A Life That Matters (18 page)

On August 30, 2003, he filed a suit in the federal court in Tampa against Michael for conspiring to kill Terri and named the hospice and Felos as codefendants. He also asked for an injunction to protect Terri from Michael and Felos and for assurance that Terri would receive proper medical attention.

The hearing, held a few days later, was contentious. The judge, Richard Lazzara, kept throwing questions at Chris, reprimanding him for submitting a complaint motion that did not say how Terri’s case violated federal statutes. (Indeed, he had worked too quickly in order to meet a deadline Pat had asked for.) Lazzara instructed Chris to refile. There was no discussion of the injunction that would have protected Terri from her husband. Chris was outwardly calm and courteous, but inwardly furious. The judge didn’t seem to understand the gravity of the complaint, he felt, even though Governor Bush had filed an amicus brief with the court.

Pat was keeping up the pressure on Judge Greer. The judge had told two friends of hers, both highly placed officials in Florida law enforcement, that he would rule against appointing a guardian ad litem
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Why? Because Jeb Bush had suggested it.

Pat filed a motion asking Greer to recuse himself from Terri’s case because he had illegally discussed his strategy with unauthorized outsiders, Florida Deputy Attorney John Carassas and Pinellas County Sheriff Everett Rice. Greer denied the motion and, later, the two officials denied they had told Pat anything. The good-old-boy network was in operation.

Meanwhile, Pat petitioned the court to postpone the death date of October 15 (two months later than the original date set by the appellate court)—indeed to forestall any death date at all—and to allow eight weeks of therapy for Terri. She attached an affidavit from clinical neuropsychologist Dr. Alexander T. Gimon, who had studied the video clips of Terri at the medical evidentiary hearing and wholeheartedly offered us his services. To this she added four nurses’ affidavits that claimed Terri was not PVS. The nurses—Carolyn Johnson, Heidi Law, Carla Iyer, and Trudi Capone—didn’t know each other, so the similarity of detail is independent and uncoached.

Because the statements are so powerful, and because what the nurses testified to was verified by others at Palm Gardens, it’s worth quoting excerpts from two of the affidavits. Here’s Carla Iyer’s:

The atmosphere throughout the facility was dominated by Mr. Schiavo’s intimidation. Everyone there, with the exception of some people who seemed to be close to Michael, was intimidated by him. Michael Schiavo always had an overbearing attitude, yelling numerous times such things as “This is my order and you’re going to follow it.” He is very large and uses menacing body language, such as standing too close to you, getting right in your face and practically shouting . . .

To the best of my recollection, rehabilitation had been ordered for Terri, but I never saw any being done or had any reason to believe that there was ever any rehab of Terri done at Palm Gardens when I was there.
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I became concerned because nothing was being done for Terri at all, no antibiotics, no tests, no range of motion therapy, no stimulation, no nothing . . . One time I put a wash cloth in Terri’s hand to keep her fingers from curling together, and Michael saw it and made me take it out, saying that was therapy.

Throughout my time at Palm Gardens, Michael Schiavo was focused on Terri’s death. Michael would say “When is she going to die?” “Has she died yet?” and “When is the bitch going to die?” These statements were common knowledge at Palm Gardens . . . Other statements which I recall him making include “Can’t you do anything to accelerate her death—won’t she ever die?” When she didn’t die, Michael would be furious. Michael was also adamant that the family should not be given information. He made numerous statement such as “Make sure the parents aren’t contacted.” I recorded Michael’s statements word for word in Terri’s chart, but these entries were also deleted at the end of my shift . . .

Any time Terri was sick, like with a UTI or fluid buildup in her lungs, colds, pneumonia, Michael would be visibly excited, thrilled even, hoping she would die. He would call me, as I was the nurse supervisor on the floor, and ask for every little detail about her temperature, blood pressure, etc., and would call back frequently asking if she was dead yet. He would blurt out, “I’m going to be rich!” and would talk about all the things he would buy when Terri died, like a new car, a new boat, and going to Europe, among other things . . .

I have contacted the Schindler family because I just couldn’t stand by and let Terri die without the truth being told.

And this, from Heidi Law:

I know that Terri did not receive routine physical therapy or any other kind of therapy. I was personally aware of orders for rehabilitation that were not being carried out. Even though they were ordered, Michael would stop them. Michael ordered that Terri receive no rehabilitation or range of motion therapy. I and Olga
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would give Terri range of motion anyway, but we knew we were endangering our jobs by doing so . . . We were always looking out for Michael, because we knew that, not only would Michael take his anger out at us, but he would take it out on Terri. We spoke of this many times . . .

Every day, Terri was gotten up after lunch and sat in a chair all afternoon. When Terri was in bed, she very much preferred to lie on her right side and look out the window. We always said that she was watching for her mother. It was very obvious that her mother was her favorite person in the whole world . . .

When Olga was talking with Terri, Terri would follow Olga with her eyes. I have no doubt in my mind that Terri would understand what Olga was saying to her. I could tell a definite difference between the way Terri responded to Olga and the way she reacted to me, until she got used to my taking care of her. Initially, she “clammed up” with me, the way she would with anyone she did not know or was not familiar or comfortable with. It took about the fourth or fifth time taking care of her alone, without Olga, that Terri became relaxed and non-resistant with me . . .

At least three times during my shift where I took care of Terri, I made sure to give Terri a wet washcloth filled with ice chips to keep her mouth moistened. I personally saw her swallow the ice water and never saw her gag. Olga and I frequently put orange juice or apple juice in her washcloth to give her something nice to taste, which made her happy. On three or four occasions I personally fed Terri small mouthfuls of Jell-O, which she was able to swallow and enjoyed immensely. I did not do it more often only because I was so afraid of being caught by Michael.

On one occasion Michael Schiavo arrived with his girlfriend, and they entered Terri’s room together. I heard Michael tell his girlfriend that Terri was in a persistent vegetative state and was dying. After they left, Olga told me that Terri was extremely agitated and upset, and wouldn’t react to anyone. When she was upset, which was usually the case after Michael was there, she would withdraw for hours. We were convinced that he was abusing her, and probably saying cruel and terrible things to her because she would be so upset when he left.

In the past, I have taken care of comatose patients, including those in a persistent vegetative state. While it is true that those patients will flinch or make sounds occasionally, they don’t do it as a reaction to someone on a constant basis who is taking care of them, the way I saw Terri do.

Despite these affidavits, and others like them, Judge Greer denied the petition.

Pat knew, of course, that Judge Greer would deny any motion of hers. Her strategy was to build as strong a record as possible so that when Chris Ferrara went back to federal court, he could argue with new weapons, new facts.

On September 22, 2003, Chris filed the amended complaint with Lazzara in federal court, citing civil rights violations Terri had endured at Michael’s hands over the past ten years.

To no avail. On October 10, at a hearing to rule on the request for an injunction to block the removal of Terri’s feeding tube, the federal court refused to accept Terri’s case, saying that all the federal violations had already been adjudicated in the lower courts.

The October 15 date for the removal of Terri’s feeding tube would stand.

I spent the fall of 2003 in a downward spiral. Each new negative ruling was an emotional punch in my heart, the words of encouragement from Pat or Chris no more now than feeble whistles in the din of bad news. At one point, we were told that the federal court had agreed to take Terri into its care, meaning that Michael couldn’t touch her. But our joy was short-lived. The federal court had only agreed to
hear
a petition to take on her case, not act on it. We went from heaven to hell in a heartbeat.

Greer had ignored all the evidence presented to him and was still pursuing Terri’s death. I was very depressed, couldn’t eat or sleep, lost fifteen pounds. I found it hard to talk, so I stayed quiet. My only solace was my family. We were never closer, perhaps because we knew we had to hold on to each other or perish.

As scheduled, on October 15, Terri’s feeding tube was removed a second time. Michael denied the Sacrament Holy Communion.

CHAPTER 16

Groundswell

There was no one day that Terri’s case became a political cause, no one event that changed it from a family tragedy to the focus of a national debate. Goodness knows, we didn’t ask to be in the eye of a hurricane. Our only wish was to keep Terri alive and to be able to take care of her.

To this end, when the momentum began to build, we took advantage of it. We didn’t question the motives of the people who rallied around us and supported us. We knew we were being “used” by some politicians and the media for their own agendas. We were not so naïve that we believed everyone who claimed to be interested
in Terri’s well-being. We did not subscribe to every idea or every political cause championed by the powerful people who championed us. We did not differentiate the pure of heart from the self-promoters. As I said at the beginning, we were not political people—and we are not now.

The reason we ourselves went on radio and TV all the time was to correct misconceptions about Terri: that she was a “vegetable”; that she was on a respirator; that she couldn’t go outside; that she couldn’t sit or couldn’t respond or couldn’t function. Her dignity, as well as truth, mattered to us.
She was a living human being!
So we fought for Terri, loudly and publicly, believing there was no other course open to us.

The federal court, our court of last resort, had ruled against us. There were no more motions our lawyers could make, no more petitions they could file. Terri’s feeding tube had been removed. Within days, she would die. So we were happy to be “used” if it meant postponing Terri’s death. If the politicians and media pundits could help, we welcomed them, and we didn’t stop to figure out who honestly cared and who was merely riding on the bandwagon. Together, their voices were loud and clear and moving, and we were grateful to them.

The voices grew in intensity. Every day we recorded the new events—court decisions, how Terri was feeling, what Felos and Michael were doing—on our Web site. The responses grew in number, but there was no way to know how powerful they’d be. Our aim was to get Governor Bush to act by invoking his executive powers, for he was the only person who could save Terri’s life. But Jeb Bush was silent.

On October 9, 2003, six days before Terri’s feeding tube was to be removed, Monsignor Malanowski conducted an all-night prayer meeting at St. Lawrence’s Catholic Church in Tampa, asking the parishioners to pray that the courts would allow a stay in the removal of the tube so we could go on fighting. The prayers went unanswered. Or, perhaps, took other routes.

The removal was scheduled for October 15. On the eleventh, a friend told Bob that Randall Terry might be able to help.

“I had no idea who Randall Terry was,” Bob says. “I called Kenny Blake, Mary’s cousin, and asked him. ‘He’s an activist in the pro-life movement. Been arrested dozens of times,’ I was told.

“That morning Pat Anderson had called me. ‘It’s over,’ she’d said. ‘There are no more rabbits in the hat.’ So I called Randall, figuring I’d try anything. He lived in St. Augustine, outside of Jacksonville, and said he would come down the next day.”

Suzanne points out, “We had a meeting Sunday night with him and his publicist, Gary McCullough. Randall organized us. He was compassionate, supportive, calm, and organized. We had a litany of things we needed to do, and everybody got tasks. He told us to rent an RV. ‘You’re going to be outside the hospice camping in it,’ he said.

“Across the street from the hospice there’s a long industrial-looking building running perpendicular to the street. The building contains individual storage garages. At the very front of the building is a little shop that sells all sorts of odds and ends. Adjacent to the building is a driveway and a space reserved for parking. The proprietors of the building owned the lot and wound up charging the people who parked there, including us. In a way, we didn’t blame them. They were invaded by ‘The Schiavo Case.’ Stephanie Willets, who operated the small store, was herself a renter. She allowed us to use her store as a communications center and as a place we could go if we needed a respite. She volunteered the store, not only in ’03 but again in ’05, when the invasion reached a monumental scale.

“I ran around town trying to find an RV, and eventually we got a motor home and we parked it in the lot. We lived there for the next several weeks.”

All of us shared the trailer during the day. Bobby would often stay through the night. And still more and more people showed up, sleeping outside the hospice, and after the hospice chased them away with sprinklers, they came back.

“Some things that happened were remarkable,” Bob remembers. “I looked out one day and saw people running telephone wires into the lot. They put out tables with computers on them, tied to this little odds-and-ends store. And they’d go on the Internet. They had a printer and a fax machine right next to our trailer. One guy came down from Pennsylvania—a computer whiz. He was the person who set the whole thing up. It was a network. Started solely to pressure Jeb Bush.