"I worked at a hospital for twenty years," the tan, white-haired woman said, "and I witnessed firsthand the abuses that took place in the name of treatment. Real compassion isn't creating vegetables. Real compassion is scientists putting their heads together to create a measurement scale that would quantify suffering. Those who score above a predetermined criterion could then be helped in a timely manner even if they lacked the capacity to liberate themselves."
Reaction to Zoghbie's proposal by local religious leaders was swift and negative. Catholic Bishop Ar-mand Rodriguez termed the plan "a call to genocide," and Dr. Archie Van Sandt of the Mount Zion Baptist Church accused Zoghbie of being "an instrument of cancerous secularism." Rabbi Eugene Brandner of Temple Emanu-El said that Zoghbie's ideas were "certainly not in line with Jewish thought at any point along the spectrum."
An unattributed statement by the Socrates Club issued two days later attempted to qualify Zoghbie's remarks, terming them "an impetus to discussion rather than a policy statement."
Dr. J. Randolph Smith, director of the Western Medical Association's Committee on Medical Ethics, viewed the disavowal with some skepticism. "A simple reading of the transcript shows this was a perfectly clear expression of philosophy and intent. The slippery slope yawns before us, and groups such as the Socrates Club seem intent on shoving us down into the abyss of amorality. Given further acceptance of views such as Ms. Zoghbie's, it's only a matter of time before the legalization of murder of those who say they want to die gives way to the murder of those who have never asked to die, as is now the case in the Netherlands."
I logged off, called Milo at the station. A young man answered his phone, asked me who I was with some suspicion and put me on hold.
A few seconds later, Milo said, "Hi."
"New secretary?"
"Detective Stephen Korn. One of my little helpers. What's up?"
"Got some stuff for you, but nothing profound." Got a resolved ethical issue, too, but I'll save that for later.
"What kind of stuff?" he said.
"Mostly biography and the expected controversy, but Alice Zoghbie's name came up-"
"Alice Zoghbie just called me," he said. "Back in L.A. and willing to talk."
"Thought she wasn't due for two days."
"She cut her trip short. Distraught about Mate."
"Delayed grief reaction?" I said. "Mate's been dead for a week."
"She claims she didn't hear about it till yesterday. Was up in Nepal somewhere-climbing mountains, the Amsterdam thing was the tail end of her trip, big confab of death freaks from all over the world. Not the place to choke on your chicken salad, huh? Anyway, Zoghbie says she had no access to news in Nepal, got to Amsterdam three days ago, her hosts met her at the airport and gave her the news. She slept over one day, booked a return flight."
"So she arrived two days ago," I said. "Still a bit of delay before she called you. Giving herself time to think?"
"Composing herself. Her quote."
"When are you meeting her? "
"Three hours at her place." He recited the Glenmont address.
"Socrates Club headquarters," I said. "Found their website. Hundred bucks to join, credit-card friendly. Wonder how many of her bills that pays."
"You don't trust this lady's intentions?"
"Her views don't inspire trust. She thinks senile old folks and handicapped kids should be put out of their misery, whether they want to be or not. Got the quotes for you-part of today's work product. Along with assorted other goodies, including some other death-freak stuff and more weirdness."
I told him about Roger Sharveneau and the other hospital ghouls, finished with Zero Tollrance's exhibition.
"Cute," he said. "The art world's always been a warm and fuzzy place."
"One thing about Tollrance I found particularly interesting: he posed Mate in The Anatomy Lesson as wielding the scalpel and getting flayed."
"So?"
"It implies a certain ambivalence-wanting to play doctor on the doctor."
"You're saying I should take this guy seriously?"
"Might be interesting to talk to him."
"Tollrance, like that's a real name… Denver… I'll see what I can find."
"How far down the family list have your little helpers gotten?" I said.
"All the way down in terms of locating phone numbers and first attempts at contact," he said. "They've talked to about half the sample. Everyone loves Mate."
Not everyone. "Want me to come along to meet Alice inDeathland?"
"Sure," he said. "Look how cruel life can be. Climbing mountains in Nepal one day, enduring the police the next… She's probably one of those fit types, body image uber alles."
"Depends on whose body you're talking about."
CHAPTER 7
WE AGREED TO meet at the station in two hours and I hung up. I'd intended to bring up the Doss family but hadn't. My excuse: some topics didn't lend themselves to phone chat.
I wanted to know more about Eldon Mate the physician, so I drove over to the Bio-Med library at the U., found myself a terminal. The periodicals index gave me a few more magazine articles but nothing new. I scanned scientific databases for any technical articles Mate might have published, not expecting anything in view of his lackluster career, but I found two citations: a Chemical Abstracts reference that led me to a thirty-year-old letter to the editor Mate had written in response to an article about polymerization-something about small molecules combining to create large molecules and the potential for better gasoline. Mate disagreed crankily. The author of the article, a professor at MIT, had dismissed Mate's comments as irrelevant. Mate's title, back then, had been assistant research chemist, ITEG Petroleum.
The second reference appeared in MEDLINE, sixteen years old, also a letter, this time in a Swedish pathology journal. Mate had his MD by then, cited his affiliation at Oxford Hill Hospital in Oakland, California. No title. No mention that he was a lowly intern.
The second letter didn't argue with anyone. Titled "Precise Measurement of Time of Death: A Social Boon," it began with a quote by Sir Thomas Browne:
"We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases."
Mate went on to bemoan the stigma associated with cellular cessation, and subsequent moral cowardice exhibited by physicians when dealing with parathanatological phenomena. As the ultimate caretakers of body and that fiction known as "soul," we must do everything in our power to demystify the process of life termination, utilizing the scientific tools at our disposal to avoid needless prolongation of "life" that is the fruit of theology-based myths.
In this regard, quantification of precise time of death will be useful in robbing the myth mongers of their fictions and save costs that accrue from the needless employment of so-called heroic measures that create nothing more than respirating corpses.
Along these lines, I have attempted to discern which outward physical manifestations advertise the precise shutoff of vital systems. The central nervous system often continues to fire synaptically well after the heart stops beating and vice versa. Even a high-school biology student can keep a pithed frog's heart beating for a substantial "postmortem" period through the use of stimulant drugs. Furthermore, brain death is not a discrete event, and this fact leads to confusion and uncertainty.
I have thus looked for other changes, specifically ocular and muscular alterations, that correlate with our best judgment of thanatological progress. I have sat at the bedside of numerous premortem patients, gazing into their eyes and studying minute movements of their faces. Though this research is in the formative stage, I am encouraged by what appears to be a dual manifestation of cardiac and neurological shutoff typified by simultaneous twitchlike movement of the eyes combined with a measurable slackening of the lips. In some patients, I have also discerned an audible noise that appears to manifest sublaryngitically- perhaps the "death rattle" commonly cited in popular fiction. However, this does not occur in all patients and is best dispensed with in favor of the aforementioned ocular-muscular phenomenon I label the "lights-out" syndrome. I suggest that this event be studied in great detail for its potential in serving as a simple yet precise indicator of cellular surrender.