A Life That Matters (8 page)

Sheehan filed for a rehearing motion, but Penick denied it. The judge was right. The case was closed. What’s more, the court ruled that all Michael’s legal expenses were to be paid from Terri’s medical fund, made up of the money he had won for her in the malpractice trial which he had pledged for her rehabilitation.

We felt abandoned, trapped in a court system where a judge can overturn the findings of his own investigator without explaining why and without giving the other side a chance to appeal. I was utterly bewildered. It was like watching frontier justice at work in an old western movie.

Some months later, we got a notice from Michael’s lawyer asking if we wanted to pursue the case further. We called Sheehan. “There’s nowhere to go with it,” he said, and the case was permanently closed.

It was closed “with prejudice,” Sheehan told us, but it was only much later that we learned what the term meant. Not only could we not question Penick’s ruling ever again, but we could not refile, in any instance, to have Michael removed as guardian.
⁴

We made so many mistakes in those first years! Lack of money was one reason: we simply couldn’t afford lawyers’ fees to pursue other avenues open to us. Optimism was another. Each time we went into court, or faced a hospital decision that went against Terri, we believed that justice would eventually triumph. After all, we were
right
—right to fight for Terri’s well-being, right to insist on our say in her care, right that she deserved the best care and legal consideration. I in particular
knew
that everything would come out well.
How could anyone hurt Terri
?
It was inhuman, inhumane, unthinkable.

We were so naïve.

Whenever we visited Terri at Sabal Palms, the nursing staff would complain to us about Michael’s behavior. Some of them told us he bullied them, and shouted at them when they did not obey his orders, to the point where the Sabal Palms administration tried to limit his access to Terri. Terry Russell, the administrator, had flatly refused to deny Terri medication, and we were led to believe that Sabal Palms had been inclined to join us in our suit against Michael’s guardianship. As far as I was concerned, Terri might have been comfortable at Sabal Palms, but Michael wasn’t. So in 1994, he moved Terri to the Palm Gardens nursing home in Largo, where he continued to warehouse her, and there was nothing we could do about it.

I fluctuate in my feelings toward Michael (much more than Bob, Bobby, or Suzanne), for I think back to the time at the beginning when Terri shone with love for him. For a long time, he was simply my son-in-law, part of the family. But it seemed to me then, and even more so now, that this moving of Terri was unconscionable.

Terri’s transfer to Palm Gardens ensured, in effect, that Michael could do with Terri pretty much what he wanted, could keep back any medical information we sought.

Terri received no physical, speech, or occupational therapy at Palm Gardens during the five years she was there. She was washed, fed, dressed, put in a wheelchair in the morning, put down for a nap in the afternoon, put back in the wheelchair in the evening, and then put into bed for the night. I visited as often as I could. Most times, Terri would brighten when she saw me, grow dispirited when I left, but sometimes she gave no sign of recognition, made no movement to indicate she was aware of her surroundings. She simply sat passively, strapped to her chair, lost in a world no one could enter.

Those times made my heart ache. But then she would revive, and she became my daughter again—injured, God knows, but warm and sweet and precious. Alive to me, as I was to her.

We speak of the years 1994 to 2000 as the “lull” in Terri’s case, the time from her transfer to Palm Gardens to Michael’s suit to
have her feeding tube removed. Our days routinely included visits
to Terri, but we went to work, shared dinners and phone calls, and tried to remind ourselves that there were other aspects to our daily lives.

Still, neither side was inactive.

Michael certainly wasn’t inactive in his personal life. Terri’s girlhood friend Sue Kolb, now married and living in Pennsylvania, called me in July 1997.

“Did you see the obituary?” she asked.

“What obituary?”

“Michael’s mother died.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.” I was. I’d always liked Claire, though I hadn’t spoken to her since the rift between us and Michael.

“You know how in obituaries they always mention the siblings?”

“Of course.”

“Well, this one says, ‘survived by Michael Schiavo and his fiancée, Jodi Centonze.’”

I was appalled. Not only did the obituary not mention Terri, to whom Michael was still legally married,
⁵
but now he had a “fiancée.” It made me sick at my stomach. We’d heard that Michael was living with another woman, and it made me sick. But to announce in the newspaper that he was going to marry her? That was too much.

All I could think of was how happy Terri was on her wedding day. Then I remembered Michael’s using his wedding vows to make an impression on the medical malpractice jury. How hurt Terri would have been if she had known!

Michael’s handlers were busy on the legal front as well.

On August 23, 1997, we got a letter from a lawyer named George Felos announcing that the “court in your daughter’s guardianship” had employed him “in the issue of withdrawal and/or refusal of medical treatment for your daughter.” Felos quickly became Michael’s champion. It is un-Christian not to love him, but I cannot do so. Felos might have been following Michael’s wishes during the ensuing years when he argued for him, protected him, schemed for him, twisted truth for him. But we believe that it was Felos’s strategy, not Michael’s, that dictated the course that led to the death of my daughter. Maybe he had a political agenda—to become a spokesman for the euthanasia movement—and used Michael as his willing tool.

In 1995, some two years
before
he sent us the letter, Felos and Michael’s guardianship lawyer, Deborah Bushnell, began to work out a legal strategy, almost surely for the removal of Terri’s feeding tube. We know this because a court document (Bushnell’s accounting of her costs) records at least one call between the two of them “
re
assistance with the analysis of life-prolonging procedures.”

Ignorant of the Bushnell-Felos conversations, which might have superseded all other issues, we hired an attorney named Alan Grossman to argue to the courts that we should be able to obtain Terri’s medical records, which had been cut off to us since 1993.
It took him several months, but he finally prevailed, and the
court granted us access to the medical information, though not to Terri’s finances. That was the deal: medical records, yes; financial records, no.

It did us no good. I went to Palm Gardens armed with the court order and asked for the records. “I’m sorry,” they said. “We can’t release them without Mr. Schiavo’s permission, and Mr. Schiavo says you cannot have any medical information.”

I brandished the paper. “But I have a court order—”

They were implacable. “Sorry.”

Bob called Grossman. “They’re not honoring the order,” he told the lawyer.

“That’s terrible!” he said. “We’ll have to file a suit and set up a hearing.”

“A suit? A hearing? How much time would it take? How much would it cost?”

Grossman named a figure. I forget the exact amount, but we couldn’t afford it. “We’ll accumulate the money,” Bob consoled me. But by the time we had enough money, the matter of Terri’s medical records was submerged under far more important matters.

In May 1998, Michael filed a petition with the probate court to have Terri’s feeding tube removed.

Just writing that sentence brings back the horror of the moment we found out about it: August 23, 1997. I remember thinking that this couldn’t be coming from Michael, my son-in-law. Seven years earlier, he had fought side by side with me for her recovery; a husband who loved his wife could not conceivably petition for her death. Bob felt like someone had sucker-punched him in the stomach. Michael was trying to murder his daughter! Like Suzanne, he thought Michael was sick to even consider such a petition.

Still, the petition
did
come from Michael, and I could feel my heart harden toward him.
He
might not love her enough to try to get her better, I thought, but her family did.

I thought of what Michael did to Terri’s cats when he wanted them out of the way. Now Terri! I couldn’t sleep for a week. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see Terri looking at me, begging for my help. Eating made me sick. Maybe it was my unconscious saying I shouldn’t eat if my little girl was going to be starved. I reassured myself that no judge would ever allow anyone to die of starvation. The thought did little to ease my pain.

The case didn’t come into court until January 2000, perhaps because the court was waiting for the Florida Legislature to enact a law, championed by Felos, allowing feeding tubes to be declared artificial life support. (The feeding tube was the only “support” Terri needed, and to us it was as though the law was tantamount to declaring IVs artificial life support, which would put a whole lot of not very sick patients in danger of having them removed.)

By that time, we had hired a lawyer, Pamela Campbell, to represent us, and her optimism heartened us. Still, this was a terrible time. I can’t possibly convey the anxiety we continued to feel or the pain of arising each morning thinking,
They’re trying to kill our Terri.

Until 2000, we were an ordinary family afflicted with a private tragedy. Now, however, we were about to plunge into a five-year siege in which the name Terri Schiavo became known throughout the world. And our lives—psychological, professional, philosophical, emotional—would be transformed forever.

CHAPTER 8

Permission Granted

A friend of Bobby’s knew George Greer, the judge who would preside over Michael’s application to have Terri’s feeding tube removed. “He’s a good man,” Bobby’s friend said a few days before the trial was to begin. “A man of God. He has a good reputation. I think it’ll be a fair trial.”
¹

We were sure that as soon as he heard our arguments, Judge Greer would throw the case out; nevertheless, I was sick with worry, and so was Bob, whose high blood pressure—a threat all his life—was acting up again. The tension was relentless.
A judge, a stranger, was going to decide whether Terri lived or died.
It seemed to me unfair and unfeeling. Judge Greer didn’t know Terri. And now we were told that his word could take her from us? Insane!

The hearing, which would run for five days, started on January 24, 2000, in Clearwater. At Felos’s request, the venue had been moved from St. Petersburg to Clearwater, which was the lawyer’s home turf. Felos had been working on the case from 1995 forward, so he really had a chance to prepare himself. We didn’t think much preparation was necessary for our side; we were sure to win. Felos was just a name to us then. We didn’t know he specialized in euthanasia cases. We didn’t know how dangerous he was.

The courtroom reminded Bobby of one he had seen in the movie
The Verdict
, all high ceilings and large windows, with scarred wooden pews and jurors’ chairs. (There would be no jurors present at the hearing, of course; the decision would be Judge Greer’s alone.) We were represented by attorney Pamela Campbell, who, attended by her assistant, was delighted with the southern-type setting. “The perfect ambience,” she told us.

Michael arrived with George Felos and Felos’s wife, Constance, also a lawyer—she often worked with him. Bob, Suzanne, Bobby, and Bobby’s girlfriend Lori Stewart arrived with me; Michael’s father and his father’s lady friend came with Michael. Bobby and Lori had faxed a letter to the press about the abomination being perpetrated on Terri—perhaps a public outcry would stop it, they thought. Only the local ABC channel and a reporter from the
St. Petersburg Times
showed up. So the courtroom, which seemed to me cavernous and menacing, was virtually deserted.

Judge Greer entered. He was a slight man, about five-six or five-seven and balding, looking more like a CPA than a judge, and as I watched him take his seat, I prayed that he would be just and wise and would spare Terri.

The first day was devoted to the opening arguments. Michael and Felos had to prove two things in order for the feeding tube to be removed: that Terri would wish it and that Terri was in a persistent vegetative state under Florida law. In her opening statement, to our amazement, Pamela acknowledged that Terri was PVS.
But that’s half our case!
we wanted to scream. Her rationale for this tactic was that she wasn’t sure she could find a doctor who would disagree with that diagnosis, and that if we were to bring in a doctor to examine Terri, Felos would be present at the examination and could use against us any negative finding the doctor might make. In retrospect, however, not bringing in our own doctor was a terrible mistake.

As for Terri’s wishes: Felos’s contention that she’d expressed them stunned us. She hadn’t! There was no evidence for it! Surely she’d have mentioned such wishes to her parents, her siblings, or her friends at one time or another over the years. But no one could recall her saying anything about them at any time. Yes, Michael would testify that Terri had expressed a wish to die if she was incapacitated, contrary to what he said in his November 1993 deposition, but what judge would decide against Terri on the basis of one man’s word—and a man with his own agenda, at that?

We had given our depositions the previous September, simple, unembellished statements that Terri had shown undeniable signs of awareness, that she could follow us with her eyes, that she could laugh and move, and that she was even capable of swallowing baby food. George Felos had taken the depositions, and I found him cordial.

But we were unprepared for what we should say in our depositions to counteract what Michael was likely to say, and unprepared for the hearing itself. Bob had half assumed Greer would throw the case out, particularly in view of a recent interim guardian’s report.