Right to Die

by Hazel McHaffie

  I’ve wandered away from the kernel of what my visitors give me.

  Hmmm. Why aren’t Curtis and Lydia among the chosen few? I need to think about that one. I still respect, admire and like them both. But I am not always buoyed up after their visits. Sometimes I’m even more depressed than when they came. Why? I guess it’s because I’m ambivalent about what they do. It no longer seems appropriate to be trying to improve my mobility or learn new ways of doing things. What fires me up is what my mind can still achieve; what depresses me is what my body can no longer do.

  Curtis remains the biggest enigma. We’ve travelled a long way together, he and I, and I so much value the support he gives me, his enthusiasm for my novel, his personal involvement with me, not just as a patient. But there’s an underlying resentment because he refuses to help me in the way I want. Although I respect his position, I suppose I see this as setting limits to our friendship. Unfair, I know.

  After all, he stuck his neck out for me over the Madeira incident. And I rather suspect that now, if I needed pain relief, Curtis would consider increasing the dose, without imposing a ceiling. I used to think it was a form of medical hypocrisy to give drugs which shorten life under the guise of relieving pain or distress while at the same time rejecting the idea of euthanasia. I no longer see it that way – thanks to Hugo Curtis’s careful explanations. So he’s helped to educate me, as well as walk alongside me. I’m too exhausted to write more, but I know my subconscious will be filtering all this overnight.

  For the first time in weeks, the nightmare returned. But for once Mavis was not amongst her accusers. In the wakeful hours that followed Naomi found herself itemising the arguments for and against her actions.

  ‘You’re starting to pick up some of Adam’s bad habits, my girl,’ she told herself sternly. ‘It’s done; it can’t be undone. You did it for all the right reasons. Now let it go!’

  If only it were that simple.

  12 JUNE—Naomi still gets up early in the morning to scurry around getting the place ready for my carers. No amount of reassurance will rid her of this compulsion. So I seized the moment that presented today.

  The agency rang yesterday to say they were short staffed, they wouldn’t be able to send a carer until this afternoon. Naomi didn’t need to get up at the crack of dawn; I had her all to myself without fear of interruption. Perfect. Except that things took a completely unexpected turn.

  My intention was to tell her about my plan: Ask Curtis if he would specify accurate dosages and agree not to intervene. Ask her to agree to stay well away with a cast iron alibi in return for me giving her advance warning. I wrapped it all up in the story of the case I’d read about where the wife didn’t alert anyone till it was too late.

  I fully expected her to weep and beg. Instead she remained, outwardly at least, perfectly calm.

  ‘I know you hate other people telling you what to do,’ she said conversationally, ‘but I’ve got an even better plan.’ With that she turned onto her front so that we were suddenly looking at each other directly.

  Though startled, I managed to hold her gaze – not so easy given her proximity and state of undress.

  ‘I know you’ve had enough, I know you want to go sooner rather than later. But I can’t bear the thought of losing you. So why don’t we go together?’

  I just stared at her.

  ‘That way, I can help you but not be around to be prosecuted. They couldn’t do a thing about it.’

  I wanted to weep.

  ‘Bless you, Nay,’ I said thickly, ‘but no, absolutely emphatically, no!’

  ‘But why not? It’s the perfect solution.’

  ‘To rob you of life? I think not! I couldn’t.’

  ‘Better than going to prison and grieving in solitary confinement.’

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t want that either.’

  ‘I’ve thought about it a lot.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t! And I can tell you now, I don’t intend to give it another thought. It’s outrageous. You have far too much to live for.’

  ‘Are you still mad at me – about going on the pill?’ she whispered.

  ‘No, I’m not. And I never had any right to be. You were only trying to do what was best. What I’m really mad about is this disease. That’s what’s to blame for everything wrong between us.’

  ‘I want so much to help you.’

  ‘And you do, especially putting up with my moods. I wouldn’t blame you if you just walked out.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Where would I go?’

  ‘To Joel?’

  ‘He’d cart me straight back here!’

  We laughed together, her innocent response soothing my green-eyed thoughts.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, deliberately lifting the tone back up into my comfort zone, ‘Did you read that piece about the guy who had his ashes scattered by his shooting buddies?’

  She shook her head. ‘Some of us have better things to do with our time than read the gutter press.’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t gutter stuff. No, I think it was in our rag.’

  ‘As I said…’ she crowed.

  ‘Okay, okay.’

  ‘So what happened?’ I knew curiosity would get the better of her in the end.

  ‘Apparently the deceased was an expert in vintage shotguns. So his widow had his ashes mixed with traditional shot and loaded into cartridges. Then she invited a bunch of his closest friends to the last shoot of the season. So between them they scattered his ashes in a way he would have approved of.’

  ‘That’s really going out with a bang!’

  We laughed together.

  ‘She even had the cartridges blessed by a minister.’

  ‘Your mother would turn in her grave!’

  We spent the next twenty minutes devising ever more outlandish ways of disposing of my ashes and in that way I stopped all talk of a suicide pact. The thought still appals me.

  Later Much as I’d welcomed a leisurely start to the day, it can be annoying having to wait in until the carer eventually comes. Naomi insisted she could manage pretty much everything I needed, so we rang to cancel the visit and took off up the Fife coast. I was craving sea air, but I wanted to protect Naomi from heavy pushing; the straight stretch of road beside the sea at Leven was a smooth and easy ride for both of us.

  Watching the rhythmic waves, I found myself contemplating death by drowning. Would I be able to think peaceful thoughts and just let the water fill my lungs, or would I instinctively thrash and struggle? Maybe I’ll experiment in the bath – always supposing I am ever allowed to have a bath on my own again. And if I am, whether I have the strength to pull myself back up out of the water if I am only experimenting.

  Naomi looked so relaxed basking in the sun, eating her ice-cream – she has this taste for Mr Whippys! – I didn’t share these thoughts with her. It is such a relief to be at ease with her again, I want to savour every moment we have together. But privately I’m considering my options. Insulin’s another possibility. Apparently you can’t detect that after thirty-six hours.

  But where would I get insulin? And who would inject it?

  Maybe a hefty bolus of air into a vein, then? Air is at least freely available. Could I manage to find a vein, inject it, tie/untie the tourniquet, all by myself? Not a chance. But if I could, all I’d need would be a syringe. I should have thought of this option while I still had some manual dexterity and strength. So all I really need is a syringe and someone sympathetic to my cause…

  If an injection of something is a viable option, just to make sure, I/we could do it in the bath so that when the deed was done, they could slip away and I could just slip down into the water and it would look like a simple accident.

  Would the authorities feel compelled to do a post mortem? Surely not… although in detective stories there’s always some eagle-eyed sleuth who notices the puncture mark and gets suspicious. I suppose they’d ask how did I get in the bath in the first place, and who had left me there alone?

  I
t’s all so fraught. And I have a nasty feeling that I might be overlooking the obvious. I’m struggling to write fast enough to keep pace with my thinking nowadays and there’s an anxiety that I’ve missed chunks out and there’s a walloping great hole in my argument which I can’t for the life of me see.

  Fuggins, are you listening? HELP!

  15 JUNE—The carer was early today and I was ready in good time for the morning service. I wanted to hear Ernest Kane in professional mode. Naomi was sufficiently intrigued to want to come too.

  The church looked splendid. There was a wedding there yesterday and the whole place was bedecked in flowers, white with the most delicate shades of pink – perfect against the old stone pillars and rich maroon drapes. The scent of freesias, jasmine and stephanotis disguised the faint mustiness I’ve detected on previous, unadorned visits.

  Ernest Kane wore no ornamentation, just his everyday black, and looked somehow much smaller in that setting. And yet his very simplicity spoke to me powerfully and provided the perfect foil for the message he wanted to convey.

  ‘About ten years ago,’ he began in a conversational way that made you feel he was speaking to you personally, ‘I met a man who lived in a windmill. His name was Josiah Dreghorn. Perhaps it still is.’

  He had us all in the palm of his hand.

  The sermon was about the ephemeral nature of worldly fame and riches, and I know it comes from the heart. All this is vanity and vexation of spirit (as my mother used to say). Just as I heard her voice, he too took his text from Ecclesiastes! Weird. The same book as last time. In January. Just after her death.

  But in a curious way the choice of text initially felt discordant coming from him. My mother carried a renunciation of the rest of the world with her throughout her life – at least the life she shared with my brother and me. But Ernest Kane has a sort of inner peace and contentment, a sincere love of, and hope for, his fellow man. His cheerful optimism doesn’t square with the depressing conclusions of the preacher in Ecclesiastes.

  In spite of that, it was no effort at all to listen to him. He’s a born orator. By the end of the eighteen minutes he’d painted a startlingly vivid picture of divine riches. And that does square with the man I met! He positively exudes such wealth.

  Furthermore the whole vanity thing gels with my own experience. The closer I get to my end, the more I see that my small celebrity, my worldly wealth, count for nothing in the great balance of life. What sort of a person I am is of much more consequence. Who better to remind me of such a truth than this humble man?

  At the door afterwards, he seemed genuinely pleased to see me, instantly remembering my name. (I’m not sure if this speaks of his excellent memory or the paucity of houses where he gets a welcome.) Given that I was glued to my walking frame, he sensibly gripped my arm rather than my hand. I was sincere in my thanks to him.

  When we got home, as soon as I’d set the table, I went straight to my study and started to read the book of Ecclesiastes while Naomi cooked the vegetables for our roast. Mother would have cherished hope for my eternal welfare had she seen me poring over her much-thumbed Bible, nodding at the pertinence of certain truths that seem to me undeniable at this stage in my disintegration.

  ‘That which is crooked cannot be made straight…’

  ‘And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.’

  ‘For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? As the fool.’

  By the time I’d got to the end of the second chapter, I was exulting in the sheer poetry of the language, and I’d got the message.

  Roast pork and Naomi’s famous herb stuffing – even mashed to a pulp – further heightened my good humour!

  Naomi had a report to write up in the afternoon so I staggered out to the conservatory and buried myself in the papers. More weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth! Another GP under investigation, suspected of having murdered a patient or two. Maybe Curtis has a point.

  I hadn’t got beyond the general pages (and a few multiples of forty winks) when in breezed my brother. He’d been up in Aberdeen for a meeting yesterday and decided on the spur of the moment to call in on his way back down south. We had a nostalgic couple of hours before he needed to get back on the road. This time I insisted on seeing him off. If he was irritated by an extra ten minutes delay in his departure, he gave no sign of it. I’m increasingly impressed by the character of this man who used to be so casual about other people’s sensitivities.

  As ever he left me with a joke on his lips, a triumphant punch of the air from his open window. Today is the first time it occurs to me that maybe the last minute levity is for him as much as me. What must it be like for him each time he has to say goodbye?

  Naomi sighed. She knew what it cost Joel to remain so outwardly cheerful, how he lived in daily fear of hearing Adam had taken his own life and that history was repeating itself. Perhaps not even she really understood.

  His visit had taken her by surprise too. Finding Adam asleep, he’d gone in search of her, only to discover her in tears over the report she was supposed to be writing. The harrowing details of the family she was dealing with, coming so soon after the reflections prompted by Ernest Kane’s sermon, had brought her own sadness to the surface.

  She explained it away, but he hadn’t been fooled. Somehow he managed to undermine her resolve. She hovered on the very edge of confession, and then held back.

  ‘You’ll despise me!’

  ‘Course I won’t. You’re being melodramatic now.’

  ‘You don’t know what I’ve done.’

  ‘Try me, then.’

  In the end it had simply tumbled out, the agony in her heart finding release after so many months of being repressed. Since that awful day, almost a year ago now. 25 July – a date forever imprinted on her brain. A day that could never be changed.

  At first he hadn’t understood, the facts of the story lost in her distress. But when he did finally piece together the fragments, Joel’s reaction had surprised her.

  ‘How you managed to keep all this from Adam I can’t begin to imagine.’

  ‘I had to. Don’t you see? I had to.’

  ‘Even so.’

  ‘Can you…?’ She kept her eyes averted.

  He’d moved to face her directly.

  ‘Look here, Naomi, this is none of my business, but for what it’s worth, I think you did exactly the right thing.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Most definitely. Good grief! You couldn’t possibly have managed a baby as well as Adam – as he is. And especially not a baby… like that.’

  ‘It kills me to think…’ She couldn’t say it.

  ‘I can’t imagine what it took for you to make that decision – on your own. Especially doing what you do all day at work. Seeing all these other families.’

  ‘We would have loved it… so much… if…’

  ‘Of course you would. You’d make a fantastic mum. The best. Adam too, he’d have been a great parent… before all this anyway. But you couldn’t have coped with that. You couldn’t. Not now. It would have been the last straw.’

  ‘And it wouldn’t have been right… for the baby… either.’

  ‘No. It wouldn’t.’

  ‘I was so afraid… your mother would find out.’ It was a mere whisper.

  ‘Well, she’s the last person you should have been worrying about. No question about that!’ he said abrasively. ‘Her and her convictions! Most of them not founded on anything sensible.’

  ‘She’d never have forgiven me.’

  ‘Whether she would or not, we’ll never know. Anyway, her opinions are totally irrelevant. You were the one who’d have had to juggle responsibility for two disabled people.’

  ‘If the baby had lived.’ />
  ‘That bad, huh?’

  ‘Severely malformed they said. Physically and mentally.’ A profound coldness enveloped her, just repeating those awful words.

  ‘Life stinks sometimes. What a bloody cruel deal.’

  ‘The worst. I just couldn’t let our baby suffer. I couldn’t. Not to spare myself.’

  ‘Would it have been easier… for you, I mean?’

  He asked the question reflectively.

  She stopped to think again.

  ‘Nothing was going to be easy. Whichever way I went. But if I hadn’t decided on a termination, I wouldn’t have had the guilt.’

  ‘Not this particular guilt maybe. But knowing you, you’d have felt guilty about bringing the baby into the world, and seeing it suffer, for however long it did live, wouldn’t you?’

  She nodded mutely.

  ‘You are far too nice a person for your own good,’ Joel said, a break in his voice.

  There was a long silence.

  ‘How on earth did you keep the termination itself from Adam?’

  ‘I told him I had appointments at the hospital all day.’

  ‘And he bought that? Even when you came home? I mean, you must have been…’

  ‘Well, a colleague of mine from work brought me home, afterwards. Adam didn’t say anything. I don’t think he noticed anything out of the ordinary. But then I do get emotional sometimes. He’s used to it. Goes with the territory in my job.’

  ‘Even so… You must be a damn good actress!’

  She shot him a wintry smile. It faded instantly and she searched his face.

  ‘It was right… wasn’t it?… not telling him?’

  ‘Who knows?’ He shrugged. ‘I can see why you didn’t, of course. But it must have been a hell of a burden for you all these months.’

  ‘I’ve coped. I just thought, with all the things that he was having to deal with, Adam didn’t need to know the baby he wanted was… so deformed too.’ She crumbled under a fresh wave of misery.