“That’s what it sounds like to me!” Sullivan called over his shoulder as he flung the door open and stepped out into the crisp autumn sunshine. The receptionist watched them go, her eyes wide with interest.
“It would!” Ellen yelled, marching out behind him. “You don’t give me any credit at all. None! You’re selfish, Sullivan Proctor! Selfish and cruel.”
They reached the car, and Sullivan unlocked the doors, not bothering to hold Ellen’s door open for her as he usually did. His anger was deep and barely restrained.
“It’s cruel to want to keep you with me? It’s cruel for me to want to live? To want you to live?” He slid behind the wheel and inserted the key. Then he turned to her, his eyes hard. “I’ll tell you what’s cruel. Cruel is taking food and water and medical treatment away from a helpless sick person, someone too weak to fight back. Cruel is starving someone to death who can’t defend himself. I can’t believe you would do that! You’re not the person I thought you were, Ellen. I don’t think I can trust you to make decisions for me.”
“You don’t trust me?” Tears of rage shone in her eyes. “Well, I don’t trust your ass either! How could you insist on keeping my body alive, suffering, possibly for months or even years? Not able to talk, or hear, or move. It’d be a living hell! And you’d put me through that? Now, that’s cruelty! And it’s purely selfish. All because of what YOU want. Nothing about what I want. All to save you grief.”
“It wouldn’t save me any grief, Ellen. If anything happened to you, I’d be grieving more than you can imagine.” Sullivan’s voice held a note of anguish. He started the car, backed out, and pulled carefully into traffic. In a burst of renewed anger, he hit the brakes harder than necessary at the corner and then accelerated recklessly. That was one habit of Sully’s that Ellen disliked intensely, his tendency to express his anger or frustration behind the wheel.
“Slow down, Sully,” she cautioned. He threw her a look of irritation, but backed off the accelerator in deference to her request. It dawned on him they were each focused only on their individual concerns. Logic asserted itself and told him there were four issues here: What would happen to him if he got sick, what would happen to her if she got sick, and each person’s individual response to the situation. But to hell with logic; he decided to appeal to Ellen's emotions.
“Don’t you have any compassion?” He shot her a sideways look, brief but filled with a confused hurt.
“Don’t you?” she returned, equally wounded.
“Look, I love you, Ellen.” Sully took a deep breath. “I love you, goddammit! I’m not going to stop just because you become ill, get hurt in an accident, or get old and feeble.”
“I know that,” Ellen said, her voice still shaky. “But, it wouldn’t be fair to me. And it wouldn’t be fair to you either. I wouldn’t want to live that way! And, you shouldn’t want me to live that way. If you really love me, you’d respect my wishes.”
“Your wishes are wrong,” he stated flatly, and her anger flared again.
“You think you’re so perfect. You think you always have the right answer, and that your way is the only way. I get so tired of it sometimes.” She stared sightlessly out the passenger window, locked in her own thoughts and resentments.
“So, if you get sick, you’d just give up? Leave me? You wouldn’t even try to fight it? I mean so little to you?” He choked on the words. “How could you just leave me?”
Ellen's voice became gentle. "Honey, if I'm that sick, then I’m already gone. It wouldn’t be a choice.”
He slammed the palms of his hands on the steering wheel. “Bullshit! It is a fucking choice and you’re making it right now.”
She felt her anger suddenly dissipate. His agony was heartbreaking to witness. How could she make him understand?
“You’re right, Sully! It’s my choice. I have the right to make it just as much as you have the right to make your choice." She turned in the seat to look at him. "I would never want to leave you. I love you, too. You know that. Sully, you know that. But we’re talking about my body, my life!” She was surprised to see the glimmer of unshed tears in his eyes. They pulled into their driveway and got out. He waited for her on the sidewalk in spite of his anger, and they walked into the house together. As soon as the door closed behind them, the argument resumed.
“We’re talking about my life, too,” he pointed out, tossing his keys onto the hallway table and shrugging out of his jacket. “What would my life be if something happened to you?”
“You’d grieve. But then you’d go on. You’d eventually find someone else, and I’d want you to.”
“I feel like puking.” He sunk to the couch, his expression a mixture of frustration and pain. Ellen put her purse on the coffee table and sat next to him.
“It’s a tough subject,” she agreed. “But I’m glad it came up. We need to find some resolution to this.”
“I just can’t believe life means so little to you,” Sullivan said. “I can’t believe you would let go of it so easily. So, if something happened to me, you’d just give up? Pull the plug on me?”
“No,” she said carefully. “I’d respect your wishes.”
He groaned as her words skewered him. “Touché, Ellen.”
“You’ve never had to make that kind of decision, have you?” Ellen asked, her voice gentle. She picked up his hand and held it tenderly. He was unresponsive, stiff.
“Neither have you,” he replied
“No, not personally. But I saw my mom go through it with Grandma Rhonda when she had her heart attack. It’s horrific. What a burden to put on somebody. It broke her heart to take Grandma off life support.” Ellen shivered.
“Well, she didn’t have to do it.”
“Yes, she did.” Ellen was firm. “Grandma wasn’t going to get better. It was her time to go, Sully. Keeping her alive was just postponing the inevitable.”
“Yeah, well, I have a story like that, too.” He turned to her, his eyes hard as flint. “You’ve met my cousin’s daughter, Lucinda. What you don't know is that Lucy was born prematurely, was very small, less than two pounds. At that time, they couldn’t do what they can today for preemies. The doctors gave my cousin a choice of turning off the respirator. Little Lucy had all kinds of things wrong with her, and she’d had a brain hemorrhage that day. The doctors predicted she would never recover. If she did, they said, she’d be little more than a vegetable. They told my cousin and his wife to think about letting her go. Well, they thought it over for about two seconds, and then they refused. And today she’s alive, twenty some years later. It didn’t happen overnight. It took a long time for her to heal. But, she’s alive and well today.”
“That’s different,” Ellen said. “She was a baby with her whole life in front of her, and she couldn’t make the decision for herself. I can understand why they made the choice they did. But, my grandma was old and debilitated.”
“I see,” he said coldly. “When you’re old, you’re not worth anything anymore.”
“God! You make me furious!” Ellen withdrew her hand and stood. She paced back and forth in front of the picture window.
“Look,” she said, trying to be reasonable. “Why are we doing this to ourselves? We probably won’t have to even worry about it for years. Years! We’re young and healthy. Nothing is going to happen to either of us for a long time.”
“Maybe, but you never know.” Sullivan felt a chill walk up his back on small icy feet. Later, he would think of it as a premonition.
As usual, they made up in bed with tender words and gentle touches. But Sullivan’s feelings for Ellen had been altered subtly. Although he loved her as much as ever, he felt that her particular set of experiences had warped her judgment. He still believed his way was the better way. When they went back to the attorney’s office later that month to execute their wills, end-of-life decisions were not discussed. No such documents were drawn up, not a living will for her, or its opposing counterpart for him. Sully didn’t know until Ellen’s illness that she had taken care of it secretly, at her doctor’s office. Her advanced directive was put in place, waiting in a file somewhere to confound and hurt him when the unthinkable happened.