Life Support (47 page)

When Pinchot paused, Alexia stood. “Your Honor, if there are not going to be any questions for my client, may she come down from the witness stand?”

“Mr. Pinchot, are you going to have any cross-examination of the witness within the guidelines I've set?” the judge asked.

Pinchot glared at Rena for several seconds. Alexia held her breath. Based on Rena's outbursts in the ICU, there was no predicting her client's response to the pressure of the moment. As Alexia watched, it appeared that Rena was looking strangely past Pinchot and focusing on someone else in the room. Suspecting Detective Porter had moved to a different seat, Alexia turned slightly, but there was no one in the area where Rena was staring.

“Not if you allow me the right to recall her as an adverse witness during the presentation of my case,” Pinchot said.

Judge Holcomb didn't hide her exasperation. Pinchot was clearly trying to bait the judge into making errors that he could argue to a higher court.

“Ask your questions now,” the judge replied in a steely voice that hardened the lilt of her southern accent.

Pinchot bowed slightly. “No questions.”

Rena came down from the witness stand and joined Alexia. The lawyer could see beads of perspiration on her client's upper lip. There was still a glazed look in Rena's eyes. Alexia leaned forward and picked up the documents to tender into evidence.

“He was here,” Rena whispered.

“I know,” Alexia said, thinking she was referring to Detective Porter. “He's at the back of the courtroom.”

Rena shook her head, “No, Baxter.”

“What?” Alexia asked.

“He was standing behind the other lawyer.”

The pressure of the courtroom affected people differently, but a visual hallucination was a new manifestation to Alexia. She stared incredulously at Rena and groped for a response.

“Uh, close your eyes,” she said. “Maybe he'll go away.”

“Oh, he's gone. It's okay. I'm fine now.”

The judge spoke out, “Proceed, Ms. Lindale.”

Alexia abandoned her surreal conversation with Rena. “Your Honor, I resubmit petitioner's exhibits one and two—the declaration of desire for a natural death and the health care power of attorney.”

“Subject to my offer of proof, respondent has no objection,” Pinchot replied.

“Admitted,” the judge said. “Call your next witness.”

“That's all for the petitioner,” Alexia said.

“Very well. Court will be in recess for ten minutes before the respondent presents his case.”

Ted Morgan had spent a busy morning building a deck onto the back of a house not far from the church. The hammering and sawing had occupied his attention, and he didn't think about Alexia's hearing until he stopped for lunch shortly before one o'clock. While munching an apple and standing at his kitchen window, he let his mind return to their phone conversation the previous evening. A sense of heaviness settled on him.

Ted had been with people who made the difficult decision to terminate life support. He agreed with the writer of Ecclesiastes that there was a time to die. In some instances, the continuation of extraordinary means of life support prolonged the suffering of both the dying and the living. But there was no cookie-cutter answer. Each situation carried the responsibility of seeking God's heart and mind.

The heaviness Ted felt when thinking about Alexia and Baxter Richardson lingered while he finished his apple. He considered going to the church to play the piano, but the idea didn't fit his mood. He spoke a short prayer for direction. Nothing came, and he decided to go for a walk through the cemetery. He stepped outside into the backyard. Several ocean-born clouds drifted across the sky and cast shadows like great ships as they passed overhead.

The graveyard was not a morbid place for Ted. The epitaphs chiseled on some of the gravestones were words of triumph and hope that brought encouragement from the past to the present. Walking slowly along the rows of ancient and modern markers brought order to his thoughts. He occasionally turned in the direction of the cemetery as a place of revelation.

The oldest graves were near the church, and only a few remained visible. In most areas it took no more than ten or fifteen steps to leave one century and enter another. Most of the earliest tombstones, from as far back as the 1700s, were broken pieces of nameless marble with the identity of those memorialized lost to anonymity. But some markers remained, and Ted stopped at the grave of a man named Archibald Murphy who lived from 1726 until 1798. His life spanned the birth of a nation, and the inscription on the narrow gravestone proclaimed,
He believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

Ted prayed, “Lord, I believe you will intervene in this situation and ask for your righteousness to be revealed.”

He walked on. The 1800s covered a broader and more ragged expanse of territory. Several people who died before the Civil War had been buried so far from the church that their plots weren't encompassed within the bounds of the rest of the cemetery until the late 1900s. It puzzled Ted why the distant grave sites were chosen. Perhaps even in death, the deceased refused to be reconciled with their neighbors. Whatever the reason, the unwritten stories of a single graveyard could fill a thousand books.

He stopped before a small tombstone topped with a tiny lamb. It marked the grave of an infant girl named Maybeth Wells who had died two days after her birth in January 1851. The inscription on the marker read:
A rose taken to heaven before she bloomed on earth.
There was no obvious connection between Maybeth Wells and Baxter Richardson, but when he saw the inscription, Ted knew how to pray.

38

Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labour and to wait.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

R
ena hesitantly glanced over her shoulder. Giles Porter was no longer in the courtroom. She turned to Alexia who was rearranging papers on the table.

“I'm going to splash some water on my face,” she said.

“That's a good idea,” Alexia replied without looking up from her notes. “You need to clear your mind. I'm going to try to ask Drs. Kolb and Berman a few questions before the judge returns.”

Rena saw that her father-in-law was in a huddle with Ken Pinchot and Dr. Kolb. The other two doctors were casually sitting next to one another talking. No one paid any attention to her as she walked down the aisle and pushed open the large wooden door at the rear of the courtroom.

The hallway was empty, and Rena was able to breathe. Her chest hurt, and she could feel a tension headache beginning to form at the base of her skull. The ordeal on the witness stand had been worse than she imagined. Twice a scream had clawed its way up her throat and demanded to be released through her lips. Once when Detective Porter appeared at the back of the courtroom and again when Pinchot blamed her for Baxter's accident. Each time Rena grimly clamped her teeth shut and kept the outburst imprisoned. But it had not been easy, and she was exhausted. One slip and she would be destroyed.

The sudden appearance of Baxter standing on the other side of the courtroom had not triggered the overwhelming fear of her husband's first few manifestations. Baxter was detached, casually watching the events unfold that would determine whether he lived or died. He didn't seem to care. Forcing herself to look in his eyes, Rena saw that the malevolent glare from the backseat of the SUV had been replaced by a hint of pity. He left quietly when she glanced at Alexia.

Inside the restroom, she cupped her hands and filled them with water. She dried her face with a rough paper towel and studied her reflection in the mirror. The depths of her eyes contained a reservoir of pent-up sorrow. She stared at herself, and whether from a moment of genuine self-reflection or as a result of the enormous emotional pressures in the courtroom, honest tears burned hot in her eyes. Immediately, she fought to suppress them and pressed the damp paper towel tightly against her closed eyelids. In a moment she felt the warmth of her tears through the paper towel and against her fingertips.

She took two deep breaths. Rena had to win this battle. Loss of control would mean loss of her life. She pressed harder against her eyes until they hurt. The pain helped stem the flood of self-pity, and she calmed down. After correcting the flaws in her makeup, she returned to the courtroom.

Alexia walked over to Dr. Berman and interrupted his conversation with Dr. Draughton.

“Dr. Berman, could I speak with you for a few minutes before the judge returns?”

“Are you wondering whether I disagree with Dr. Draughton about maintaining life support for Mr. Richardson?”

Startled by the physician's directness, Alexia said, “Well, I had a few other questions, but that's the most important one.”

“You are about to find out that there are three opinions in the courtroom,” Dr. Berman said as he patted Dr. Draughton on the shoulder. “His, mine, and Dr. Kolb's. In this case, I think there are many factors favoring termination of life support, but there are not enough present for me to recommend it as the next step.”

Alexia glanced over her shoulder at Dr. Kolb, who was still talking to Ken Pinchot. “What does Dr. Kolb think?”

Dr. Berman looked at Dr. Draughton. “How would you describe his position?”

“As wrong. He can't be so confident that the patient doesn't have significant damage due to hypoxia. The readings are clear—”

“Not the ones taken last week,” Dr. Berman interrupted.

“You heard my testimony,” Dr. Draughton retorted. “Those were the least accurate in the entire series. I had a virtually identical situation with an eighteen-year-old woman in Washington, D.C. The neurosurgeon refused to face the facts, and three weeks later the girl died anyway.”

The doctors' debate wasn't getting her anywhere, and every minute was precious. Alexia felt her stomach churning. She interrupted.

“What factors do all of you agree support termination of life support?” she asked.

Dr. Draughton answered. “The readings from the left side of the brain, where he suffered the primary trauma to the skull, have been uniformly abysmal. Even Dr. Kolb has to admit it.”

Dr. Berman shrugged. “That's a factor; however, it's not right to pull it out of context. You're doing the same thing you accused me of doing. We don't know what effect—”

The judge returned, and the sound of the bailiff calling the court to order ended further debate. Alexia gave up and returned to her table. Rena joined her seconds later.

“What did Dr. Berman say?” Rena whispered.

“Not much. Apparently, none of the doctors agree. We'll find out in a few minutes.”

“Proceed, Mr. Pinchot,” the judge said.

Ken stood. “I call Ezra Richardson.”

Because the judge was already familiar with Baxter's condition, Pinchot could take the opposite tack from Alexia. His client would testify first with the medical evidence to follow. Alexia suspected that Pinchot considered Dr. Kolb his strongest weapon and wanted to end on a convincing note.

As Ezra Richardson solemnly took his place in the witness chair, Alexia replayed her confrontation with him in the ICU waiting room. Her cross-examination questions were designed to uncork Ezra's rage and create suspicion in the judge's mind about his true motivation for keeping Baxter alive. However, after Judge Holcomb summarily shut down Pinchot's attempt to portray Rena as a gold digger, Alexia wasn't sure the judge would let her implement her plan.

Pinchot began by asking Ezra questions about his background and business activities.

“Mr. Richardson, how long have you lived in the Santee area?”

“All my life. My parents and grandparents on both sides of my family lived in Santee.”

“Is your wife still living?”

“No. She passed away several years ago. I have many cousins and relatives, but the only immediate family I have are my two sons, Jeffrey and Baxter.” Ezra looked at the judge. “And I love both of them very much.”

Pinchot let Ezra's statement linger for a second before continuing.

“Mr. Richardson, how are you employed?”

“I am the CEO of Richardson and Company, a real-estate development and holding firm started by my father. I also own a small company that manufactures golf equipment.”

“What is the name of the company that manufactures golf equipment?”

“Flight Right. We make golf balls and a line of specialized putters.”

“What role do your sons take in the business?”

“They own a minority interest, and my intent was to groom the boys to take over the business within the next few years so that I could retire.”

Before Pinchot could ask another question, Judge Holcomb spoke up.

“Move on, counselor,” she said. “I accept the fact that Mr. Richardson is a businessman who has two sons. I don't need to hear a lot of detail unless it's relevant to establishing the witness as an expert on the issue to be decided.”

Ken cleared his throat. “My purpose is to show that Mr. Richardson is the type of person who should be allowed to exercise the powers granted to him by the durable power of attorney.”

Judge Holcomb hesitated and then said, “Proceed, but make it succinct.”

Buoyed by his modest victory, Ken pressed on.

“Please tell the judge about your involvement in the Santee community.”

Ezra sat up straighter in his chair. “I'm on the board of directors for our oldest, locally owned bank, and over the years I've been the chairperson for various fund-raising committees. I was recognized as Santee citizen of the year by the chamber of commerce about ten years ago.”

Pinchot showed the durable power of attorney to Ezra, who identified it.

Holding the document in his hand, Pinchot asked, “Why did you ask Baxter to sign this power of attorney?”