Saving Elijah

Elijah's life support would be like murder? But his colleague said it was an option.
    "Handicapped?" Sam says, rising from the chair. "Handicapped is a person in a wheelchair, handicapped is a child with some kind of palsy, handicapped is retarded. A handicapped person has limitations but he knows you are there, knows he is there, can communicate in some way. How can you call our son handicapped when he has no brain left? Your own colleague said there is nothing left in his brain that's normal. He cannot possibly have any consciousness. He can't even feel pain."
    Dart-dart. "We don't know that."
    Dr. Lambert shifts position in her seat. She does not volunteer her own opinion as to Elijah's capacity to feel pain. No one suggests that he can feel anything except pain. Seems to me I read in one of those books I'm always looking at that pain is the last sense to go. Or is it smell? But Elijah doesn't smell anything, either. Could he be smelling and just not able to show it?
    "Dr. Angus said we should consider removing the respirator," Sam says.
    I realize that Sam has come to a decision: He wants to remove it. I haven't even begun to think about that, I'll need a thousand years to think about it.
    There could be a miracle, couldn't there? Maybe Dr. Angus is wrong. No. Destroyed Brain Tissue Doesn't Grow Back. Even Moore isn't saying it can do that. But why not, why not? What about the Dead Sea Parting, the Fishes into Loaves? No. I don't believe in that. But Sam is Catholic, he should believe in fishes into loaves.
    Wheels within wheels, within wheels. I have to stop this, I have to pull this plug, but if I pull the plug he won't be alive anymore, but so what, he's not alive now, so I need to pull this plug, but how can I assume that responsibility, but if not me, then who?
    Not to decide is in itself a decision. Don't decide and your son spends his life lying there because you keep forcing air into his lungs. And what if he's crying to go, what if his soul is hovering right in the corner of his room, hovering and saying, "Set me free."
    "Well," Sam says. "I guess we're stuck, then. He can't go to hospice with the respirator, and we have to give consent for the doctors to do this operation here if we want them to take him at Laurel. So what happens if we don't give consent?"
    Dr. Lambert shrugs. "He'll stay here. We can't release him unless we release him to somewhere."
    Ah. Catch 44.
    "Look," Dr. Moore says, "all I'm saying is that you should wait. You don't yet know what the outcome will be. He could regain some function, with time."
    "Please, Sam, we have to let them do the operation," I say. I wonder if they give a vegetative child who can't feel any pain an anesthetic when they operate on him. And when they finish, do they come out and assure you the operation went just fine?

    *    *    *

    "You think I haunt you," the ghost said now, as I came out of the abominable imagining. "Abner Moore will haunt you the rest of your ruined life."
    I realized that, lost in my future, I had unknowingly strayed over to the Spanish child's bed in the far corner of the PICU. I was just standing there, with the ever-present ghost beside me. No one seemed to notice me, they were busy working on the child, and the mother was standing off to the sidelines with her eyes closed. Her hands clasped in front of her, she was making short high-pitched shrieks and rocking herself back and forth like a praying Hassid.
    I turned and started walking back toward the NAR. The ghost came with me, flitting hither and yon.
    "This is all your fault, Di-nah."
    "Please. I'm just a human being."
    "Poor excuse for a human being, if you ask me."
    "And what were you? You were a horrible human being."
    Smile, colossal. "Well, I'm a much better ghost. Don't you think?"
    I thought he was a vicious, tormenting ghost.
    "My sister had to go. Where were you?" It was Sam, coming up behind me. I walked on and we were a threesome. I could see through the glass that the room was empty. Even the nurse wasn't there. I started to boil. How could Sam have left Elijah alone?
    When we got inside the NAR, Sam pulled a little envelope out of his shirt pocket. "I called the doctor and got these for you." Opened the envelope, handed me two little white pills. "Take them, Dinah."
    The ghost had floated up to the ceiling. His smile had become huge, one end of the ceiling to the other. "Get a grip, Di-nah."
    I swallowed the pills with the water Sam gave me.
    "Look at your