The Thanatos Syndrome

can give him. I’m thinking of giving him a couple of afternoons a week.” Group strategy: Don’t shoot Bob Comeaux, use him.
    We all appear to consider.
    â€œWell, I don’t know,” muses Max, who is just beginning to grasp what has happened, is astounded, and is not showing it.
    Bob Comeaux, still martyred, eyes still closed elegiacally, is actually attending closely. He almost nods.
    â€œI was thinking too,” I say, not to Bob, but to Max. “You know, we’ve not only got a lot of toxic-abused children, overdosed on sodium 24, thanks to Van Dorn’s hapless experiment”—blame Van Dorn for now—“who’ve been knocked back to a cortical deficit, a pre-linguistic level like a bunch of chimps and are going to need all the help Father Smith and the rest of us can give them. I think it would also be a good place to transfer the euthanasic candidates and quarantined patients from the Qualitarian Center.”
    Max rolls his eyes. Things are moving too fast. It’s all right for resource persons to fall out in group, stage mock warfare. But this! For Christ’s sake, Doctor, Max is saying, eyes rolled back, you’re pushing him too far.
    â€œI for one,” says Max, switching to his nice-cop-versus-mean cop voice, “don’t think Dr. Comeaux should take that to mean you’re suggesting the transfer of all infants who are candidates for pedeuthanasia for one reason or another—hopeless retardation, Down’s syndrome, AIDS infants, status epilepticus, gross irreparable malformations, and suchlike—who have no chance for a life of any sort of acceptable quality—you’re not suggesting that they too should be transferred from the center to the hospice?”
    â€œThat’s what I meant. The hospice will take them all.”
    Bob Comeaux has recovered sufficient footing to lever himself away from the doorjamb and face us both.
    â€œYou’re talking about violating the law of the land, gentlemen,” he says quietly. “D oe v. Dade, the landmark case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court which decreed, with solid scientific evidence, that the human infant does not achieve personhood until eighteen months.”
    Max’s eyes are in his eyebrows. If his junior resource person insists on screwing up, he’s on his own.
    â€œNot only that,” I go on in the same sociable tone, non compos but not hostile either, “we want all the so-called pre-personhood infants at St. Margaret’s by next week, plus all the terminal cases of any age, including adult AIDS patients who’ve been quarantined—plus your nursing staff until we can get organized.”
    Why am I saying all this? Father Smith is a loony and can’t even take care of himself.
    â€œShit, Max!” Bob Comeaux, now altogether himself, collected in his anger, has squared off with Max. “He’s talking about shooting down the entire Qualitarian program in this area. No way.”
    Max now, dropping group voice: this is serious. “Tom, we don’t want to get into a legal hassle. It is, after all, the law of the land.”
    â€œMax, the law of the land does not require gereuthanasia of the old or pedeuthanasia of pre-personhood infants. It only permits it under certain circumstances.
    â€œI know, but—” says Max.
    Group falls silent.
    â€œNo way,” says Bob Comeaux softly.
    â€œVery well,” I say, picking up the photos and Lucy’s printouts from NIH’s mainframe. “I’ll be going.”
    â€œWhat you got there?” asks Bob Comeaux quickly, eyes tracking the printouts like a Macintosh mouse.
    â€œYou know what these are, Bob.”
    â€œWhat you going to do with them?”
    â€œReturn them to Dr. Lipscomb. They’re her property. She in turn will be obliged to notify NIH, ACMUI, and the Justice Department.”
    â€œBut we haven’t signed you out!” exclaims Bob Comeaux, actually pointing to the torn paper in my student wastebasket.
    â€œIn that case I’ll just hand them to Warden Elmo Jenkins, who is familiar with the case and will pass them along to Lucy.”
    â€œAh me,” muses Max.
    I’m halfway to the door. “Hold it, old son,” says Bob Comeaux, uttering, in a sense, a laugh, and clapping a hand on my shoulder. “As L.B.J. and Isaiah used to say, Let us reason together.” And, to tell the truth, he looks a bit like