own house seemed oppressive, too silent, too empty. That afternoon the silence and emptiness were more like a vacuum than ever, like a low-pressure area where there was not enough air. The silence was that of holding one’s breath, not simply the lack of sound.

He left the house and sat in his car for a minute or two, tracing the pattern of wear on the steering wheel cover. He had worn it down to nothing in spots. Realizing what he was doing, he stopped. The salesman had said nine out of ten Volvos ever sold were still on the road. Twenty years ago? Twenty-two? Now and then he thought he might trade it in on a new model, then he forgot until the next time he noticed that it was old. He shook himself and drove to the clinic.

He parked in Greg’s driveway, walked the path to the alley, across it, and into the garden, where he made his way to the waterfall and sat on a bench in the shade, listening to the splashing water, watching the koi swim back and forth effortlessly. There, listening to the music of the water, he let his grief fill his eyes with tears. Grieving for his wife, for Joyce and William McIvey, grieving for the clinic. They had shared a vision, the four of them. Now he was the only one left, and the vision was fading.

He had not yet moved when he heard a girl’s voice. “You bastard, you moved the chair farther away!”

“Maybe a little farther,” Darren said. “And does your mama know you use such language?”

“Who the fuck do you think taught me?”

Darren laughed. “The deal still goes. You walk to the chair and earn a ride back.”

Thomas could see them when they rounded a curve, Darren and a teenage black girl. Sweat was running down her face. She was using two canes, learning how to walk with a prosthetic, an artificial leg from the knee down. They rounded the curve and were heading out of sight again when she began to sway.

“I can’t feel it! Darren, I’m falling!” Her voice rose in a wail.

“No, you’re not. You’re fine.” He had his arm around her before she finished speaking, and for a time neither of them moved. “See, what happens is that something in your head wakes up and says, ‘Hey, I don’t have a foot down there,’ and you feel like you’re going to fall. What we have to do is convince that something in your head that it’s okay, there’s a working leg and foot, and it’s yours, so get used to it. Ready? Just a few more steps now. Here we go.”

Thomas watched them out of sight, then he realized his hands were clenched into tight fists, and he relaxed them and flexed his fingers.

“I’ll fight you, David,” he said under his breath. “I’ll fight you every inch of the way.”

Everything was muted at the clinic that afternoon. A few appointments had been canceled. Some of the therapists and nurses had taken time off for the funeral, and some of the volunteers had excused themselves. Greg and Naomi were gone for the day.

In desperation Bernie had called Erica. “If you can just sit at the reception desk for an hour or so, I’ll help out in the kitchen. Stephanie’s gone to the funeral.”

Due to the reduced staff and cancellations, traffic was light that afternoon. The two interns working under Darren’s supervision had their patients as usual, and Winnie Bok, the speech therapist, was on duty. A few others were there with their own flow of patients arriving, leaving. But Erica was not rushed, and she daydreamed that she had trained in physical therapy instead of education, that she now worked full-time here, consulting with Darren, joking with him in the lounge, walking home with him at the end of the day….

She chided herself for indulging in romantic schoolgirl fantasies, but they persisted. In fact, she seldom even saw him. He left the clinic every day before she finished reading, and he didn’t walk; he rode a bicycle. She had not seen it the day he saved her life, but she had been too shaken to notice much of anything. Sometimes she could hear him in the upper apartment, and one time she had made dinner for two, only to find that he had already left by the time she went up the stairs to invite him to share it. It would be different, she told herself, after he moved in. They would be neighbors, and how much closer could neighbors be, separated by a floor, a ceiling? He would drop in for a chat, for a cup of coffee; she would invite him to dinner; they would have long talks. They would find the key, or simply remove the lock on the upper door of the inside stairs.

Bernie returned a little before four-thirty. “They’re back,” she said. “Stephanie chased me out of the kitchen. She’s in a temper.”

“Why? What did you do?” Erica got up from the chair and moved aside as Bernie took her usual place.

“Me? Nothing. Stephanie said that Dr. McIvey plans to take over running the clinic. Believe me, if that happens, this place will clear out like the plague swept through.”

“Why? What’s wrong with him?”

Bernie looked past Erica and smiled. “Hi, Shawn. How’s it going?”

A tall youth had entered with a woman, his mother probably, Erica thought. The boy was wearing a neck brace and had his arm in a sling.

“Okay,” he said.

Bernie buzzed Tony Kranz and the boy started to walk toward the therapy rooms while his mother went to the waiting room. Tony met the boy halfway down the hall and they walked on together. Tony didn’t look very much older than his patient. He was one of the interns who had come for his clinical practice, and to work under the direction of Darren Halvord. The interns, Erica had learned, worked for peanuts, but they would have paid for the chance to work under Darren for a year or two. After this apprenticeship, they were considered to be prizes by other institutions.

Bernie did not have a chance to answer Erica’s question. A couple of patients were arriving for their four-thirty appointments, and others were leaving, some of them stopping by the desk to arrange appointment times or just to chat a moment.